DELCAMBRE — Warm weather and tons of good food welcomed residents and visitors attending the 2007 Delcambre Shrimp Festival.

This year’s festival featured a street fair, live music performances and the famous shrimp cookoff.

Saturday’s turnout was strong with hordes of patrons sampling food, taking in the sights and riding carnival rides.

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“We’re doing pretty good. We’re selling plenty of boiled shrimp,” Del-cambre Shrimp Festival Association President Connie Landry.

The lawn next to the Shrimp Festival building was filled early Saturday with tents shielding cooking teams from the hot sun.

“We’ve had a record this year for cookoff teams. We actually had 27 this year. It’s a record for us. We only had three judges. They had a tough job,” Landry said.

Clint Renard and the Country Drive Cooking Team worked on their creation that teamed shrimp with fresh eggplant topped with green onions.

“We took a combination of things. Everything is natural. We caught fresh shrimp and got the eggplant straight out of the garden. Nothing is store bought and nothing was frozen. Freshness is everything,” Renard said.

Renard said the cooking team has competed in the cookoff five times.

“It’s a lot of fun. We’re all family and we all live together in one area. It’s a good way to get out and see some people,” he said.

The festival also gave the town a chance to show visitors from other states how it has rebounded from Hurricane Rita.

Blair Tingley and several students from the Community of Jesus Home School Group in Cape Cod, Mass., got a chance to taste and see what Delcambre has to offer.

“It’s great. Cape Cod is very much a fishing community so we feel some affinity with the fishing community,” Tingley said. “We have a blessing of the fleet also where we are but we don’t have shrimping where we are so that’s a new experience for us.”

The group has been traveling through the western United States learning about other places.

“We’re trying to get as much culture and history everywhere that we travel. Hearing about Hurricane Rita and its impact on the community as well as hearing about the life and plight of the shrimpers has been very informative,” she said.

One of the students, Heather Catlin, also strolled the festival grounds taking in the festival’s offerings.

“I think it’s pretty cool. I’ve never been to anything like this. It’s really fun,” Catlin said. “It’s hot but we have a little bit of heat like this at home. But it’s not as bad as this.”

Today’s festivities will continue this morning with a Catholic Mass at 10 a.m. in the Shrimp Festival Building followed by the traditional “Blessing of the Fleet.” The street fair and concessions will open at 10:30 a.m. and patrons can ride all rides for $15 from noon to 4 p.m. At noon, a fais do do will be held under the pavilion with music by T.K. Hulin and Smoke, Warren Storm, Willie T and G.G. Shin. All concessions will close at 4 p.m.

“We’d like anyone that hasn’t come out to come out,” Landry said. “We want people to come out and enjoy. Come out and have a good time.”