Homemade, Local and Did We Mention Downright Sinful?

When was the last time you ate at a restaurant that made their own butter? Or tasso? Or andouille sausage? My guess is most of us would answer, “Never.”

Well now you have the opportunity to change all that. Step into Lunabread, a sweetly cozy six-table eatery specializing in Cajun and Metro cuisine on 15th Street in Tulsa’s Cherry Street District. Everything on their menu is made-from-scratch with as many local ingredients as possible.

Lunabread’s eclectic atmosphere offers plenty of spots for relaxing with a good book and some of their doubleshot French Press Coffee, cream sodas or organic free-trade tea.

Never underestimate the value of a comfortable chair beside a window in a room filled with light, art and a delicious fusion of aromas emanating from the kitchen. If the chair is colorful – even better.

Mandatory for all great eateries – a nook with plenty of room for interesting things. Lunabread passes the category with flying colors.

This is April, our very friendly and helpful waitress. She made sure we had everything we needed and patiently educated us about tasso, a spicy, peppery Cajun ham made right there at Lunabread. We didn’t taste it this go round but have added it as a must for our next Lunabread visit. Can’t wait!

And now for the main attraction … food!

My friend Ron Ferrell, sculptor and prolific gardener from Jones, Okla., ordered the cornbeef and hash with crawfish. The beef was house cured and slowly stewed with organic potatoes, crawfish and topped with eggs over easy. Mouth watering yet?

I ordered the crab cakes Benedict – poached eggs on top of ‘Nola style (a.k.a. New Orleans) crab cakes and sauce cherone. After chowing down on this, other eggs Benedict seem like pale blobs of pabulum.

Ron digs in. Like me, he excels at eating and is a connoisseur of local Okie goodness. Ron is also an expert biscuit maker and had great appreciation for Lunabread’s homemade biscuits which were light and baked just right – slightly crunchy on the outside, flaky on the inside.

Paired with Lunabread’s homemade butter – well holy cow doesn’t even begin to describe it. Let’s just say any time you are within 200 miles of Tulsa, make nabbing homemade biscuits and butter at Lunabread a priority.

Meet Chris Foster, Lunabread’s owner, baker and dessert maker. We loved Chris’ hat and serious passion for local food. He was born in New Orleans and together with his business partner, Paul Wilson, who lived and trained in New Orleans, they head up creating the good eats at Lunabread. That commitment to New Orleans jazzes the taste and style of much of the menu and kicked the dishes we feasted on into Cajun heaven. Delectably sinful!

Part of Lunabread’s secret is those local ingredients. There’s just no replicating the taste of fresh – and once your palette acquires that knowledge, you never want to go back. Just a few of Lunabread’s sources: The yogurt in Lunabread’s dishes is produced by Wagon Creek Creamery near Helena; wheat comes from John’s Farm & Cattle Tracks near Fairview; beef from Natural Farms in Tulsa. Chris buys his pigs whole from Pork & Greens near Broken Arrow and uses every part of the pig – that’s where the homemade tasso and andouille sausage come from.

Ron and Chris discuss the finer points of biscuit making. My mouth was too full to add much to the conversation and I’m a biscuit-making novice anyway.

The board shown here highlights some of what’s on the menu, which is small and changes often according to what is available from season to season. The day we visited some of the other luscious goodies we had a hankering to try but didn’t (we didn’t want to be gluttons) were housemade andouille sausage, white gravy and pork fat biscuits, and Southern eggs benedict – organic stone grits topped with a poached egg, sausage and gravy. If your mouth is not watering now, you likely no longer have a pulse. We were also sorely tempted by the desserts – white chocolate bread pudding with hard sauce, organic raspberry tart with peppercorn gelato, Belgian chocolate torte royale. See what I mean – more sin!

I glimpsed the biscuits and gravy from across the room on another customer’s plate and now I can’t get that vision out of my mind. With such a serious obsession, another Lunabread experience is at the top of my must-do list. This kind of “sinning” can’t happen too soon.

Treat Your Mom to an Oklahoma Adventure

Mother’s Day 2011 is now a memory but don’t let that stop you from giving your mom special Oklahoma adventures throughout the year.

A couple of years ago our family started a new Mother’s Day tradition and gave my mother and mother-in-law a day trip to a couple of special Oklahoma destinations. To avoid the crowds we chose the Saturday after Mother’s Day for our first adventure and headed to Ponca City, known for its rich, colorful blend of American Indian, Western and oil boom history.

To fuel up for touring the ornate and historical Marland Mansion, we opted to first have lunch at Enrique’s Restaurant, a legendary local eatery self-described as “the hottest jalapeno on the runway,” so named for where it’s sited -- right next to the runway at the Ponca City Airport Municipal Airport. Having visited Enrique’s on previous trips, we knew the delights of the restaurant’s robust menu of fresh, flavorful Mexican food and of watching planes land and passengers debark and saunter into the restaurant like they would from a car.

Enrique’s puffy hand-made corn tortillas are paradoxically both crunchy and chewy, and transcend the genre, especially when paired with the restaurant’s piquant salsa, and the flavorful chicken tortilla soup was another big hit with our family.

Just down the road from Enrique’s lies the Marland Mansion, built between 1925 and 1928 at a cost of $5.5 million as the home of Oklahoma’s 10^th governor, oilman E.W. Marland. Touring the mansion was a fascinating and nostalgic trek for our mothers, who remembered the styles reflected in the historic mansion’s opulent furnishings.

Known as the “Palace on the Prairie” and built by master architect John Duncan Forsyth in Mediterranean Revival style, this palatial National Historic Landmark feels as though it could be the setting for F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “The Great Gatsby.” Lavish embellishments and artifacts glitter and sparkle at every turn in the 43,561-square-foot mansion. We had fun imagining the dinner parties held in the luxurious dining room.

Place settings that would have impressed nobility from any country.

From the imported Waterford crystal chandeliers -- the crowning the glory to the ballroom -- to the 24 karat gold-leaf mosaic domed ceiling worth more than $1.4 million in the gallery level of the mansion, each of the mansion’s four levels revealed luxurious treasures beyond imagining.

Chandelier gazing.

Intricate ceiling.

A grand hallway was stunning as were an elevator lined in buffalo skin, delicate hand-carved details in lime wood and oak paneled walls, rich tapestries and Sheffield plate wall sconces, ornate ceilings.

Everything so beautiful and intricate that at one point we all just sat down and stared at the ceiling for a good long while. The necks tend to get a little sore from all that looking up. 

And then we toured the bedrooms, many of them, ten in all.

And this beauty was one of them.

Grace at every turn.

Marland’s office.

There are 12 bathrooms scattered throughout the mansion. Lydie’s bathroom was particularly lovely. Lydie was Marland’s adopted daughter and after his first wife passed away, he later had the adoption annulled and Lydie became his wife.

So many enticing little details -  note the special shower setting for tepid.

The mansion itself is just a starting point for all there is to see. The grounds are lush and extensive and include an artist studio, oil museum, Lydie's cottage  and Lake White Marsh, named after Marland's yacht.

By all accounts our family had a grand time exploring these two Ponca City destinations, but the greatest treasure of all wasn’t found in the tasty food at Enrique’s or the lavish display of wealth at the Marland Mansion. It was the gift of time spent with our mothers, of seeing the pleasure they took in the sights, of the memories we created in our time together -- altogether totally priceless.

Guest Post: Meet the Green Girl and The Canebrake

I have been dubbed “green girl” by the folks at my office. My official title is Sustainable Initiatives Coordinator, which is a bit laborious and pretty vague. Green girl certainly cuts to the point, plus it makes people feel guilty when they see me and they are carrying a Styrofoam cup. I find this highly entertaining; as if I have the power to single handily bring Styrofoam use to an end in Oklahoma. Hardly. But hey, if it makes people think twice then so be it. What I actually focus on is sustainable tourism in Oklahoma. Still vague? I work with any tourism entity from tiny restaurants to large hotels on what they can implement to make their business more efficient, environmentally aware and locally focused, in essence how to run a more sustainable operation. A sustainable operation focuses on the interplay of environmental, social and economic factors.

Blah, blah, blah, you say. Ok, don’t give up on me yet. I just needed a few primer sentences so when you read these blog posts you understand what we are talking about when we say sustainable as it refers to tourism. But enough with the definitions, if you want to know more about our ECO program or sustainability, just hop on over to our site.

So what is the green girl doing on the Oklahoma Dispatch? Simple. I want to dispel two myths about green travel in Oklahoma. 1. That it doesn’t exist. 2. That people don’t really care about sustainability, especially the tourism industry.

My hope is that through these posts you discover cool and innovative places around our great state that you can visit and support. What you are bound to discover is that while we can use a lot of big words, fancy ideas and interesting products to discuss sustainability, it really all comes down to the people. So I look forward to introducing you to some of my favorite “sustainable friends,” as I call them, and telling you their stories.

So first up, The Brackens...The Bracken Family runs The Canebrake Restaurant and Resort in Wagoner, Oklahoma. I am an Oklahoman but my geography leaves a lot to be desired. Needless to say I had never heard of Wagoner, nor had I been there. However, it didn’t take long until I was introduced to The Canebrake. This place is probably the mecca of green travel in Oklahoma. That is not an exaggeration. It is a serene resort situated near Ft. Gibson Lake and every detail has been intentionally thought out. Sustainability is at the core of everything The Canebrake does and that stems from Sam and Lisa Bracken.

Sam serves as the executive chef at The Canebrake. He oversees the restaurant and all dining options with extraordinary care. I’ve never had a bad meal from Sam. He sources a lot of his ingredients locally, purchases organic and most importantly knows where his food is coming from and is happy to tell you all about it. This past weekend I had meatloaf sliders from local, organic bison. Yum.

The Canebrake often has cooking demos in conjunction with other activities where Sam and his hospitable team turnout wonderful meals while explaining the food and processes they use.

Lisa teaches yoga at The Canebrake. The Canebrake has yoga classes everyday as well as yoga workshops. I attended a yoga workshop last weekend led by Lisa. Lisa is a tiny ball of energy who manages to contort her body into any shape imaginable. Tiny, energetic and a contortionist! Yes, it’s true and typically these types of people evoke a nice blend of jealousy and annoyance out of me. But Lisa defies any stereotypes and is an incredibly relatable, low key yogi. She teaches with a great sense of humor and encouragement. She sells Okie Yoga t-shirts that say, “Namaste, Y’all” on the back. I think that pretty much sums up Lisa.

A main part of The Canebrake is the Yoga Barn where all the classes take place. While The Canebrake is incredibly polished and well done it has a down home sense as people walk through the lobby in their yoga ware with yoga mats in hand. Since The Canebrake is located on 400 acres there is plenty of space and outdoor options. I find the space to be welcomed relief from my usual busy routine.

All the rooms and suites at The Canebrake are luxurious yet comfy. They employ a variety of green energy practices, many of which you wouldn’t know about if I didn’t tell you. The property uses geo-thermal for heating and cooling as well as solar. The insulation for the aforementioned Yoga Barn is denim. Yep, old blue jeans. This is effective insulation keeps the temperature consistent no matter the season.

The Canebrake has an aggressive recycling program, ensuring a reusable home for almost all disposed products. They participate in the Clean the World program. Clean the World collects shampoos and soap from lodging properties, sterilizes and recycles them and distributes them to children in parts of the world where soap is needed but not accessible.

The spa, oh yeah, there is a spa. So the spa uses products that are kind to you and the earth. At this point I hope you see a theme. Thoughtful. The Canebrake is a thoughtful destination. Lisa, Sam and their team are committed to running a thoughtful business. No one is doing anything because they have to, rather because they believe in it and they have seen the benefits of the choices they make. As a visitor, I benefit from their thoughtfulness, but so does a whole bunch of people from local farmers to kids on other continents. It’s a good cycle of thoughtfulness they have created. So when you need respite from the crazy of your daily grind head over to Wagoner and chill with the Brackens. You can thank me later.

-Jessica