Buried in Gastronomical Me and the story Fisher’s first oyster is her memory of a joyous school picnic at the Huntington School for Girls.
Fisher remembers t “Hungry shrieking,” girls “at half past noon a procession of house-boys would come down the cliffs from the school with our lunch for us in big baskets. There would be various things, of course, like pickles and napkins and knives and probably sandwiches and fruit, although how Mrs. Cheever managed it with the school full of hungry shrieking postgraduates is more than I can guess. Perhaps she even sent down devilled eggs to make it a real picnic.”
Simple food, Fisher suggests, is the true makings of a “real” picnic. But constantly shifting her preferences in “The Pleasures of Picnics” (discussed elsewhere in PicnicWit.com.) Fisher touts champagne, caviar, wild strawberries, and vanilla mousse.
Fisher Family Picnic in Laguna Beach, California (1918c.). Fisher is in the front left.
See M. F. K. Fisher. “The First Oyster,” In The Gastronomical Me. New York: Macmillan, 1943. Reprint, North Point Press, 1989; M. F. K. “The Pleasures of Picnics [1957] “In A Stew or a Story: An Assortment of Short Works by M.F.K. Fisher Edited by Joan Reardon. Emeryville, CA: Shoemaker & Hoard, 2006. The essay was originally published in Harper’s Bazaar (1957); by Auguste Escoffier. The Complete Guide to the Modern Art of Cookery (1903), Translated by James B. Herndon: London: Heinemann, 1907; Alfred Suzanne. La Cuisine Anglaise. Paris: En Vente A Paris, 1894