California Strawberry Fest: Oxnard Awesome

Try your best throw in the Strawberry Tart Toss or wear your Berry Best Hat.

You've always been competitive, and especially when it comes to one of your favorite fruits, the strawberry.

Perhaps you can balance a berry on your nose (not using the green top but rather the pointy bottom of the fruit). You've fit three large berries in your mouth before (not recommended, of course, as strawberries are best enjoyed one at a time, or in slushie/ice cream form).

And you've always wanted to gain ultimate victory in one of the California Strawberry Festival contests, which include, yes, the classic pie eating showdown, but also the Strawberry Relay, where "(y)ou and a teammate go through a series of obstacles to assemble, and then consume, a strawberry dish in record time."

Those are just two of the juicy competitions at the large-scale, single-fruit-focus'd happening, which will again grow big and delicious in Oxnard on Saturday, May 20 and Sunday, May 21. 

It's a mega salute for a pretty wee fruit, but when you take into consideration the strawberry's reach — cakes, fruit salads, even spinach dishes — and its importance to the regional agriculture scene, the out-sized bash makes total sense.

And visitors have a lot to do, from watching a cooking demo on the Strawberry Promenade to taking their tots to Strawberryland for Kids.

There are more contests, too, including the Berry Best Hat competition and the Berry Best Dressed Baby.

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As for those all-important eats? As in, "what will they think up for strawberries next"? Check it out: Strawberry beer, strawberry tamales, strawberry popcorn, and strawberry chimichangas are all on the creative cuisine list.

Strawberry chimichangas! That feels like the ideal edible to end this on, for how can the food world top such a perfect pair-up? It may never be done again, frankly.

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