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PRINCETON: Loose Ends: Oyyyster-veh: All for a worthy cause

By Pam Hersh Special Writer
    I am sorry, Dad, but I am about the reveal a family secret — more than a century after your birth and a quarter of a century after your death.
    You adored oysters — a forbidden fruit of the sea, according to the tenets of your Jewish faith. The Kashrut, the Jewish dietary laws, also known as kosher laws, decreed that shellfish, such as lobsters, shrimp, clams, crabs and oysters, were not to be consumed. Ninety-nine percent of the time, you diligently followed the kosher dietary mandates that included not mixing meat and dairy and also eliminating all pork products. You had no problem depriving yourself of lobsters, shrimp, clams and crabs, but when it came to oysters, I think you convinced yourself that someone must have made a mistake by forbidding, as you once described them, “the most heavenly food ever created.” This culinary sin was the only taboo — to my knowledge (I did not know you in your jazz musician youth) — that you, a non-smoker, non-drinker, and non-womanizer, ever broke.
    I was reminded of your forbidden passion two weeks ago, when I literally stumbled into the Oyster Bowl taking place on Nassau Street in front of the Blue Point Grill. I was on my way home from my usual Sunday morning at Starbucks or Small World, when I was jostled into a swarm of revelers cheering what seemed to be a team of people inhaling oysters.
    I had read about this Super Bowl Sunday oyster orgy as being a benefit for the Central and South Jersey Affiliate of Susan G. Komen for the Cure, supporting breast cancer research and education. But even the knowledge that all this oystering was for a great cause failed to mitigate my gag reflex. I watched people slurp down what I consider the most nauseating food ever created, having the same appeal as slimy, unseasoned tofu. Sorry, Dad, I never got your oyster-ficionado gene and, in my opinion, the Jewish elders deciding on food prohibitions were 100 percent right, at least when it came to oysters.
    Even Congressman Rush Holt was fascinated by the oyster happening, particularly since Barbara Devaney, the mother of one of his employees, was on a team vying for the first prize that would be awarded to the team consuming the most oysters on two minutes. As I watched Ms. Devaney, a senior vice president at the Princeton-based policy research firm Mathematica, I decided that I had to find out what drove her — and you, Dad — to drink oysters. Drinking is the correct term, because there is no chewing ) just swallowing — those yucky creatures.
    Ms. Devaney reported that she was the only female on any of the 11 teams competing. The Mathematica Team won, and she consumed 61 oysters of the total Mathematica team consumption of 247 oysters in 120 seconds. She had participated on the Mathematica team every year for the past four years and even contemplated retiring this year. But for her and others, the slimy oyster in Princeton was as irresistible as the shiny apple in the Garden of Eden was to Eve.
    “I could not resist. The thought of all those scrumptious oysters (Blue Point shucks them perfectly) got to me,” she said. When I pressed her for a rational explanation for her passion, she gave answers that were as unsatisfying to me as a bowl of oysters.
    “You have to love oysters. I can’t explain it. I just love oysters. It is my favorite food. I prefer them plain. I only started eating them about 20 years ago, shortly after I moved to Princeton. A trip to New Orleans and its fabulous seafood restaurants got me hooked. And Blue Point Grill has fed my passion. Their oysters are perfect and perfectly shucked. I can give no other explanation. People either love them or think they are totally disgusting,” said the mother of three grown children.
    She was so consumed with the delectability of the oysters that she was unsure of the prize her team won. “It really doesn’t matter. No one does it for the prize. We do it because it is a great cause (this year the event raised more than $25,000) and because of the appeal of the oyster, in this case Cape May oysters, which means something to oyster connoisseurs and nothing to me.”
    I had to ask her if the rumored aphrodisiac effects of oysters were true. She indicated that in her case the only passion amplified by the consumption of oysters was the consumption of oysters.
    “And they are only eight calories apiece,” she added. Oyyyster-vey, I thought. Eight times 61 is 488 calories. Lacking the oyster orgy gene but definitely afflicted with the chocoholic gene, I came up with a much better ways to ingest 488 calories in two minutes. Two Almond Joy bars are 470 calories. As far as I know, nothing in the Jewish dietary laws bans the joy of Almond Joys.
A longtime resident of Princeton, Pam Hersh is vice president for government and community affairs with Princeton HealthCare System. She is a former managing editor of The Princeton Packet.