Garden Grove Strawberry Festival

This past Wed. I went to the downtown L.A. farmer's market during lunch to buy some strawberries. The season is almost over, and I felt like we haven't fully taken advantage of it. So I picked up 3 baskets for $5 from Oxnard and they were really good. On Wed. and Thurs. nights, D had sliced strawberries with vanilla ice cream, and he was waxing poetic over how delicious it was.

Then, last night D and I went to the Garden Grove Strawberry Festival. I read somewhere that it is the second largest community-organized outdoor festival west of the Mississippi (the largest is the Portland Rose Festival). It was kind of a pain to find parking, but we eventually found a spot (park in the La Verne/Acacia college parking lot).

There is no entry fee, and right when we entered we came upon a large strawberry shortcake. Miss Garden Grove and here entourage were passing out small pieces, also free (only on the first night).



As you can see, it is actually made up of separate cakes, arranged as one. I thought it would be one huge one, but I guess that would be a lot more work. Anyway, the cake itself was pretty tasty, but the whole strawberry on my piece was kind of underripe.

There were a lot of unsafe-looking carnival rides and booths with people selling some weird stuff (anyone want a wax form of your hand?) D signed up to win this Mazda 5:



I told him he probably wasn't allowed to win, but he pointed out that it didn't look like it was a Mazda-sponsored contest, so he filled out the card.

The food options were kind of limited. D had a hot dog and a really watery soda ($5). I had corn on the cob with chili powder/parmesan ($2). They had huge strawberry shortcakes, but since we already had a small piece of one, it didn't make sense to buy another. D claimed he had never had a funnel cake before. Failing to see how this was possible, we bought one with strawberry glaze ($5):



It was nice and hot, but D thought there should have been more fresh strawberries on it. (He's becoming such a foodie!) I think this booth supported the Kiwanis club. The other food we bought also supported community organizations, so I didn't feel bad paying the higher prices.

Overall, it was really crowded. I thought they could do a better job of promoting the whole strawberry theme. If you didn't know it was a strawberry festival, you probably wouldn't have been able to tell it apart from any other fair/carnival. So, this will probably be a one time thing for us, but I would like to go back to the street we passed which is supposed to be like "Old Town Garden Grove", or something like that.