Oyster Festival Fun!

Learn all about the Oyster Festival, the Shucking Contest, and how to shuck an oyster too!!

Also in this clip, at about 1:28 (and a few more times) you can briefly see my poster artwork on the Oyster Festival Program! My art was on TV.... How exciting!!!

A few weeks ago, I found out that I won the poster contest for the festival and I was so flattered and excited! Yesterday I was able to get down to the festival for the first day and sign and sell a bunch of the posters. Since it was about 40 degrees and raining all day, we had a table with the St. Mary's County tourism display inside one of the buildings. Much to my delight, we were in the same building as the National Oyster cook-off! That meant we got to smell and more importantly SAMPLE a bunch of the winning recipes.... A. MAZ. ING. I tried "Beach House Oysters with Sherry Sauce" by Chef Brandon Cahill that was... seriously... like a little bite of heaven.

You can view pictures from the event on my Facebook page even if you don't have an account!
http://www.facebook.com/SamanthasArtStudio
But if you do have a Facebook account, you're more than welcome to become a fan of my page! Just click "Become a Fan" up at the top. :)

Here are the news clips about the show too! Meet the Oyster King! (He's fantastic!)
http://networkedblogs.com/p14806822

Oyster Festival Poster Contest

I found out yesterday that my artwork was selected for the official posters of the 2009 St. Mary's County Oyster Festival & US National Oyster Shucking Championship Contest!

I've posted the artwork on my Facebook page! You can see it here:
http://www.facebook.com/SamanthasArtStudio

The Lexington Park Rotary Club and Maryland375 (St. Mary's County Tourism) sponsored a contest to design the poster for this year.
(It was hard to find information about exactly who sponsored the contest so if I'm leaving anyone out, please just leave a comment at the end of this post on my blog!)

Each year the US National Oyster Shucking Championship Contest is held at the St. Mary's County fairgrounds at the Oyster Festival. The winner of the contest goes on to compete internationally in Gallway, Ireland! The St. Mary's County Oyster Festival is an annual event that I've tried to attend each year for as long as I can remember, since I love oysters soooo much.

Momentarily stepping into the time machine.......
Apparently as a toddler, I was a pretty picky kid when it came to food. At a party, a friend of my parents started feeding me raw oyster after oyster, and lost track of how many of them I had eaten. Much to my parents' pleasant surprise, I didn't get sick from eating all those oysters! But it was one of the few foods that they could get me to eat as a kid... Go figure. Imagine my mom and grandma taking me out at lunch time and ordering sandwiches for themselves and oysters on the half shell for the kid! I heard they got some bizarre looks from some of the local restaurant staff.

If you've never been to an Oyster Festival or seen an Oyster Shucking contest, you should definitely make an effort to go. I didn't have much interest in the shucking until a friend of mine entered (and ended up winning!!) the amateur contest a few years ago. Watching the people shucking their trays of oysters was just amazing, especially since none of them even managed to severely injure themselves.

At the St. Mary's County Oyster Festival, there are also oyster cooking contests and demonstrations. Sometimes if you're lucky, after a contest or demonstration the chefs will pass out free... yes, FREE samples of the wonderful yumminess they've prepared! I had an oyster chowder sample one year and can I just say..... Heaven! I've even heard that people who don't like oysters at all often go and try oysters in some fashion that is new to them and find out that.... they do like oysters! Albeit minced and prepared in some kind of tomato based stew, but nevertheless.

For more information about the Oyster Festival, go here:
http://www.usoysterfest.com/