Stories

As the world becomes shortage and space obsessed, I realize how ahead of the curve I've been in making myriad reuses of everything and everyone. Call me frugal/economical and/or exploitive/anal.

I reuse big tissue boxes as snowshoes for a friend's kids (kids become two-pronged sources of love and laughs, lumbering around like "transformer bots"); I use their abandoned toy cars as conveyances for salt and pepper shakers glued on top, as "pass the salt" makes the dining room table a speedway.

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.

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.

It came to me in a flash: sell the house. After my husband lost his second job in eight months and after my agent stopped returning my calls. It was the solution to all our problems. We hired a realtor – a young energetic woman called Jen – and made a plan. We would sell our three bedroom home and move to a loft in downtown Los Angeles. We would be downsizing, but it would be chic.

It was a bitter pill to swallow, selling the home that we had lived in for twenty-one years and raised our children. But really there was no alternative to our diminished earning capacity. Added to the embarrassment of having a ‘For Sale’ sign planted on our front lawn and explaining to all our inquisitive neighbors why and where we were moving. What I had failed to take into account was the effect that this momentous decision would have on our eating habits. What nobody tells you when you are trying to sell a house is that cooking in your home becomes virtually verboten.

In these tough economic times if you want to sell, you have to ‘Stage’. When you live in the film capital of the World, people want to buy houses that look like movie sets. This requires cramming every personal item you own into a closet and making your house look like nobody lives in it. But at the same time it has to look like Martha Stewart was your interior decorator.

Dandelions do not lie. Hold one of those wild flowers under my chin and you will see. A sunshiny reflection of that yellow dandelion will show up on the skin just under my chin. As a child, my friends and I would play that game as we braided dandelions to make necklaces and bracelets. Always, the test results would show I loved butter. And, always, a couple of my jewelry-making friends would fail the test. No yellow reflection would show up under their chin. They did not love butter.

My mother was raised on a farm with fresh milk and creamy butter. I learned early on that butter made the best cookies. And, butter is the only thing that should be spread on toast, pancakes, waffles and French toast. Everything is better with butter. That's been my motto.

Recently, when I discovered my cholesterol is a little elevated, I've started being more conscious of the fat I'm consuming. I guess all that butter has finally caught up with me.