SC Strawberry Festival 2018

You’d think on Cinco de Mayo any American food blogger would be heading for Mexican but nope for me it’s Strawberry Festival time.  The day was overcast so while it wasn’t the beautiful Carolina blue sky of last year the temperature was very pleasant for a day of walking around and enjoying  the exhibits, music, wrestling, food and classic car show.

After checking out the options and deciding which lines looked ridiculous and which looked scary short I decided to try Red Oak Barbeque and specifically their BBQ bowl.

The BBQ bowl was basically a BBQ plate just layered in a container.  There were baked beans forming the base layer topped with mac & cheese then a layer of smoked pulled pork which was covered with a little coleslaw all topped with a flourish of BBQ sauce.  The best two things about this were the pork and the convenient container.  The baked beans were nondescript and the mac & cheese was on par with packaged mac & cheese from the grocery store.  The coleslaw was ok but a again nothing to spend many words on.  The pork was obviously where the time was spent and it had a good smoked flavor and was nice and tender.  In hindsight a sandwich would have been the way to go.  On the upside I got to hear a good band, Carolina Rhythm Band who had a set that varied from beach music to Blondie.  I’m not sure what’s going on with the two ladies by the tent in the picture but it looked awkward.

Not to be deterred by the just OK experience with the BBQ bowl I headed off to find something with strawberries from the many options available.

Had the day been sunnier I’d have almost assuredly had some strawberry ice cream but instead I was lured over to the Sweet Dough tent by their options of strawberries & cream, strawberry doughnut and strawberry fritters and the fact they were a local business.  They all looked good and I was leaning toward the fritter when the choice was cemented by one of the folks manning the tent telling me they were still warm from being delivered from the store.  I happily forked over my money and proceeded to step away when it turned out the little wax paper bag turned out to be more of a sleeve with two open ends and while I was opening one end the fritter was exiting the other.  When I turned around with a “What the heck” look on my face the guy just handed me another.  I was so shook-up by the pastry incident I forgot to snap a shot of the fritter so you’ll just have to imagine a golden brown fritter that had strawberries folded into the dough and glazed just lightly enough to give a shiny sweet coat to the fried doughy goodness.

I also couldn’t pass up these just because it sounded so different.

I did try one and the strawberry taste starts out stronger than the dill and the sweetness doesn’t go away but the dill side tries to assert dominance as you finish the pickle.  It never does but it tries.

Lastly I just wanted to share a couple of the cars from the car show that had quite a number of really nice cars.  For the older folks the Gran Torino is the Starsky & Hutch car.