you can but you can't

you grow up somewhere. you don't really have much to compare it to but you're pretty sure there's better places out there. you live down the street from a strip mall and you yearn for something more. you dine at a local chinese restaurant, frequent the salad bar at the wendy's where all the ladies know your name but still you crave more exotic flavors. your father listens to impassioned broadway musicals on his car tape deck and you start to dream big. at the age of 11 you hire your sister to act in a one woman production of les miserables that you intend to direct. within minutes of the first rehearsal you fire her and replace her with yourself.

you visit new york on a family vacation and experience yellow taxis, neon lights, stage doors, the smell of burning meat on the street and bodegas..oh heaven is a bodega with its all-night hours and endless possibilities of snacks. you are in love.

meanwhile you live in cleveland, ohio and return to the midwest with its oversized supermarkets and feathered bangs with a whetted taste for eastern celerity and infinite contingency.

this past weekend i visited louisville, kentucky and i couldn't shake this nagging feeling everywhere i went. i felt it when i walked down the depressed streets of the downtown area that had been hard-hit by the recession. i sensed it as i came upon dried acres of corn fields just over the border of indiana, and i was overwhelmed by it on the somewhat artsy bardstown rd that had its fair-share of music stores and head shops but was peppered with fast food restaurants too. that feeling was nostalgia. here i am, 29 years old. i have lived in new york city for 7 years and spent 4 years before that in ny state. i am, i think, a new yorker. i know the subways like the back of my hand. i can tell you where to get good sushi in any neighborhood. i am easily provoked but not easily deterred. i am assertive (but not aggressive) i am artistic (but not crazy) i am health conscious (but not a hippie) i am hip (but not a hipster) i am political (but not fanatical) i am sympathetic (but not naive). i have all the characteristics of what i truly have become; a young woman living in new york city trying to maintain her artistic integrity while attempting to survive the crushing financial demands of living here. it is tough and it will wear you down like nobody's business. maybe that is why the few moments i had in kentucky were incredibly sentimental and filled me with a renewed sense of self. cause you know what? you can take the girl out of the midwest, but she's always gonna remember where she came from.

so, let's talk 'tucky.

i don't have many pictures except for the day we visited huber's orchard & winery. i went with the purpose of visiting my boyfriend, mark, who is in an excellent production of a midsummer night's dream at the actors theatre of louisville. he had two shows on sat & sun so we didn't get to do much until his day off on monday. that day we headed over the river with a few of his cast mates to starlight, indiana (if that's not the coolest name for a town, i don't what is) to go pick some apples and pumpkins.

we went for apples first, and although it is fun to get lost in a labyrinth of apple trees, it was a little late in the season to score. most of the trees were pretty picked over and the ones still hanging were in sad shape. we did see a lot of pretty lady bugs like this one:

the pumpkins were a similar story. all the perfectly round and gleaming orange pumpkins were displayed at the entrance of the orchard where you could pick one out a bin and bring it home, but if you wanted to go to the patch and get your hands dirty, you were going to leave with a whole different kind of squash. we passed these beauties on our tractor ride to the pumpkin patch. little did we know what was in store...

the patch, like the orchard was a little...picked over.

mark and his friend, andrew, had an immediate affinity for these imperfect creatures and took pride in choosing the wartiest most discolored ones they could find. judging by their standards, they both took home very fine specimen indeed.

next we visited the winery where they specialized in homemade fruit wines like spiced apple, strawberry and peach. we all went gaga for the blackberry wine, but that's probably because they gave us chocolate with it. of all the wines my favorite was the traminette, which was similar to a riesling but not as syrupy and very light. you can get 8 tastings there for $8, which is a pretty great deal. here's a pic of mark and i (and andrew in the background) enjoying our wine

nothing quite goes with wine like cheese, and huber's just happens to have a cheese shop next door to the winery! how serendipitous! we devoured this smoked swiss stick. everyone commented that it tasted like beef jerky. i've never had beef jerky, so i just thought it tasted like delicious.

back at the farm we attempted to balance these turban pumpkins (that's really what they are called)!

mark was definitely better at it than i was. we headed back to louisville quite pleased with our outing, but not without sampling some peanut butter fudge and grabbing a loaf of jalepeno cheese bread that ended up being delicious with eggs the next morning.

i could tell you more, like the four variety pancake breakfast i had cooked that morning or the memorable dinner we had at ramsi's on bardstown rd that night (if you go there do yourself a favor and order the roasted garlic and goat cheese with grilled bread appetizer), but then it would sound like all i did was eat. ha ha ha...woops. ahh...vacation.