festivals

This is the time of year when the shad run up our east coast rivers
(I 'm also told there is a large migration up our West coast rivers)
Last weekend Poughkeepsie had a shad festival, I missed it, and this weekend we plan to attend the festival in Kingston where we will enjoy ,at a modest price, both roe and filets- they are always delicious. My wife, who will never eat shad at home (excellently cooked , if i do say so myself) always enjoys it on the banks of the Rondout creek.

There are festivals all up and down the Hudson River as there are along the Connecticut and Delaware Rivers.

I think the Roadfood forum should be a good place for shad lovers to make us aware of dates and places and to even share recipes, etc.

Here's to the"Founding Fish"!

I can't believe there's nobody out there in this gang of foodies who loves shad and shad roe, and doesn't want to talk about it.

We went to the Kingston festival yesterday. A very pleasant day,
the shad filets were grilled over wood fires by Culinary Institute students, and the roes were panfried in bacon fat. A side of cole slaw, a beer, and a squeeze of lemon made for a great meal as all kinds of boats went up and down the Rondout creek.

A new Mexican restaurant has opened next to the Hudson River Maritime Museum where the fest is held, so we wandered over there for a flan and cofee - the end of a great meal.

John,
I guess that Shad don't draw a crowd here....I always thought their purpose was to lead the Salmon back into the Sacramento River each year. We used to grab the Grunion when they did their festy little dance on the shore at high tide in the Summer. They look like a Shad and get treated the same way you describe. Must be related.
Now for Festival Information. May is BBQ Heaven here in the Ohio Valley. Owensboro,KY holds their BBQ festival this weekend..Memphis is next weekend I believe and the W C Handy Blues and BBQ Festival in Henderson KY (across from Evansville,IN is the Flag Day Weekend in June. Each of those can be a lot of fun.
On another thread we were discussing Artichokes etc and I was reminded of the Artichoke Festival in Castroville, CA...and the Garlic Festival in nearby Gilroy Both are worth a weekend trip. If you don't mind crowds, the Strawberry Festival weekend in Oxnard,CA near Ventura is a dandy...but it gets mobbed with a ton of folks from L A .
One of the smaller festivals that we have had a lot of fun at is way up in Tule Lake CA...The Horseradish Festival. it is unbelieveable what some folks can do with some 'Root'.
If the rain and nasty weather ever let's up here we want to hit some of the local fairs and festivals this summer. Churchill Downs has a "Taste of Louisville" day at the track early in June. It has vendors from all over the area serving samples of everything you can imagine in the infield area, plus a full card of racing. It is a real fun day also.
What are some of the Festivals or Fairs that have some goodies for the public in your area????

We always enjoy the Fresno County Fair (or Big Fresno Fair as it's called these days) where we enter our cooking and crafts. There is also a "Suds in the City" festival coming up featuring local breweries and food. We also have another one (don't know the name) featuring martinis, cigars and food.. frankly I think the cigars would cancel out the flavor of the food but that's just me.

One of the most Fun Fairs we would attend annually in SoCal, was the Date Festival in Indio in February. If you every can attend, Please do. Dates ate a major crop in that Desert community and they serve them in more ways than I can imagine. Plus Camel races, tons of other fair food and events for the whole week. Date Shakes are a real treat !!!

Md has the shad but they run here in March not exactly festival time here. But we do have festivals. There's the DelMarVa chicken festival (place changes each year), then the crab festival in St Michael's In August, there's one in Crisfield too, the Southern Md oyster festival in October. Strawberry festivals & Peach festivals abound in the Western part of the state. There is hardly a weekend that passes from now through October that there isn't a festival of some kind to be found. Scottish Highland festivals are held as well as a Renaisance (sp?) festival that runs for several months in Ann Arundel County.

SeafarerJohn== Love shad - used to go to the area called Shad Landing and party there. Now, alas, am more bound by work etc and get my shad and roe at fish stores. Generally do the shad in a long cooked (smothered) format and the roe with bacon! mmmm

Where are there any shad festivals being held after 5/11/03? Unfortunately I missed all the ones held so far.
I prefer locations in the Hudson Valley first and Delaware Valley secondarily and thirdly anywhere.

Thanks for any help available.

PC

I just spent a half hour on the web and didn't find any shad festivals this late in the season - and the season is really just at its height. The two major festivals on the Delaware are over, and I can't find anymore on the Hudson. Suggest you try:
info@hudsonriver,org - they should have word on festivals.
Also, perhaps some Maine towns might have later festivals.

Next year I'll try to get a listing on this site for festivals in New Jersey,New York, and Connecticut.

For those poor folk out there who have been deprived of the delights of shad, I'll remind you the latin name is "Alosa Sapidissima" meaning "most delicious herring"! This fish was a Spring staple of the eastern American Indian diet and saved Washington's starving army in the Spring of 1778 at Valley Forge.

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While not exclusively a food festival, my favorite for out of town visitors is a small, noncommercialized one - the Goschenhoppen Folk Festival in East Greenville PA. This year it will be held on August 8 & 9. It’s a recreation of life in that area in the 18th and 19th centuries so there’s not a soft drink, hot dog, french fry or snowcone to be found. But they do have corn pies baked in cast iron cookstoves, besides dozens of pies like cherry crumb, apricot crumb, and lemon sponge.

How about a ham dinner with potato filling and pepper cabbage? Or a snack platter of sliced ring bologna, cheese chunks and a pickled red-beet egg washed down with homemade birch beer or some mint tea? It’s only a few steps away to a group of aproned ladies peeling big washtubs full of ripe peaches to serve over vanilla ice cream.

There are cooking and butchering demonstrations set up and you can sample the end results – pig stomach stuffed with sausage and potatoes or that clear hard Christmas candy poured into molds are just a couple.

Just now learned there will be a shad festival complete with planked shad in Catskill, NY, at Catskill Point on the Hudson, Saturday, May 17th ,11am to 5pm.

The Delmarva Chicken Festival will be held at Delaware University in Dover Del this year. It wil be on June 20 and 21. They have the world's biggest frying pan. It has a 10 ft diameter & holds 160 gal of oils & 800 chicken quarters.

It's been a while since this topic has seen the light of day....but I just got the email notice from Churchill Downs in Louisville announcing the BREW and BARBECUE FESTIVAL to be held on the weekend of June 28 & 29. Several medium-name country performers will entertain, beer on sale in the infield from local and national dealers...and more than a dozen BBQ restaurants will provide the chow. They set all of this up in the infield where there is plenty of room. Admission to the festival is free with the normal track admission. Thats where that photo I posted of the big BBQ Rig was taken a few years back. We hope to go this year, and urge anyone within reasonable driving distance to consider it also. We have had a real good time at previous celebrations.

We have our big food festival this weekend, the Chew Chew; but Burlington being such a small town, there's really not much reason for anyone who's lived here for any length of time to go to it. I would be hard pressed to find enough to spend my money on that I haven't already had cheaper at the restaurants being represented. Like a lot of such festivals, its really aimed at the out-of-town tourists.

Tomorrow we will do a one-day, hit the festival trail in Westerrn Indiana. We have three stops on our list of places to visit.
1. Jasper IN has a 4 day Strassefest underway with many German/Amish events and a ton of food offerings, in addition to the usual fair-food.
2. Oakland City IN is celebrating it's Sweet Corn Festival Saturday and Sunday. Again the theme says it all...
3. Then it is over to Owensville IN for their Watermelon Festival.
The best part of these activities is that they are all within a 30 mile circle in the western part of the state.
We love to wander the local fairs, and the Jasper event is quite large, with the Quilt Auction being the high point of the celebration. We won't buy---they are out of our price-range...but A good dinner and a lot of munchies mean a fun day.

Sounds more like a culinary adventure than a festival. Can't wait to read about the food courts.

Paul E. Smith
Knoxville, TN

The best place to eat in New Orleans is only open the last weekend in April and the first weekend in May. If your mouth is in need of some watering, go to the link below and check out the al a carte menu. Not a hot dog or a wad of cotton candy in the place. You can however, get a softshell crab po boy and back it up with a fresh Canoli from Angelo Brocatos and wash the whole thing down with fresh made strawberry lemonade made with Pontchatoula berries. mmmmmmmmhttp://www.nojazzfest.com/food/2003food.html

I live in Natchitoches, LA, the oldest permanent settlement in the Louisiana Purchase and a town that lives from party to party and festival to festival. Some consider it a small chunk of South Louisiana picked up and plunked down halfway between Alexandria and Shreveport just to let these northern cities know what they're missing. But I digress.

Since the 1930s we've had a Christmas Festival the first weekend in December: the towns swells from 17,000 to about 140K-160K on the Saturday of that weekend. Here's a link to that:
http://www.ci.natchitoches.la.us/IE_Default.htm

This year we are having our first Meat Pie festival, honoring a pretty much local delicacy much like a fried pie filled with finely ground pork and beef, highly seasoned. It's September 19-21; here's a link:
http://www.meatpiefestival.com/

Come join us for the fun! The second weekend of December is better: fewer people, nearly as much fun. Festival lasts until Epiphany.

Following up on Stogie's recommendation, we will journey to theMadison,Indiana RIBBERFEST this morning, for a day in the sun. It is held along the banks of the Ohio River about 50 miles upriver from Louisville. According to our 11pm news tonight they got about an inch of rain in late evening thunderstorms that put a bit of a damper on this evenings festivities...So we will only hope that tomorrow brings a better day.
Although Stogie's team will not be part of the competition, he has set up introductions for us to meet and greet some of the folks involved in the contest. We are looking forward to the adventure, and a chance to gain a new perspective on competitive cooking.

Coming up next month is a Festival worthy of the attention of some of us who might have an interest in this special program!!
I hope to attend and participate in a 'tasting exercise'.

Here is the descriptive link, http://www.kybourbonfestival.com

One festival I'm looking forward to this year is the North Quabbin Garlic and Arts Festival, Sept. 20th in Orange, MA. They have a website at http://www.garlicandarts.com. The list of food on the website makes my mouth water - and the chance to try garlic ice cream as well, from Bart's, no less! Though I would prefer lemon, myself.

This past weekend there was a Greek festival in Pawtucket, RI, and another in Cambridge, MA, I think; I didn't get to either but am looking forward to the big annual one in Cranston - gotta get some lamb...

JL

quote:

Originally posted by Al-The Mayor-Bowen

Coming up next month is a Festival worthy of the attention of some of us who might have an interest in this special program!!
I hope to attend and participate in a 'tasting exercise'.

Here is the descriptive link, http://www.kybourbonfestival.com

Mr. Mayor, If the food is as good as the festival sounds, I will be there. How does the sampling occur? Shoud we bring our own???? What is the food agendae??

Paul E. Smith
Knoxville, TN

They have a Spirit Garden that operates like the normal Fair "Beer Garden" so it amounts to a cash bar!!
Foods are centered on the typical Fair Foods with a lot of the local organizations selling Bourbon Related Products. Read the menu for the Breakfast held at a local Catholic College on Fri-Sat and Sunday.. Sour-Mash Pancakes, KY Sausage, Bourbon Butter and Syrup, and Bourbon Coffee all for $5. Now that's the way to start a day !
BTW I enjoyed a Funnel Cake the other day at a local festival...but not just a powdered sugar Funnel Cake. This one had hot carmel syrup and pecan pieces all over it then the powdered sugar was applied. Hot, Sweet and Fresh, It was outstanding.

Mr. Mayor, the bourbon related foods sound good, but the funnel cakes with the pecan and carmel sounds really good.

Thanks for the info.

Paul E. Smith
Knoxville, TN

Y'all just missed the Great Texas Mosquito Festival in Clute. A smashin', slappin', swattin' good time was had by all and the folks who own stock in the company that makes Off were ecstatic. (Actually, I was there 5 hours and didn't see a single mosquito).

Coming up next month is the Great Texas Gator Festival in Anahuac, on the east side of Trinity Bay. http://www.texasgatorfest.com

In October, one of the most fun festivals and one of the most delicious is the Greek Festival at the Greek Orthodox Cathedral in Houston. I haven't been in a few years but as I recall, all the food is homemade - not the usual commercial vendors. http://www.agoc.org/greekfestival/

Dickens on the Strand is a big event in December on Galveston island, a re-creation of the Victorian era. Then there's Galveston's Mardi Gras in February. http://www.dickensonthestrand.org/

I went looking to find a website for the CzechFest at the Ft. Bend Co. Fairgrounds in Rosenberg, TX, in May and found out there are Czech fests all over Texas! Ditto Crawfish festivals.

We have so many different cultures and nationalities represented here and most have some sort of event. I heard of a Ukrainian festival last year.

About the biggest festival here is the Houston International Festival, known now just as iFest, which takes place over two weeks in March and April and is spread over a huge area downtown and in a park just to the west of downtown. It's commercially sponsored, to drum up business and trade, and each year highlights a different country or nationality. Next spring's will highlight Thailand. There's tons of food vendors, many entertainment stages, etc.
http://www.ifest.org/ifest2004/index.htm

Hermit,
Chasing dowm my Czech heritage we discovered that the Czech immigrants were one of the largest groups to settle in Texas (and the Plains States too!) Czech is the third most used language in Texas , after English and Spanish. That suprised me as I thought the German settlers would outnumber the Czechs. Apparently the wave of settlement put a large number of these folks with 200 miles of what is now I-35 from the Mexican to the Canadian border. So as you travel up the highway, reminders of the Czechs pop up frequently. WEST, Texas, near Waco is a Czech town with a number of food shops and many business's that have Czech decorations and welcome signs. They have a great annual festival also.
Texas sure is a lot more than Bubba and the Cowboys !!

Long Live SHINER BOCH !

Mr. Mayor, as I have been to Waco many times, I noticed while driving north back to DFW airport that about 30 miles north of Waco, I saw a lot of signs regarding Czech restaurants and gift shops. I stopped and there was a Czech bakery right beside interstate where I bought several different kinds of pastries filled with meats, veggies and etc. I thought it was kind of strange discovering this kind of community in the middle of Texas. Thanks for your explanation.

In addition, I drove about another mile east of the interstate and there were several other Czech establishments such as gift shops and restaurants.

Paul E. Smith
Knoxville, TN

Hi, I'm a new member! I'd like to pimp one of the best down-home festivals I've ever been to, though I'm biased because I grew up there, but sadly had to move away for work ...

The Niagara County Peach Festival is Lewiston, NY, is scheduled for Sept. 5-7. There's rides and games, sure, and the Peach Queen contest, along with the Peach Blossom and Peach Fuzz contests, a cute small-town parade and fun run. But the peach recipe contest, peach pop (or "soda" if you prefer), and peach shortcake are really tasty reasons to attend.

Sadly, because of the popularity, the peaches in the shortcake aren't fresh cut because of the volume, though back in the day they were. The biscuits are baked by a local bakery, DiCamillo's, and are fabulous.

If that's not enough, the Lewiston Vol. Fire Co.'s chicken chowder is very good, as are the grilled Italian sausage sandwiches with peppers and onions from the Kiwanis tent. If you need more dessert after the shortcake, amble across the street from Academy Park and hit up Hibbard's Custard (and liquor store next door) for fresh, rich and delicious soft custard. They usually only have three flavors per day -- chocolate, vanilla are standard, plus one to be named later. The black raspberry and maple walnut are both winners.

The Buffalo Wing Festival is scheduled for Labor Day weekend, but it's new and I've never attended, so can't endorse or dis'. But it's produced locally, I think, so how could it go wrong?

I spoke with a lady at a food booth at a festival here in Hoosierland last week...She claimed to have been able to stay out of the kitchen for every weekend since Mid-June by getting her husband to take her to local festivals in Indiana and Ohio. We aren't quite that active...but managed to visit 4 in a day a few weeks back.
A real fun way to spend a weekend.

quote:

Originally posted by hermitt4d

Y'all just missed the Great Texas Mosquito Festival in Clute. A smashin', slappin', swattin' good time was had by all and the folks who own stock in the company that makes Off were ecstatic. (Actually, I was there 5 hours and didn't see a single mosquito).

Coming up next month is the Great Texas Gator Festival in Anahuac, on the east side of Trinity Bay. http://www.texasgatorfest.com

In October, one of the most fun festivals and one of the most delicious is the Greek Festival at the Greek Orthodox Cathedral in Houston. I haven't been in a few years but as I recall, all the food is homemade - not the usual commercial vendors. http://www.agoc.org/greekfestival/

Dickens on the Strand is a big event in December on Galveston island, a re-creation of the Victorian era. Then there's Galveston's Mardi Gras in February. http://www.dickensonthestrand.org/

I went looking to find a website for the CzechFest at the Ft. Bend Co. Fairgrounds in Rosenberg, TX, in May and found out there are Czech fests all over Texas! Ditto Crawfish festivals.

We have so many different cultures and nationalities represented here and most have some sort of event. I heard of a Ukrainian festival last year.

About the biggest festival here is the Houston International Festival, known now just as iFest, which takes place over two weeks in March and April and is spread over a huge area downtown and in a park just to the west of downtown. It's commercially sponsored, to drum up business and trade, and each year highlights a different country or nationality. Next spring's will highlight Thailand. There's tons of food vendors, many entertainment stages, etc.
http://www.ifest.org/ifest2004/index.htm