Stories

1. Check the college’s weather hotline and confirm that classes have been cancelled.

2. E-mail students with directions for the next class meeting. Reassure them that spring will come (this isn’t the first cancellation of the semester), and wish them a joyous day.

3. Survey the landscape and begin shoveling.

4. Take a break to visit with your neighbor, after wading to the middle of the street. Compliment each other’s regalia: she’s wearing a jaunty beret with a pompom; you’re wearing – for which you fervently thank your son – those ear warmers with the band that fits around the back of your head (no hat hair for you, even the morning after a blizzard). When ice crystals have completely lined the inside of the scarf you’ve pulled up over your face, it’s time to stop talking and go back to shoveling.

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.

A few weeks ago a friend of a friend invited me to a pig roast.  Having never attended one, I looked forward to what seemed like the perfect California outing: meeting new people and trying new food, all at a BBQ in February.  Eating a pig that had been selected from a local, organic farm also sounded rather virtuous as far as meat-eating goes, and maybe in my heart of hearts I was thinking of the party as a kind of Omnivore’s Dilemma, Live.  Besides, I like to say that I’ll try anything once, especially when it comes to food and I think that I might get an article out of it.  I even started to string together a few premature sentences about The Pig Roast on the way over, dreamily trying out lines like “fork-tender localness”.  (Michael Pollan I obviously ain’t.)  Mental notebook at the ready, I pulled up to a trendy house in Los Feliz and quickly found myself among a crowd of strangers, each of us staring down at a charred animal the size of an eight-year old.  The pig, laid out on its grill of cross hatched re-bar, turned a party of stoned hipsters into Lord of the Flies characters with edgier haircuts, everyone vaguely competitive and wondering what to do now.

Yesterday, Shannon gave me a karmic, completely unintentional, gift. He got really, really sick.

And though I can think of eight bazillion things I’d rather do than listen to a man whine in bed, it was an opportunity for me to put a little something in the Bank of Caretaking. My surgery is tomorrow and I know I’ll be making quite a few withdrawals over the next couple of weeks. It’s important to be sure your credit is good before you complete a lot of transactions, you know?

In truth, he slept most of the day, so I got to focus my energy into healing from the kitchen – which is basically my favorite thing to do anyway. Winter has finally arrived in New York (it was in the 50’s last week but won’t get out of the 30’s this week) and I’ve had a taste for something spicy and Asian.