A FLAVORFUL RIDDLE: What's shaped like a heart, with a pointy bottom and heart-like top? It's also red, and sweet, and it appears around the middle of February? If you guessed something along the lines of "Valentine's Day" or any of the candies or decorations or gifts associated with the love-strong occasions, well, you're right: There are a lot of heartsy items all around when Feb. 14 arrives. But another heart-shaped, red, and oh-so-sweet thing happens to be the strawberry, which isn't associated with February all that much, save those yummy chocolate covered-strawberries that seem to be everywhere. Rather, the berry is a springtime staple, and, given the number of Golden State parties it enjoys, an important one. One of the mondo-est of the merrymaking haps, at least on the strawberry's calendar, is the one that happens in Oxnard in May. It's the California Strawberry Festival, a large-scale, two-day shindig, and tickets are now on sale for the May 2017 to-do. That's right, as is tradition, tickets became available on...
VALENTINE'S DAY, which seems like a good device for remembering to buy yours, if you adore strawberries and the fourteenth day of February, both. Of course, you can wait for the party itself to buy your entry — the luscious lark happens on Saturday, May 21 and Sunday, May 22 — or you can go ahead and snag it now, which gives you a few extra months to daydream of shortcake and recipes and pie-eating contest and carnival rides. No one would ever pit fruit fan against fruit fan — yes, we said "pit" and we're leaving it — but we can say, with total accuracy, that strawberry lovers make their favorite fruit a bit of a lifestyle, from strawberry-scented lotions to strawberry salsas in the fridge to strawberry-laden decor around the kitchen. It's a pretty piece of produce, after all. Perhaps because it looks so much like a sentimental heart, or perhaps not, but, either way, do remember this: Valentine's Day is ticket day for the California Strawberry Festival, one of the tartest to-dos on the food festival calendar.
