So I spent the weekend cooking and knitting again. (I know.) I made oyster chowder, and remembered this passage from the sixth Little House on the Prairie book, By the Shores of Silver Lake:
“First, there was oyster soup. In all her life, Laura had never tasted anything so good as that savory, fragrant, sea-tasting hot milk, with golden dots of melted cream and black specks of pepper on its top, and the little dark canned oysters at its bottom.”
That was New Year’s dinner, 1880, in the middle of what would become North Dakota. In all her life, Laura had probably never even tasted an oyster.