"festivals" news and stories

February has an abundance of wine-this and wine-that festivals. As we look toward spring and summer, we also look forward to fruit and vegetable fairs. Cin cin, wine enthusiasts.

Portland Seafood and Wine Festival, Feb. 5-6, Portland, Ore.: Splitting open Dungeness crabs while quaffing wine isn't a combination that comes to mind. But that won't stop us! The first 500 daily attendants will receive a commemorative wine glass. Check out the crab cracking or the oyster schucking and swallowing competitions. A percentage of the ticket price will be donated to the Oregon Chapter of the National Multiple Sclerosis Society.

The Kingdom of Navarra Gastronomic Week, Feb. 6-14, New York and Washington, DC: Spain is a land of cutting-edge chefs. Spain's Navarra province, the Kingdom of Flavors, will occupy two culinary capitals this month, armed with its pork cheeks, rosado wine and myriad treasured comidas.

• Seven soup recipes from seven new cookbooks help Denver residents stay warm this season.
• Seared scallops, salad and rib-eye are the way to go at the newly revamped Simms Steakhouse.
• The Colorado Beer Festival descends on Colorado Springs this Saturday, and offers more than 70 beers to sample, as well as a designated-driver program.
• The Wynkoop Brewery will hold its own Beers of the Year mini-festival on Saturday, also.
• Dublin-made cream liqueur Coole Swan, which gets its name from Yeats' poem "The Wild Swans of Coole," is finally for sale in Colorado, and one food writer -- who claims it's the finest cream liqueur he's ever tasted -- couldn't be happier.
• A "gastropub" opens in Cherry Creek, inspiring food critic Tucker Shaw to explore the etymology of the word.
• A knife-wielding blogger discovers the bounty of the duck.

Since the 1800's in Thailand, there has been a yearly vegetarian festival in which attendees participate in rituals from eating to piercing themselves with spears to drive away evil spirits. Everyone refrains from sex and meat-eating, and they dance and celebrate to bring luck to their community!

The Vegetarian Festival began in 1825. A traveling Chinese opera company came to Phuket and immediately fell ill with a mysterious disease. While they were sick, they observed a brief two-day tradition of honoring past emperors by refraining from eating meat. These two events would seem to be unrelated, but the opera company members' illness vanished! The people of Phuket were fascinated, and learned the vegetarian rituals the company had followed to cure themselves. They continue to honor vegetarianism as restorative and cleansing, and the festival is now a 10-day affair during the 9th lunar month.

The Vegetarian Festival, alive and well, took place from September 28th to October 7th this year, and below is our gallery. If you're feeling brave, you can see pictures of the piercings here, and you can read more about the history and traditions of the festival here.

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I thought ya'll might care to know that the World Grits Festival kicks off today in St. George, South Carolina. The three-day festival will include grits grinding demos, a grits eating contest, corn shucking competition, and a "rolling in the grits" contest (ages 15 and up. Is that anything like "rolling in the hay," I wonder?).

The festival website features grits recipes like savory grits pies, syrup n' bacon grits, and deep fried grits and cheese. While I'll devour a plain old dish of grits with butter and salt any day, my favorite grits recipe is shrimp and grits, an old coastal Carolinas favorite. I like to fancy it up, stirring grated sharp white cheddar into the grits and topping with handfuls of crumbled bacon, chopped chives, caramelized onions and fresh fat shrimp sauteed in butter and garlic. Serve it with biscuits for brunch or try it with a green salad for an easy but elegant Sunday dinner.

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Or is it crayfish festival? Either way, you won't find many of these freshwater crustaceans in the finest restaurants anywhere except Cajun country - except, of course, at Aquavit. Evidently, the Swedes love the crayfish, so chef and hottie Marcus Samuelsson is throwing a festival from August 15-21 at his midtown restaurant. The most over-the-top offering is a $100 seven-course crayfish dinner. $100 for crawfish? Wow.

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