Santa Barbara Seafood Festival

Kudos to Sherry today. She went to the equivalent of what would for me be a Shoe Shopping Festival. Well, i'm not that excited by Seafood.

But I was keen to go down there and see what was there and hopefully taste a bit of safood. Maybe they'd have some free samples.

It's been a bit cool lately, no rain yet, but the Santa Barbara early morning sea fog has given way to high Santa Barabara sea fog, in the form of cloud, that fails to disappate.

There were heaps of people down there, but not enough to make you feel as though it was going to be a lost cause trying to get anything. The best way to compare it is if you think of a busy day at a market. First thing we saw was atuna cookind demonstration. I arrived just at the right time. Sample time. The tuna was raw with some sort of mustard on it, but really really nice. i've got the bit of paper with the recipe somewhere.

We then walked up to where you could buy some hard core live seafood. The process was - pick out what you want, then take it down to the preperation station where it can either be cooked or prepared in a wway that you want. So basically you could go from picking out a fresh live lobster or crab to having it cooked within about 45 minnutes and maybe 60 minutes for it to be in your stomach. Now that is fresh! So fresh that i can't help imagine the lobster re-forming Terminator 2 style in your stomach.

I definetley wasn't going that option, I wanted instant food like with the tuna samples. So after walking up that little pier offshoot and seeing some tour stuff we headed up to the main pier. I noticed heaps of people with 1/2 lobsters, salad and bread and figured that they must be getting there lobster from somehwere else to be getting it like that. Sure enough at one of the stalls they were serviing lobster. Let the feasting begin.

First thing I got was the 1/2 lobster ($15) and while there I thought I'd try some Albacore too. It was only $7. Man that albacore was tasty as. You get a massive serve too - i'd pay 3 times the amount I paid for that at a restaurant. Probably the highlight of everything I ate. The lobster was delicious too served with melted butter.

Then i thought I'd have some oysters - geez the queue was big. In the time it took for me to get to the front of the queue, which was not overly long, Sherry had waited with me for a minute, gone and bought some danish pancakes, came back and eaten them and then gone off to get some clam chowder for me, got those and i had eaten one bowl before getting to the front.

The oysters were served natural, and you could see a guy out the back who's schucking job looked unenviable. As Sherry put it 'Aw shucks!'

So yeah we walked back to the quiet end of the pier where Darryl and friends were. I had eaten alot already and after eating 4 oysters natural they were not going down as well as everything else. So I thought I'd donate them to the others seeing as though they seemed to be having poor luck with queue's and availability. The girls ended up having the 2 remaining oysters. The twins shared one oyster 101 Dalmations style (the shared spaghetti kiss basically).

But wait, we weren't done, Sherry then saw some srtawberries and brownies so we got a plate each of those. I was employing Sherry's notion of 'the dessert stomach' at this point.

Sherry and I then headed off, as Sherry wanted to do some shopping on State St., we had spent a solid 2 hours at the Festival and if I'd eaten anything else I reckon I would have turned into a fish. I did not last long though, only 1 shop in fact. Even an Iced-coffee from Starbucks could not bring me back. So I caught the shuttle up the street, walked home and fell asleep on the couch at home watching the LSU Tigers v Florida Gators footy game.

Sherry got home around 6.30 with a bevvy of new items. It looks likes the day worked out well for both of us. I was an absolute pig - eating way too much and then falling asleep on the couch watching the football, while sherry satisfied her shopping bug.

So to summarise.
For $36 i ate

tuna sampler
1/2 lobster
albacore
2 cup/bowls clam chowder (Brophy's)
4 oysters (2 donated to the girls)

and then $6 each for choc brownie and strawberries.