Spring is here and there’s nothing that celebrates Spring quite like a Southern festival…good music, good food, good company!

From the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, here’s a roundup of some of the best Southern food festivals for Spring and Early Summer 2008.

Highlights of the season include Charleston, SC’s world famous Spoleto Festival, the International Bar-B-Q Festival in Owensboro, KY, Tryon, NC’s Blue Ridge Barbecue Festival, and the Appalachian Evening Summer Concert Series and Appalachian Dinner in Robbinsville, NC.

When you go on a fishing trip or go camping in the mountains, do you enjoy celebrating the pleasure of the great outdoors with a gourmet meal cooked on an open fire?

Fans of outdoor cooking at its finest (as well as gourmet food in general), won’t want to miss the four Redwood Creek Campfire Classic events taking place across the country throughout the spring and summer to kickoff the 2008 camping season.

The most recent event will be held on May 17th, 2008 as part of the Food and Wine Festival at National Harbor in Maryland and will feature the semi-final competitions for the contest for already selected competitors from both the North and Southeast (with Hugging the Coast’s own Doug DuCap competing in the Southeastern Division!).

In addition to the Redwood Creek Campfire Classic cookoffs, the Food and Wine Festival at National Harbor will also feature demonstrations by Michel Richard, the critically acclaimed chef of Citronelle and author of Happy in the Kitchen as well as lectures and samples from dozens of culinary experts from around the country.

Two other Campfire Classic semi-finalist cookoffs will be held in Seattle, WA on May 31st as part of the Pike Place Market Street Festival and in Chicago, IL on June 7th as part of the Chicago Botanic Garden Wine Festival which will determine the finalists from the Northwest and Midwest divisions. (The finalists from the Southwestern division were chosen on May 3rd at Mayfest in Fort Worth, TX.)

Winners of the Campfire Classic Semi-Finals will be awarded $1,000, plus an all-expense paid trip to New York City to compete during the first week of summer for a chance to win a $10,000 Grand Prize. The finals will be judged by Redwood Creek winemaker, Cal Dennison, and Bob Blumer, host of the Food Network’s Glutton for Punishment and The Surreal Gourmet.

Like the poster above? You can get it free here. Also, please see the 2007 Campfire Classic Finalists’ Recipes below to help inspire you on your own culinary campfire adventures:

• 2007 Grand Prize Winner: Coal-Roasted Chuckbox Pozole-Stuffed Onions by Leah Lyon of Ada, Oklahoma

• Chincoteague Scallops by Julia DeCastro of University Park, Florida

• Rocky Mountain Pinon Paella by Paul Heitzenrater of Denver, Colorado

• Down East Lobster Scampi a la Campfire by Brian Mulligan of Bath, Maine

• Lost in the Woods Pork Tenderloin by Kim Wittmers of Minneapolis, Minnesota

There is nothing quite like an oyster roast. Standing elbow to elbow with fellow oyster lovers we await the bounty about to be served; oyster knives at the ready, shucking gloves tucked in our belts, bowls of crimson hot sauce scattered across the rough-hewn tables.

A popular coastal tradition, the best oyster roasts are both sacred and informal celebrations of the natural flavors of the sea that ideally take place not far from the waters from which the oysters were taken.

If you’d like to hold your own oyster roast, you’ll have to order several bushels of oysters from your local seafood supplier, but it’s much better to harvest them yourself if you’re lucky to live in an area with an abundance of oysters. There’s a nice article here about the finer points of gathering oysters and running a traditional oyster roast.

If you prefer to grill your oysters instead, Coastal Living has some good tips and recipes here.

According to Charlestonlowcountry.com, oysters are an excellent source of vitamins A, B1, B2, B3, C, and D. Four or five medium size oysters supply the recommended daily allowance of iron, copper, iodine, magnesium, calcium, zinc, and manganese. Charlestonlowcountry.com also has some nice in-home recipes here.

After you’ve held your roast, don’t forget to recycle your oyster shells so that they can be used to form new oyster beds for the next generation of oysters. South Carolina residents can recycle their oyster shells at various DNR oyster shell recycling locations. North Carolina also has an excellent oyster shell recycling program.

(Here’s a photo we took of an oyster bed vista in McClellanville, SC.)

Also, below is a taste of a few of the many photos we took at Pethelpers’ 2008 Sucking It Up to Save Lives Oyster Roast at Bowen’s Island in Charleston, SC. The event raised over $13,000 to benefit the new no-kill animal shelter.

While we were at the oyster roast, we were fortunate enough to come across something small and hard in one of our oysters…a pearl!

Alas, unlike Florida’s George and Leslie Brock who were lucky enough to come across a really valuable purple oyster while eating our Apalachicola Selects, our “Pethelper Pearl” is small and rough textured; a rare specimen mainly remarkable for its extremely high sentimental (if not financial) value.

By the way, if you’re curious about how oysters make pearls, click here.

Charleston, SC’s too big to have made this list of The Best Fishing Towns in America from Field and Stream. (The places on this particular list all have less than 100,000 residents. Charleston has almost 119,000.) However, scenic Beaufort, SC did make #17 on the list.

Charleston was named one of the best fishing spots in the South on another F&S list that was mentioned in a previous post).

Here’s the full list of notable fishing towns…

1. Glenwood Spring, CO
2. Mountain Home, AR
3. Traverse City, MI
4. Bozeman, MT
5. Minocqua, WI
6. Apalachicola, FL
7. Nantucket, MA
8. Bend, OR
9. Guntersville, AL
10. Morehead City, NC
11. Missoula, MT
12. Ely, MN
13. Page, AZ
14. Driggs, ID
15. Jasper, TX
16. Tahlequah, OK
17. Beaufort, SC
18. Eufaula, AL
19. Redding, CA
20. Montauk, NY

According to a recent article on Foxbusiness.Com, the Southeastern United States is the best place to retire for those on fixed incomes. (The article goes on to list the American West and South and Central America on the #2 and #3 positions, respectively.)

As John Shelton Reed once said, “Southern barbecue is the closest thing we have in the U.S. to Europe’s wines and cheeses; drive a hundred miles and the barbecue changes.”

Please feel free to enjoy our Southern Coastal Life MP3 Playlist which is filled with 30+ streaming songs that celebrate the pleasures of Southern food, fishing, surfing, and life spent on the water. (Additional music will be periodically added.)

Artists include: The Andrews Sisters, Andy Griffith, Van Morrison, Elijah and the Ebonites, The Weavers, Tom Waits, James Taylor, Carl Perkins, The Drifters, Dizzy Gillespie, Smiley Burnette, Fats Waller, Martha and the Vandellas, Hank Williams Sr., Tim McGraw, Jimmy Buffet, James Taylor, Ryan Adams, Stringbean, Little Milton, Louis Jordan, Dar Williams, and The Preservation Hall Band…good stuff!

You can listen to it here.

The award winning outdoor sportsman magazine Field and Stream, recently named the Charleston Jetties one of the best fishing spots in the Southern United States.

Considered by the magazine to be the third best fishing spots in SC, the Santee-Cooper Area took first place in the state, with the Lake Russell Area listed in second place.

Here’s the full list of notable fishing spots in the South after the jump…

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• Hog jowls for joy! (from Piggly Wiggly Supermarkets)