The Rotten Apple

I took a much needed vacation last week. First I took the train down to Pennsylvania to meet my wife and visit her family in Center county for a few days. The train ride was leisurely, uncrowded and spacious. We passed through suburban Boston, urban Rhode Island rural Connecticut and the seashore and into Pennsylvania countryside. This resulted in an odd combination of verdant beauty, bourgeois luxury and the ruins of trailer parks.
Finally I arrived in a very rural nearby town, Lewisburg and we drove back to the house. We relaxed and saw several of Beanz' family members, which could have been awkward since her grandparents' are divorced and her half sister and brother in law are fairly conservative while the rest of us are quite liberal, and the Democratic convention was frequently the topic of conversation.
We went to the county fair to enjoy some carnival food and gawk at country wares. Farmers from all over the state (which I frequently forget is enormous) come and set up fully furnished tents for their whole families for the whole week and show off their prize winning canned foods, fresh grown vegetables and goats, cows and sheep. It's difficult to view these type of events without an ironic, detached, elitist perspective, as in, "Can you believe those hicks?" It's just a totally different way of life from the one I've lead. But I enjoyed it. I ate funnel cake for the first time, which is awesome, as well as a pretty good sausage sandwich and steak and cheese, and a shitty lemonade made of one lemonade, a cup of sugar, a half pound of ice and a cup of water, as well as the dregs of oranges that had wedged the mechanics of the lemon press. We played skee ball and Beanz ruled while I drooled.
Then we took the "Chinatown bus" from State College up to New York to spend time with friends in Brooklyn. We ate some wonderful slow braised and smoked pork shoulder, Domincan sausage, kosher pickles, asparagus and drank gallons and gallons of beer and whiskey. The night ended with horrendous drunken karaoke and vomitting. The next morning may have been in my bottom five hangovers of all time.
We had an amazing meal at our friend J's restaurant where he's the maitre 'D. Japanese-European bistro fusion? I'm not sure if that's at all accurate. There was a sushi menu, as well a variety of fish and flesh with exotic flavors that came plated the way food is on top Chef. Local seasonal ingredients, which I'm glad is all the rage these days. There was a tremendous wild mushroom salad, pork belly steamed in some sort of leaf and a fantastic halibut steak.
We're lucky to have friends who devote themselves so fully to bringing people wonderful, creative, delicious things.