Last night my hubby and I decided to go enjoy the festivities of Ludivine’s maiden voyage, their first night with doors open to the public. Here’s the sunset I enjoyed on the drive from work…
7:35 p.m., prairie view approximately 10 miles west of Meridian, OK
When I got to the house, Mick was dressed and ready to go. He looked up the address one final time (805 N. Hudson) while I brushed my teeth and sprayed on perfume. When we pulled up to the restaurant it was already dark, and most of the parallel spaces along the street were taken. “Good,” I thought. “A nice crowd even though it’s after 8:00 p.m.” Here are a couple shots from the street view…
As we entered the restaurant, I noticed the staff were busy, friendly and everyone seemed to have at least two tasks on which they were focusing. The front-end manager greeted us and told us that there was approximately an hour wait. I looked around the house and saw every table full but one. She offered to have us wait in their “great bar” but I knew what our answer would be. Mick gets up at 4:00 a.m. and staying out this late was already a stretch. She suggested coming early to lessen the wait; they open at 5:00 p.m. I agreed, told her we would be back and we prepared to go somewhere else. I wasn’t discouraged at all – in fact I was happy that their opening night provided them with a full house.
Before I left, I took a few shots of the dining, kitchen and bar areas – and one of the table general manager Tracey Leird was setting for their next guests. I commented on their flowers and she mentioned that they, too, were grown in Oklahoma. “Perfect,” I thought.
So, we headed down the road and pulled into another place near to our heart: Big Truck Tacos. I cannot get enough of their ceviche.
I’m glad Ludivine had a good first night. I’m glad I learned when to show up in order to get a table more quickly, and I’m glad that another strong business model has found it’s way to the heart of Oklahoma City. Oh…I’m ALSO glad Big Truck Tacos is there to make our tummies happy! – Red Dirt Kelly
(A few shots of Big Truck Tacos in case you’ve not yet graced their establishment. And if you’ve not…get on down there!)
Bob Waldrop - President of the Oklahoma Food Cooperative
Good morning friends. Today’s RDC Friday morning shout out goes to Bob Waldrop, co-founder and long-time president of the Oklahoma Food Cooperative. We’re working on a full length essay about his life growing up in Oklahoma, his teenage journey to California and subsequent sojourning to Utah, Kansas City and ultimate return to his Oklahoma homeland. We hope to have the completed piece out for you next week. I sat with him for two hours during our interview and felt like we had just scratched the surface of who this man is, and the capacity he has to love those around him.
Bob has a dedicated and passionate mission to connect the citizens of our great state with each other in order to build a community network of wholesome, organic and locally grown or produced food: Producers and consumers working together to build sustainable and satisfying, relational food systems not easily interrupted by more national events or various wrinkles in the larger systems.
You go, Bob Waldrop! Thanks for all you do…we look forward to sharing our full-length essay about you and your work very soon!
P.S. Remember…Rob will be treating you with a sports essay around noon today. His last essay on Kevin Durant’s character received an especially high readership. And, speaking of readership…THANK YOU to WordPress.Com for featuring the RDC in their “Freshly Pressed” section yesterday. Like I shared with our author group and FB friends: Who knew barf bags could be so interesting? Take care – and have a great weekend!
Editor’s note: For a full review on Ludivine OKC Restaurant, please visit HERE.
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There is a line in The Princess Bride where Inigo Montoya says, “Let me ‘splain. No…there is too much. Let me sum up.” Well, I feel the need to ‘splain – not summarize.
Growing up in rural Oklahoma as a youngster meant I was exposed to a life different from my current suburban context. My father was tri-vocational. He worked at FAA for his day job, he and my mother operated a small Angus cattle farm during the evenings and weekends, he did electrical wiring jobs for occasional money and ran a small business with his friend called B&C Enterprises. Dad was the “B.” My maiden name is Bomgardner. B&C enterprises operated a transportation service to and from FAA every work day, bought scrap gold and jewelry to send to the refinery for a small profit, and perhaps other ventures I didn’t even comprehend.
Morel mushrooms are a rare treat to find in wooded areas or creek banks in Oklahoma. Dredge them in a very simple light egg batter, then saute in olive oil, add salt and pepper - you'll have a heavenly tasting side OR center of your plate.
We usually traded my grandfather one of our steers for one of his, thus not eating our own beef (we frequently named our cattle), but beef we knew was raised in an acceptable way. We ate eggs from our Bantam (we called them Banty) chickens and harvested honey from our beehives. We gathered dandelion greens and poke salad off the land and gathered Morel mushrooms from the creek beds. And, we raised much of our food in a garden. An “Organic Gardening” garden.
“Organic Gardening” was one of the magazines my father received in the mail for much of my formative years. Every year, my father would order a load of cotton hulls to be delivered to our garden. They would sit on top of the soil all winter long breaking down with the moisture of the snow, and in the springtime before planting he would turn it all under to begin the growing process once again.
There are GOOD Sand Plum years, and NOT SO GOOD Sand Plum years. 2010 was a decent year for them.
My mother canned vegetables with a pressure cooker. My grandparents raised corn in a section of their land that we harvested every year. We picked sand plums to make jams and jellies, and picked blackberries when they were in season. Our neighbors’ parents had a large strawberry patch that we were allowed to harvest. My grandfather raised watermelons. My uncle in Tuttle and my aunt in Bethany had an apricot tree. My great-grandmother in town had a pear tree. We had an orchard where we raised sweet and tart cherries, peaches, plums and apples.
My brother and I used to play a game where we would ride our small Yamaha 50 under the cherry tree during harvesting time. We would reach out with one hand and grab a bunch while cruising under the tree at top 50cc speed, then stop to see how many cherries we had scored on that particular run.
We purchased milk from our neighbors and a friend in town who had a dairy. My parents made their own yogurt with their yogurt maker. We sometimes make sumac lemonade or tea when the red velvet sumac on our property pollinated at the end of the summer. We cut and bailed the prairie hay we fed our cattle. We purchased bales of alfalfa from local farmers for supplements.
A trip into town to eat at a restaurant was fairly rare. I usually ordered a bologna sandwich or a corn dog when that happened…that was “fancy food” to me. Ah, youth…
I’m sharing this information with you because it might better help you understand why I’m using this space on the RDC to give not just one but TWO shout-outs this week to the soon-to-open Ludivine restaurant in downtown Oklahoma City. I’ve now watched every one of their eleven 4.5 minute videos posted on their YouTube channel. In each segment, they highlight a vendor they have built a relationship with in order to bring the food raised in Oklahoma to the table of those who eat in their restaurant.
"Sunchokes" or Jerusalem Artichokes
My heart warmed while viewing them. We used to raise “Jerusalem Artichokes” in our garden at home. They’re using “Sunchokes” (same thing) in their restaurants. One of the videos shows the pains of gathering Sand Plums and discusses the rewards of why you would do such a thing. And most of all – there are people across Oklahoma who Ludivine has connected with carrying on a tradition of raising organic, nutritious, fresh and wonderful treasures in our precious Oklahoma soil. They seem to be committed to helping you feast on their crops or products that they prepared in a loving and conscientious way.
Here’s to you, Ludivine, for documenting your developmental journeys and relationships with your growers and vendors. And here’s to you, Wagon Creek Creamery, Two Tomatoes Farm, OM Gardens, Regional Food Bank, Avalon Seafood, Willie’s Ribs, Coop Ale Works and Urban Agrarian. (We mentioned Peach Crest Farms earlier this week).
Thank you twice. Thanks for all you do, all your plans and for all you hope to be.
Good luck! (Click the picture below to visit Ludivine’s YouTube videos).
Thank you, Ludivine Restaurant, for making short videos highlighting local growers and the products you use. Thank you, Oklahoma Food Cooperative, for helping share the story and share the love.
All three of you rock. Keep up the great work, Red Dirt Kelly
Here is my Habanero Pepper plant. As you can see, I need to make a couple of recipes - one for the weekend, and one for the freezer!
I do not like habaneros peppers. I don’t like to pick them. I don’t like to can them for habanero pepper jam to spread over cream cheese later in the fall. I always forget I’ve been handling them and then scratch my nose or rub my eyes; horrific running around in circles ensues: “Argh – my nose! My eyes! Ahhh!” When I’m out picking them I make a mental note, “Use gloves, or go wash your hands immediately.”
I always forget.
So, are we clear? I don’t like habanero peppers. What I DO love, though, is a jerk chicken marinade recipe that is so good it even makes me tolerate growing the peppers…really, just for this one recipe. I give the rest away. There are people out there who eat them, even raw. My eyes are watering while I’m typing this entry!
So, this Saturday morning post is to remind you that Jamaican Jerk Chicken can be a hearty AND lower fat item for your outdoor grilling. And in case you’re trying to use up any extra habaneros left in your garden, even better.
Remember, tomorrow is “Silent Sunday.” We hope you enjoy our Photographs of the week and our new masthead featuring the Oklahoma State Fair while we take the day off from writing. We’ll see you back with new essays on Monday.
From the Red Dirt Chronicles Contribution Group to You and Yours…Have a safe, happy and enjoyable Labor Day weekend.
Sincerely,
Kelly, Julie, Rob, Mark, Rachel, and our soon to be coming on board or one time contributors
(Click photo to go to “AllRecipes.com” for my favorite Jamaican Jerk Chicken Recipe)
Jamaican Jerk Chicken for Labor Day Grilling ~~YUM!
I don’t envy the library employees who labored to document, scan and archive electronic images of The Daily Oklahoman from the day OPUBCO opened its doors. But I sure do appreciate them.
Last year I was doing some research that led me to discover this feat had been accomplished, so last night I logged on to do some more. This time for the Chronicles. I wanted to see what Labor Day Weekend was like in Red Dirt country fifty years ago.
Italian sweater jersey dresses were $21.00; John A. Brown's was having a "door buster" sale - shirts for $1.00
What I found was a slice of life that made me laugh, frown, send a clipping to my colleague at OSU and think about my friends who are politically active. I experienced quite an array of emotions for the hour I perused the September 1st, 2nd and 3rd issues of the paper. Then I tried to decide how I would put all that information into a small Friday morning blog posting.
The decision I arrived at was to provide you bullet points of what stood out to me, provide you with a few visuals, then encourage you to try this type of exercise on your own if you enjoyed it. Here we go…
The Oklahoma local and county fair scene was being announced in several sections. In Beaver, OK they were announcing festivities in a recently completed complex that cost $150,000 to construct.
H.E. Bailey and group were doing the final studies to put in a turnpike to travel eastward. I’m sure the Tulsa World reported the project as traveling westward.
Bobby Darin and Sandra Dee were preparing to “tie the knot.”
OU and OSU were gearing up for their first football games of the year to be held later in September. OSU was celebrating being voted into the Big 8 conference; 1960 would be their first year to compete although they had petitioned many years prior. OU had just finished a pre-game scrimmage and was concerned about two injuries they sustained during the contest. They did win the scrimmage, however.
An OU professor was being investigated. He was under suspicion for being a “Red.” The “Red” theme was all over the paper. “Red China” was the title they used for that country in a national headline. This professor story was sad to me. From what I could tell, all they knew at this point was that he and his wife had “legally updated their passports while in Moscow” on an academic trip.
And speaking of Moscow, Khrushchev was in the news because the US had refused to provide him an actual red carpet to walk on into the United Nations building due to a classification of his status “being one of the 60 states represented” rather than “a dignitary.” There was another international article wherein a student from Africa was warning her fellow students back in her home country not to attend a Russian university, as she had, because of extreme derogatory names she was called while there.
People were gearing up for their Labor Day weekend cookouts. Sound familiar? I’ll bet you wish we had 1960 grocery prices!
In fashion, the new fall line was being introduced at Peyton-Marcus in downtown Oklahoma City.
People were getting married, people were dying and babies were being born.
The weather was exceptionally hot for this time of year.
"Er, I ran into a door!" - political cartoons changed? Not much.
And, Governor Edmondson was trying his best to educate the state about several legislative measures going to a vote of the people very soon.
I noticed that in the business section there were many announcements from local business and industries about new hires or new appointments to management. All of the names were male.
A young pro golfer had been found murdered in Lawton. There were other crimes and murders as well.
And, I read a nice recipe in the food section on how to prepare garlic bread with a clove of garlic, butter and Parmesan cheese.
So I wonder…what has changed? The Oklahoma culture is still here: Football season, Labor Day cookouts (standard across our country), the local and county fairs, community, politics and the news.
Milnot: Make it a NO Labor Day!
It seems that most of what has changed, besides the fashion, are socio-political factors. There isn’t a “Red” scare any more…but there are others, right? Are people of various skin colors still being threatened with persecution and derogatory name calling?
Okay. Perhaps not all that much has changed.
However, the technology to retrieve this information is a huge difference. People will cook with technology that wasn’t invented in 1960. The football games will have real-time updates on the internet and entertain the crowd with multimillion dollar big screen “wow factors.” Brides-to-be will be utilizing event management software by an account set up online within their wedding planner’s website. People will take digital photographs of their fair entries and send them to their family around the country.
There are differences. Perhaps a bit of the socio-political paranoia is gone…maybe.
But there sure are similarities as well.
"The Big Red Will Rise Again" (Article in the Dec. 2nd edition, AFTER the football season was completed) Click for larger view."Rattlesnake Roundups," fair news, stock shows and rodeos...News from Around the State.
How many people have visited Meers, Oklahoma to get a hamburger and wax nostalgic? How about Eischen’s Fried Chicken in Okarche? Wilson’s BBQ in Tulsa? J&W Grill in Chickasha? The Italian restaurants in Krebs?
How many have visited these establishments for so long that they then take their children and eventually their grandchildren? Of those grandchildren taken by their grandparents (who were waxing nostalgic as well as enjoying their precious cargo), how many decide to then take their teenage friends back and begin their own sentimental journeys?
I have no idea. I do know that at least one has followed this hypothetical pattern. She took her boyfriend on August 18th, their two-year “dating anniversary.” She took him to Meers, Oklahoma to get a hamburger because she had a nice time when she was a kid on a trip with her grandparents.
Tylz and Rylz (Tyler Garcia and Rylee Roberts) headed toward southwest Oklahoma at approximately 3:30 in the afternoon. They had scheduled the afternoon and evening off work, dressed up slightly, printed out a map and set out to find the restaurant on their own. It wasn’t their first road trip and it probably won’t be the last.
They arrived at the restaurant, ate dinner, talked to the cook, and said hello to the stray cats. The cook said they could take one with them if they wanted. “Well,” he hesitated. “Not the fat one. You can take one of the others.” Evidently he had a soft spot for the “fat” cat. I wonder how many hamburgers that cat has ingested?
Just prior to arriving at the restaurant, Rylee spied a sign on the road. “That’s where I went on youth retreats! Camp Y’Shua…Let’s go back there after we eat. I’ll show you where I camped!”
Where she camped. Where she went with her grandparents. Where she went to her youth retreats. Tyler was getting the grand memory tour and Rylee was just fine with being the tour guide.
They said goodbye to the cats at the restaurant, explored the grounds at Camp Y’Shua, stopped by the lake to watch the sunset and headed home.
Tonight I was trying to decide what to put on the blog since we moved our Sports release to Friday, and another piece I had come in didn’t really fit our mission. It was one of those “What do I do now?” times. So I’m digging. Digging for some angle. I asked Rylee, “What is it about the 20-something crowd that makes them want to go back and explore the Oklahoma culture? The grass roots of our state? What is it that motivated you to choose Meers for your two-year anniversary trip?”
“It’s not my ‘group’ or my friends that are doing this, mom. We were the only ones our age in the restaurant. I just wanted to go back.” She sounded slightly annoyed.
“Okay. So, you just randomly decided to go?”
“No,” she replied. “That’s not it. I just wanted to go because I went there once with Granny and Papa when I was little and I liked it. That’s all.”
She wasn’t waxing philosophical. She just wanted to share a happy memory with her boyfriend.
Her reason was so much more than I had assumed before I heard her answer. And, it was certainly deeper than my questions.
Showcasing Red Dirt culture ~ authored and managed by contributors with connections to the great state of Oklahoma.
So, we headed down the road and pulled into another place near to our heart: Big Truck Tacos. I cannot get enough of their ceviche.
