the road | the food | a new direction
The fishing community of Ballard, a Seattle neighborhood that sits alongside Puget Sound, got together with the local Elks to hold a salmon barbeque dinner in 1971 to raise money for the Chamber of Commerce. That dinner has since grown into the two-day Ballard SeafoodFest, drawing over 60,000 people to what was once a center of Scandinavian-American salmon fishermen. This year’s festival will be held on Saturday and Sunday, July 11th and 12th. Continue reading
California has the distinction of holding the summer’s first state fair (state fair geeks are aware that Florida’s fair, held in February, is the first of the calendar year). The California State Fair is one of the more popular state fairs as well, drawing almost a million people over its 17 days. This year’s edition opens in Sacramento on Friday, July 10th and runs through Sunday, July 26th. Continue reading
Over five tons of turkey is grilled outdoors over coals for McMinnville, Oregon’s annual Turkey Rama, held this year for the 55th time. The turkey is fantastic, smoky and seasoned to the bone, with luscious strips of skin. Choose white or dark. This is a huge festival that extends far beyond the consumption of the bird that was once, but is no longer, a major part of the local economy. Continue reading
All you city slickers are probably wondering: what’s a thresher? It’s a piece of farm machinery that separates the kernel of a grain from the stalk. The Southeast Old Threshers’ Reunion claims to be “The Greatest Steam, Gas Engine & Antique Farm Show in the Southeastern U.S.” and we don’t doubt them. The part of the festival that intrigues us the most is the Tractor Ride, at $25/person. See, you drive the tractor! It’s not clear to us if they supply the tractor or you are supposed to bring your own. In any case, the ride comes with a t-shirt and lunch afterwards of BBQ pork or grilled chicken. Continue reading
Traverse City, Michigan calls itself the Cherry Capital of the World and, judging by the eight-day cherry party they put on each summer, we’d have to agree. There are many, many opportunities to eat cherries at the National Cherry Festival. How about attending the Very Cherry Pancake Breakfast which will include locally sourced cherry topping? Or the Great American Picnic where the menu includes corn bread with dried cherries, cherry brats with cherry mustard chutney, smoked chicken wings with cherry-chipotle glaze, marinated green bean salad with cherry vinaigrette, pasta salad with dried cherry pesto, and a brownie with dried cherries! Continue reading
Peach ice cream, peach cobbler, peach sundaes, peach slush, peach tea, peach almond delights (what are they?!), and fresh peaches — that’s right, this isn’t one of those festivals where the local crop plays a strictly symbolic role. No, there WILL be peaches at the 57th annual Lexington County Peach Festival, and plenty of them! To go along with all those fresh peachy delights there will be plate lunches of barbecued pork and chicken.
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Mountain Rest, at the far western reaches of South Carolina, bordering Georgia, is certainly a part of Appalachia, but when they celebrate the 56th annual Hillbilly Day on the 4th of July you can be sure tongues are planted firmly in cheek. Which is not to say that the stereotypical “hillbilly” culture celebrated at this festival is entirely foreign to the thousands of folks who attend in fanciful getups each year. The old-timey banjo and fiddle music is for real, as are the cloggers. But don’t expect to run into the real Jed Clampett. Continue reading
Combine pig, hickory charcoal, and the High Country of North Carolina and what do you get? A 4th of July to remember, at the 47th Roasting of the Hog in Beech Mountain (the highest town in the United States east of the Rockies). The local fire department claims they’ve perfected their seasonings and charcoal blends over the years, to the point that they may just serve the finest barbecue in the High Country. Dinner (they do turkey as well as pork) is served from 6 until 8 p.m. and includes all the fixin’s, tea and lemonade, and even a Moon Pie for dessert! Continue reading
“Before God was God and boulders were boulders, the Basques were already Basques.” That Basque saying refers to the Basque people’s very long history, said to predate the arrival of the people who became most of today’s European population. The descendants of Basques who came to this country primarily in the 19th century have a strong cultural identity, which is celebrated each year in Elko, Nevada at the National Basque Festival. This year’s festival runs from July 3rd through 5th. One thing you can count on: there will be plenty of robust Basque cuisine to sample. Continue reading
What began in 1946 as the Homecoming, a 4th of July weekend festival for soldiers returning home from World War II, in 1950 was transformed into the peacetime Blackberry Festival in Carlisle, Kentucky (the blackberry became the official state fruit of Kentucky in 2004). Celebrated on Carlisle’s courthouse lawn, the festival features rides, games, a Blackberry Queen, plenty of live music (there’ll be gospel Wednesday night), a Thursday night parade, and fireworks on Friday night. Continue reading
We find this hard to believe, and it’s incredible if true: the Cherry Fair in Schaefferstown, Pennsylvania is said to go back to the 1700s! Presumably they skipped a few years since that first fair for, say, the Revolutionary War or something. The fair, these days, is held at the circa 1736 Historic Schaeffer Farm, which was designated a National Historic Landmark in 2011. Continue reading
Ahh, the huckleberry! Anyone who has spent significant time in the Mountain States of the U.S. has surely encountered huckleberry jams, syrups, and milkshakes, and the taste is unforgettable. They look like blueberries but, as a food (as opposed to horticulturally, about which we know nothing), there are two main distinctions: they tend to be seedy, and the flavor, to us, is like a more intense combination of blueberry and blackberry. They only grow wild – all efforts to farm them have failed. While they are generally associated with the Mountain States (they are the state fruit of Idaho), plenty of huckleberries can be found elsewhere – they are abundant in New York forests, for instance. Continue reading
Have a rooster that won’t shut up? Bring him to the town of Rogue River in Oregon on Saturday, June 25th and he might just make you a little spending cash. That’s the date of the 63rd annual Rooster Crow, held since 1953. Each competing rooster is watched for 30 minutes and the one who crows most often is the winner. If you don’t have a farm background you might be surprised to learn that the winning rooster typically crows over 60 times in that half hour. That’s over twice a minute. Imagine living with that outside your bedroom window! Continue reading
The first Alma Center Strawberry Festival was held way back in 1945, and the local Lions Club upholds the tradition to this day. First thing to know about this three-day party: there’ll be strawberry shortcake! Isn’t that enough? But there’s more: how about brats (this is Wisconsin, after all) and chicken and hot pork sandwiches? Continue reading
The peaches that hang from the trees in north-central Louisiana orchards are ripe and ready to eat from mid-June through mid-July. Until 2011, some of these locally grown peaches were peeled and cut up by volunteers. Then the Louisiana Tech Dairy incorporated them into the locally beloved peach ice cream that was only produced for the two days of the Louisiana Peach Festival in Ruston (the flavor was too labor-intensive for year-round production). Continue reading
Are you a seed spitter? A really, really good seed spitter? As in, can you break the world seed spit record of 68 feet, 9 1/8 inches? Because if you can spit a watermelon seed farther than the current world record, you will be awarded a bonus prize of $500. That’s in addition to the regular cash prizes awarded in the World Championship Seed Spitting Contest to be held at the Luling Watermelon Thump this year. Continue reading
The Italian-American fishing community of Gloucester, Massachusetts has sponsored an annual festival to honor the patron saint of fishermen, St. Peter, since the early 1900s. The Italian section of Gloucester will be decorated with colored lights, fifty archways, flowers, and a life-size statue of St. Peter from Wednesday, June 22nd through Sunday, June 26th. There will be five days of live musical entertainment and sporting competitions, including the famed Greasy Pole Contest and the Seine Boat Races. Continue reading
2016 is the 74th year for South Carolina’s “oldest continuing festival.” The Hampton County Watermelon Festival begins next Saturday, June 18th, and will continue through Sunday, June 26th. Most, but not all, of the events take place in the town of Hampton. Some of the edible highlights: Continue reading
Tekoa (pronounced tee’-ko), a small eastern Washington town, is holding their annual Slippery Gulch Celebration next weekend (Friday, 6/17/16 through Sunday, 6/19/16). Tekoa gets a jump on the festival proper with a fishing derby on Wednesday and a “Royal Tea” Thursday evening, the 16th. Friday night will see a teen game night and adult dance. Saturday’s the biggest day, beginning with the Chamber breakfast at 7:30 a.m., which, in the past, has included German sausage and cinnamon rolls. Continue reading
Hot summers call for cool watermelon! For over half a century the town of Monticello, just east of Tallahassee in northern Florida, has put on an annual celebration of this ultra-refreshing summer fruit. Jefferson County has been a major supplier of fruit and seeds to the rest of the country since the late 1800s. This year’s 65th annual festival began last Saturday (6/6/15) with all the pageants and will continue through Saturday the 20th of June. Continue reading
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