Today kicks off the start of the 60th Annual Maine Lobster Festival. The festival, based in Rockland Maine takes place for five day in the beginning of every August. This year it runs from August 1st - 5th, 2007. It's been shown on the Good Morning America, the Food Network and other channels many times and is a celebration of all things lobster and Maine. people come from all over for the festival, and I do mean all over. In the parking lots you will see license plates from states as far away as Washington and Alaska, as well as all parts of Canada. In the past I have even run into people visiting from England, Sweden, Japan, and more.
During the time between now and Sunday evening I will cover as much as I can of all the weird, whacky, and food related events that take place, including the children's lobster eating contest, the children's codfish carry, the "Great International William Atwood Lobster Crate Race", the Sea Goddess contest, the "Real Maine Man" cooking contest, the Maine Seafood Cooking contest (which my friend Risa Small has won twice), the blindfold rowboat race, the little lobster diaper derby (lobsters and diapers together sounds downright strange), and all the festival food.
From Thursday to Sunday there is a blueberry pancake breakfast each morning where you cal get your fill of tasty pancakes made with the local blueberries. One of the best parts of the LobsterFest is the enormous lobster tent where you can buy tasty seafood of all kinds. Steamed mussels, fried scallops, fried shrimp, fried clams, marinated mussels, shrimp cocktail, steamed clams, and lobsters, lobsters, and more lobsters. You can get a single lobster dinner, a double lobster dinner, or for the hearty eaters a triple lobster dinner. I haven't had lobsters since I picked up a pair to dine on back in early June, so it's time for a double or triple for me. then for desert there is fresh made strawberry shortcake, made with the local strawberries that are just finishing up their season.
They serve so many lobsters during the five days of the festival that they built a special lobster cooker, which has served so much use over the years that this year they are doing a find raiser selling custom engraved bricks, so they can build a new brick cooker for next year. Gee, just what I always wanted. A customized brick. Anyway, to get back to the lobsters. There are more than 1,000 volunteers working the festival, and some of the hardest working will be those who serve the crowds of up to 90,000 folks who will eat 25,000 pounds of lobster during this week. No wonder the old cooker is getting run down. From morning until night the big steamer that's the size of a car gets up to 700 pounds of lobster dropped in to cook at a time. Well, I'm off to get ready for the start of the festival with the entrance of King Neptune and last years Sea Goddess. Something I saw for the first time almost thirty years ago.
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