Sunday, October 10, 2010

Back from the Gorgeous Countryside of Kentucky…


Every fall we celebrate a series of Holy Days called "The Feast of Tabernacles".  We refer to it as simply "The Feast" for short.  Every year we travel somewhere for the Feast and this year was no different.  The site was held in a little town in about 2 hours south of Lexington and it was absolutely gorgeous.  I had no idea Kentucky was so beautiful.  The place we stayed at was surrounded by lush green rolling hills, haystacks and lakes... a perfect and picturesque scene for what this time pictures for us.  We did so many fun things, but above all, it was a great opportunity to visit with people we hadn't seen in quite some time, as well as make new and lasting friendships.  This vacation was jammed packed with activities.

We started our trip with a visit to a local apple orchard.  We were not disappointed, especially since the first place you walk through when you arrive, is the bakery where the smells of apple pie, caramel apples, and fresh pressed cider circled the air.  We knew it was going to be a great outing.  We then paid for our collecting bags and went out to the orchard.  They told us we could taste any apple we liked. And let me just say... taste we did! The country store attached to the orchard was so quaint and lovely.  There we found all kinds of farm fresh products like locally grown honey as well as every kind of jam possible. We bought some pumpkin jam and had I known how great it was, I would have stocked up for the rest of the year!  We exited the orchard, but not before buying a half gallon of cider and an individual fried apple pie for each of us.





We got a group together and went horseback riding one of the days. We stopped at this gorgeous state park right by the riding stables.  The views were so beautiful.  After that, we set of to the stables.  I'll admit, I was so scared at first.  But I felt a ton better knowing my new friend, Erica, was in front of me.

One of the evenings, we hosted a sock-hop.  In a ton of pictures I'm in the background getting down.  It's also hard to miss me since I'm wearing a sweater with large green and white stripes.  It's almost like playing "where's Waldo" when I see these pictures. The evening was a blast and there were several games we played like the freeze dance and the Senior's twist that were such fun.  We played lots of oldies that everyone knows like Please Mr. Postman, The Lion Sleeps tonight, Rock Around the Clock etc.  My only complaint is that my feet were so sore the next day from dancing all night!







We also visited the prettiest state park and went horseback riding.

Last but not least, we hosted a Caribbean dinner for everyone.  Originally I thought there was too much food, but boy was I wrong...  it was well attended and we had a a great time getting to know everyone.  For those of you who asked me for some recipes, I will link them here.. I made Picadillo- a Cuban ground beef hash. I also made Ropa Vieja which is a shredded beef dish, but I made it with chicken instead (in the recipe I linked it to, it's served with mashed green plantains, but I served it with white rice at our Caribbean night). Several people asked me for the trick to making white rice that isn't sticky or soft.  I will do a separate post for that soon with step by step instructions.  For now I'll leave you with pictures of our Caribbean night.  I want to thank everyone of making this the best Feast ever!

2 comments:

Debbie said...

awwww, great pictures! looks like it was such an awesome trip! loved the sock hop party! how fun! :)

Judi said...

When you went to the apple farm did you try their homemade apple fried pies? Delicious.


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