Californians love to eat. It is only natural, since we produce a large percentage of food products in the nation and have so much produce that we sell it to the rest of the U.S. and the world. Some of our top foods by volume are milk, cheese, ice cream, beef, grapes (both table grapes and wine grapes,) strawberries, nuts, rare fruits, dates, avocados, artichokes and garlic.

Oh, let's have a food festival to celebrate! If you are a foodie, you'll be in for some serious chomping and stomping this summer. The season has already launched with dates and nuts festivals in the spring. Now we're moving on and will celebrate strawberries next month with three or more delicious festivals honoring the huge, sweet red berries. Here is a list of some of the California fruit festivals.

An extremely popular fest that combines tomatoes, onions, avocados, and spices, takes place in Oxnard in July. The Oxnard Salsa Festival lives up to its reputation as both a food feast and a dancing festival that includes lots of Salsa dancing. The beauty of this food and lifestyle event is that you can eat to your heart's content. Salsa is not very high in calories and salsa dancing wears of any excess calories you may acquire from the rich foods that salsa appears on. Go eat, drink, be merry, and celebrate the summer 2011 with food festivities. Best of all, many events such as the Oxnard Salsa Festival are free admission!

Food Line Up:

Artichoke Festival May 21 - 22, 2011 in Castroville

Salsa Festival July 30 - 31, 2011 in Oxnard

Strawberry Festival May 27 - 30, 2011 in Garden Grove

Strawberry Festival Memorial Weekend in Arroyo Grande

Strawberry Festival April 29, 30 & May 1, 2011 in Santa Maria

Gilroy Garlic Festival July 29 - 31, 2011 in Gilroy