Think your shrimp and grits recipe has what it takes to be crowned a 2008 Shrimp & Grits Festival favorite? You can enter the amateur or professional cook-off and prepare your favorite shrimp-and-grits meal. The amateur cook-offs will be held on Saturday, September 20th beginning at 10 a.m and 3:30 p.m. There are two seperate rounds and each round will have a first, second, and third place winner.

Amateur prizes: First Place: $500; Second Place: $300; Third Place: $100.

Professional chefs will compete on Sunday, September 21st beginning at 12:00 p.m.

Professional prizes: First Place: $1000; Second Place $800, Third Place: $500

For more information or to enter, fill out an entry form online at www.jekyllisland.com/shrimpandgrits.

Tags: chef competition, family festivals, jekyll island shrimp and grits festival, shrimp and grits, shrimp cooking competition, Wild Georgia Shrimp Festival
Posted in Beachscape, September 2008 | No Comments »

Christopher Hewitt, professional chef at the Olde Pink House in Savannah, Georgia will be a tough act to follow this year.

Falling in love with cooking came to Hewitt at the age of 12-years-old. Though he was not allowed to cook in the kitchen in his youth, Christopher was exposed to cooking through his family’s restaurant business. His dad, also a chef, caught him cooking eggs on the radiator in his room and his career began.

Graduating from the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, New York, he has been working at the Olde Pink House for a little over two years. Hewitt was featured on two Iron Chef episodes on the Food Network, in which he cooked with world-renowned top chef Bobby Flay in New York and Japan.
Enjoying the relaxation that Jekyll Island offers, Mr. Hewitt is preparing for the upcoming competition where he wowed the taste buds of judges with his impeccable Southern Sushi in 2007. Judges can begin salivating again as Hewitt plans something spectacular to reclaim his title.

For more information on Shrimp and Grits: The Wild Georgia Shrimp Festival, visit www.jekyllisland.com/shrimpandgrits or call the Jekyll Island Visitors’ Information
Center at 1-877-4JEKYLL.

Tags: chef competition, jekyll island shrimp and grits festival, shrimp and grits, shrimp cooking competition, tim hewitt, Wild Georgia Shrimp Festival
Posted in August 2008, Beachscape | No Comments »

The 2008 Shrimp and Grits art contest winner is Ed Hose! Chosen from hundreds of entries Mrs. Hose, a freelance artist, has always been a creative thinker. She graduated with a degree in illustration and design from Tyler School of Art in 2001 and has been working in digital illustration for 11 years. Though she has worked with a multitude of mediums, including pottery, glass, oils, acrylics, collage, sculpture, and even food, she enjoys working in digital formats because, “I don’t like cleaning up after myself,” states Hose. A mixture of elaborate details, imagination, and brilliant colors bring her art to life and makes all, young and old, fall in love.

Ed’s clients include a wide array of categories ranging from the Japan Times in Japan, and the Bucks County Council on Drugs and Alcoholism in Doylestown, Pennsylvania, to local Brunswick, Georgia businesses like Color Me Happy Pottery and even the Jekyll Island Club Hotel.
Check out her wonderful creation by purchasing a 2008 Shrimp and grits t-shirt and poster during the festival, September 19-21. For more information contact the Jekyll Island Welcome Center at 1-877-4-JEKYLL.

Tags: ed hose, jekyll island, jekyll island shrimp and grits festival, september festivals, shrimp and grits, shrimp and grits artwork, wild georgia shrimp
Posted in August 2008, Beachscape | No Comments »