I take lots of food photos. Those of you who follow me on Facebook, Instagram and Pinterest, you know that I also post lots of food photos. I cook so many different things that sometimes it's hard to remember what I've tried and liked. It's fun to scroll back through the photos on my computer and think, “Hey! I forgot about that one. It was delicious. Gotta make it again.”

Baby, It’s Cold Outside

Dear Aunt Bossy,

You usually come off like a combination of Mother Theresa and Little Mary Sunshine, with all your do-good advice and insane positive thinking, and I want you to spare me that crap, but you do seem to have some experience and common sense, so I am turning to you for advice.

“I think often of Celia Davies. She could squeeze a conversation to its rind, leap it east to west, or change its axis wholly. Her wits were as supple as her fingers were rigid. I don’t know her story, for she was an adept evader of questions, but her life would be a giddy crossword, working down from some clues and across from others.” Leif Enger, So Brave, Young, and Handsome (2008, Grove Press)

Frank Roberts might grow the world’s best oyster right here in Beaufort. Now the world is about to find out.

Story and photos by Mark Shaffer

A good oyster smells like the sea breeze skipping over the shore. A bad oyster smells like a murder victim. I prefer the former. But I like how even the latter helps exemplify the essence of the interface: an oyster conveys its life experience directly to your senses.

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     – Rowan Jacobsen, from The Essential Oyster, a Salty Appreciation of Taste and Temptation, Bloomsbury Publishing, 2016