May 15, 2021 Tulsa to Robert Fogg State Park Lunch - Around the Corner Diner, Edmond, Oklahoma. Dinner - Diced Brisket, asparagus, sugar snap peas and green onion in a BBQ Soy sauce.
We got up and Billy and Elaine went to the Farmer’s Market while we showered and packed.
They returned with a huge sweet roll and a bag of sugar snap peas and we all made tea and coffee and shared the sweet roll.
Then we left. They to return to Dallas and we to drive toward New Mexico. We got off the road at Oklahoma City and drove to a farmers’ market in Edmond, just north of Oklahoma City.
We bought a lb. bunch of fresh asparagus and then decided to walk around the downtown area.
We walked through a commercial food court area and then toward the man street with its old buildings that had been renovated into commercial businesses. We went through the back door of what was once a car dealership and was now the Frenzy Brewery with the large fermenting tanks in the back and a bar and spigots and tables and chairs in the front.
We tasted several beers and a good slightly dry apple cider. Suzette took a pint of ale and I took a pint of the dry cider and we walked next door the Around the Corner Cafe to eat brunch. We found a table outside in a patio area with a view of the Main Street and all the people walking by. We decided to split the four piece fried chicken lunch with sides of green beans and fried onion rings.
It took thirty minutes to prepare the chicken from scratch, so Suzette walked down the street to the Edmond Antique Store for the thirty minutes and I tried my hand at a word scramble puzzle in the menu that was contained within a small 8 page printed newspaper with the menu interspersed among articles of local interest: a very clever idea that Suzette may try to replicate at the Center Bistro.
The restaurant and street was filled with people, most of whom were unmasked. It looked like things had returned to normal in Edmond and Oklahoma City by Saturday after the CDC announcement on Friday that vaccinated people can dispense wearing masks.
Suzette returned just before the plate with four pieces of chicken, several onion rings, and green beans arrived. It was super crispy. I loved it. I ate the crispy crust from the wing and thigh and some of the breast that we did not eat but took with us in a carry out box. I gave Suzette part of the thigh meat to go with the drumstick she ate. The crispy coating was divine and definitely worth the wait. The onion rings were good and probably home made, but the green beans were inedible, water logged with no flavor like they had come directly from a can.
At lunch Suzette mentioned that there were several items that caught her attention at the antique store, so after lunch we walked the half block to the antique store located in another renovated old building. Suzette bought a good steel signed lettered with the words Farmer’s Market and a small sculpture of a duck made out of sheet metal. I found an 1855 map of Texas with mostly open space west of the line of forts in the center of the state that I thought Jody might like. We bought the three pieces and carried them the two blocks back to the van.
I had two thoughts about Oklahoma from this day’s experience in Edmond. There is a lot of money that has gone into preserving the old downtown areas of many of its cities. We saw it in downtown Tulsa and were seeing it in Edmond. The other thought was that there was a high level of prosperity in Oklahoma of which I had been unaware. There was lots of consumption and folks looked prosperous, even after taking into account the fact that we must surely be at the front of the wave of post-pandemic consumption.
We then drove the approximately 200 miles to western Oklahoma to Fogg State Park, a large reservoir built in the grasslands of western Oklahoma.
The grasslands with their waving ocean of green grass was beautiful, but we were disappointed by the constant 25 mph breeze blowing. I can see why the area became a dustbowl in the 30’s.
After we arrived we made Bloody Marys. Here is zsuzette enjoying her Bloody Mary sitting by the lake in our campsite.
After we finished our drinks I reclined in one of our lounge chairs by the lake as the wind cascaded over me and read Washington Square while Suzette watched a movie inside the van.
We decided to cook and eat inside the van rather than fight the wind. I chopped some of the asparagus we had bought at the Farmers Market and a green onion, and the BBQ beef brisket and de-boned the pork from the last BBQ rib and Suzette snapped several of the sugar snap peas and lined the bottom of a 10 x 10 inch Pyrex baking dish with the PPI rice form the Chinese food from last Sunday and we filled the baking dish with the chopped ingredients.
We then mixed the remaining small cup of sweet BBQ sauce with three or four small bags of soy sauce and a bag of plum sauce to make a sauce that we drizzled over the dish and especially on the rice to soften and flavor it.
Suzette then heated the baking dish full of ingredients in the small microwave oven and we turned the front seat in the van to face the seat by the door that was open, we placed the heated baking dish of food on the cork underside of a cutting board we carried in the van and we shared the meal as we balanced the cutting board on my knees in the van. It was the second most delicious meal we cooked on the road. The fresh asparagus and sugar snap peas and green onion complemented the sweet BBQ and soy BBQ sauce that flavored the rice. The best dinner we made was the melted cheese hamburgers and fresh vegetable and mushroom medley we cooked over the open fire at Meramec State Park in Missouri.
Dinner with a lake view from the van.
As the sun set, Suzette heated two cups of water in the microwave and we soaked and cleaned the baking dish and utensils.
We then returned to the van and Suzette found “A Little Chaos”, a newish English movie about a female landscape architect who supposedly developed a water garden element within the gardens at Versailles Palace for Louis XIV, starring Kate Winslet, Matthias Schoenaerts, Alan Rickman, and Stanley Tucci. It was a lovely small quiet movie similar to The Dig. We enjoyed it as we sipped Zacapa XO rum and I drank a cup of Earl Grey tea with milk and sugar.
It seemed as if we had reached a moderate level of mastery of living on the road in the van.
Much of our sense of well being comes from Suzette buying a hot spot for her phone and sharing it with my I Pad to access Netflix and communicate by internet.
Bon Appetit
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