"The world was my oyster..."

A piece of folk wisdom concerning oysters is that they are best to eat in months containing the letter r, as illustrated by the famous phrase: “OYSTERS IN THE “R” MONTHS.” In the past, it was said that one should refrain from eating oysters during the warmer months and have-at-em during colder months, or the months with an “R” in the name. The reasoning behind this was two-fold.

One reason was that, because heat encourages the growth of bacteria, balmy summer waters were a breeding ground for disease. Limiting harvests to “R” months was the answer.

The other reason, more an issue of quality, was that, because oysters spawn during the summer months, their meat weighed less and was of poorer quality than the sugar-rich meat of an oyster that was bulking up for the cold, dormant winter that lay ahead.