Stories

chicken_noodle_soup.jpgI am a real estate agent who caters to clients, as they say, “in entertainment.” This means that I move fussy, busy people from Hollywood to New York, and that my clients expect, even demand, me to be a cross between Ari Gold and Betty Crocker. It also means that I’m providing ancillary services on a ludicrously high level: I have FedExed leases to the set of an Oliver Stone movie, hung drapes for a client who was on the other coast doing Leno, and made homemade chicken soup for a panicked Broadway star with the sniffles.

I found the soup particularly challenging. Chocolate chip cookies are one of my standards, quick and easy enough to make while conducting a bidding war via bluetooth. Soup, on the other hand, takes hours, and is practically guaranteed to taste like dishwater if you don’t layer the flavors in. Adding some canned chicken broth speeds the process, but go too far, and you’re apt to erase the “homemade” essence that you’ve spent hours crafting.

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My brother is at odds with Thomas Wolfe. He is living proof that you can go home again. Oklahoma City is just that kind of place. I can’t really describe what makes my hometown so special to people who have never passed through the capital of the panhandle state. Perhaps the folks best suited to explain the city’s certain ‘je ne sais quoi’ are its chefs. Chefs like my brother, Jonathon Stranger, Mark Dunham, Josh Valentine, Chris Becker, Kurt Fleischfresser, Russ Johnson, and the father of Mission Chinese, Danny Bowien.

Like many members of this crew, my brother left Oklahoma City at eighteen and explored various parts of the globe through a cook’s lens. At age 27, armed with folders full of harrowing but valuable tales from the restaurant world and some culinary tools in his belt, he returned and thought about how he could make his mark on the city’s landscape without turning a blind eye to his roots. And so Ludivine was born, a farm to table restaurant set in Midtown, a newly revitalized area of the city, where Oklahomans could taste dishes inspired by and using fresh, local ingredients, like bison (the tenderloin is my personal favorite).

But what I think makes Oklahoma City’s chefs so unique is not just that they are simply introducing new approaches to food and what it means to dine out to its customers, but that they are working together, side by side, to foster a sense of community in this collective venture. They love food as much as they love the people they serve, the people they grew up with, the people of OKC.

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Which is why when the devastating tornado touched ground in Moore on May 21st, leveling entire city blocks and taking 24 lives, including 9 children, it was only natural that this eclectic group would find a way to bring people together and raise money for the victims in a setting that would celebrate who we are as proud, resilient Oklahomans.

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They say that being a mom is the hardest job in the world.

I don't doubt it.

child giving the fingerMy dad always said that children were like small drunk adults. They walk around with little regard for their safety, they say stupid things, and they vomit. I am probably not going to have them. And I'm going to be real: I don't want to get fat. I don't want my body to change into something I don't recognize. But most importantly, I don't have the patience to be a mom. I have no idea how my mom put up with me. I would sabotage grade school Christmas shows by dressing as Michael Jackson. I would argue about everything, especially regarding bike safety (I didn't care that my helmet was a Barbie licensed helmet damnit.) I wouldn't eat anything she cooked.

In short, I was an asshole.

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usda-food-plate.jpgIt is the consummate, diet-related cliché: “you can stop drinking, or smoking, but you can’t just stop eating.” You can, of course, stop eating; Ghandi used that strategy to magnificent effect. As a method of reaching a healthy weight, however, it’s frowned upon. What you have to do to lose weight is not to stop eating, but to stop eating the way you used to eat. I’m doing it, and it’s working, but it complicates the hell out of my life as a cook.

I’ve struggled with weight all my life, losing and re-gaining the same 30+ pounds several times. I established a pathetic pattern worthy of a medieval tapestry: the large woman stops eating (anything, carbs, second helpings and fast food), exercises (incorrectly, so intensely that she gets shin splints, until she abhors the sight of her Nikes) and becomes smaller. She buys tinier clothes, and basks in the admiration of all of the people who want to know her “secret.” She gets busy, stressed, cocky and inattentive and starts to eat like she used to, she becomes larger again, and in the final tableau she is folding her smaller clothes and putting them in bags to donate to Goodwill, and then pulling the larger versions from the back of the closet where she saved them for the inevitable.

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dsc 8901 1A few days before my birthday, a picnic table arrived in our yard, carted down the driveway in Roy’s truck. Roy held out for as long as he could, swearing he was not going to pay money for a picnic table when he could build one for much less, or better yet, build us a really lovely outdoor dining table. I know he was disappointed not to have the time to do it this summer, but at least he didn’t leave us without something to sit around for the birthday gathering.

We positioned the table under the shade of the giant maple, which just happens to be about halfway between the back door and the garden gate—the path we travel most often. We intended to move the table after the party, since it’s in the way of the rope swing. But it seems to be settling in, letting us know it’s happy where it is—and happy to do for us whatever we need. Oddly enough, it’s as if the table was always meant to be here, as if the backyard beckoned it to come complete our outdoor living room. (The grill is right nearby, too.)

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