january has an "r"

Charboiled Oysters
Acme Oyster House
St. Tammany Parish
Covington, Louisiana

Why do we only eat oyster in the months that have R's in them? The answer has to do with an oyster's sex life. During the month without R's, the adult oyster has little interest in sex . During cold weather the oyster's body weight is made up of the glycogen and salts that make it fat and tasty. But in the late spring, the oyster's fancy lightly turns to reproduction and it assumes a sex for the season, or at least part of it. It may be either sex, primarily. Having made a choice of which sex it will be, the oyster converts 80 percent of its body weight to sex organs, which are thin and watery and taste like nothing at all. It isn't that oysters are inedible during the summer; just that they aren't as meaty and succulent.