If you didn’t it know already, Tim and I are in the process of moving from Seattle to Santa Barbara.
We are both so excited and so overwhelmed, all at the same time.
Still on the To Do List:
Get a job
Find a place to live
Buy a car
Drive Tim and Lars and all of our belongings from Washington to California
Live happily ever after
Though not too lengthy, it’s still a helluva list.
The plan was for me to come down to California first, before Tim, so that I could get a head start on the house hunting part and the landing a job part. Meanwhile, Tim would wait back in Seattle to bubble-wrap our kitchen breakables and list our unwanted furniture on Craigslist, until I secured a new place for us to live.
In the two weeks that I’ve been down here in California heaven, I’ve applied for seemingly every single job in Santa Barbara. All day, every day, I fill out tedious job application after tedious job application.
I’ve applied to hotels. Marketing groups. Publishers. Newspapers. Magazines. Museums.
I like to think I have a somewhat impressive resume. I have a master’s degree in Journalism from Boston University and lots of professional experience. My cover letter reads concisely and confidently. My resume looks smart and polished. I have a whole list of credible references who will speak favorably on my behalf and I’m ready to get right to work.
But as these idyllic summer days slip by and by without response, it’s beginning to seem that getting a job anywhere, ever, is an impossible dream.
Why won’t anyone hire me?
What’s also disheartening is that finding a place to live is proving to be equally hopeless.
Every day is the same.
I dial daily the phone numbers of potential landlords and leave polite messages on their machines explaining my interest in their properties.
They don’t usually call me back.
When they do, it’s to tell me that the little pink house of my dreams, the one on Islay Street with rosemary shrubs that poke through the pickets of the white fence that frames the yard, is no longer available.
To be sure, I know I am being a little bit picky in my search for a new house.
Back in Seattle I used to daydream about our next place. Would it have a porch or a clawfoot tub?
I really want to find a small, stucco house like that that one house on Pedragosa Street that I love so much. I know I’ve told you about it before. You know, the one with the curls of magenta bougainvillea vines that bend over the entry way? I want a house where Tim and I can arrange our potted succulent plants in a window that collects hot, California light. Maybe a place with hardwood floors and a dishwasher?
At this point, though, with all the rejections, I’d settle for any place that has walls and running water and that allows for cats.
I’m feeling a little bit discouraged, to be honest.
Before I got back to California, I thought it was going to be so easy to make the move down South. I was so sure that everything was just going to fall in to place the minute I got here.
Job.
House.
Car.
I don’t know why I thought the tasks on my list would be easier to accomplish.
So far, all my efforts in crossing just one of the to-do’s off my list, have ended in frustratingly painful yanks of my hair and exclamations of the very crudest curse words I can muster.
Now that I’m here, back in my favorite place in the world, nothing seems so certain anymore.
Well.
That’s not true.
There is one thing I know for truth.
And that is that my mother loves me a lot.
I know, not only because she tells me every day, but, because while I’ve been here on this fruitless house/job hunt, my mother has been letting me live with her, rent-free, in her beautiful, house-on-a-Santa-Barbara-hill home.
God bless her whole heart and generous soul.
If allowing your unemployed, carless, pushing 30-year-old daughter to move back in with you once you’ve finally emptied the full nest doesn’t paint a picture of the truest and most sincerest love, then really, what does?
I love her a lot too, of course.
And not just because she’s letting me live with her while I search for a little house that Tim and I can settle into with our fat, cat-son (I thank her for being so patient with my princess pickiness in my search for the perfect apartment).
There are so many things to love about my mother, actually.
Laura Hofberg, inside and out, is a picture of real, authentic beauty.
She’s small like me but her sparkling spirit cannot be contained in it’s frame. Her wide gestures and screams of delight fill whole rooms. You can feel her presence in a space long after she leaves. It floats in the air and lingers in the corners like an expensive perfume.
She has medium-length, strawberry blonde hair that frames her face that is carved deep with creases from years of constant smiling. Her arms and legs are like mine. Creamy and patterned with a million, million red freckles. Her grey-blue eyes are pregnant with all the awesome sights from her travels around the world. She smiles wide with straight teeth and always pink or red polish is painted on her fingers and toes.
Like me, my mother likes peonies, fiery hot sauces, black coffee with whipped cream, citrus trees, beach walks, blues music and Paris, France. I know that it makes my mom really happy to be with her kids. She loves her kitty cat, Blue, and traveling to every place in the whole wide world.
As mothers are, she is always so wonderfully warm and supportive to me. Since I’ve been back in Santa Barbara, she’s always optimistically reminding me that the job hunt and the house hunt will work themselves out.
“You always land on your feet, Kate,” she lovingly reassures me.
And I know she’s right.
I know I will find a house for Tim and I and I will land a job.
It just takes time, sometimes.
In the meantime, living with my mom again, even if just temporarily, has been a real treat.
I don’t think I even realized how much I was going to enjoy it.
I guess I didn’t really realize just how homesick I was for my family until I got back to Santa Barbara.
I really like to wake up and see her in the morning.
We both wake up early, too hot from bright sun that sifts through the blinds, and when I get up she brews me cups of dark roasted coffee. Then she asks if I’d like some eggs for breakfast. The fridge is always full of truffle cheeses and smoked salmon slices and cornichon pickles. She leaves chocolate croissants from D’angelos Bakery on the counter for me and there’s a perpetual pile of fresh, clean towels in the bathroom.
Living with my mother, I know that I am spoiled rotten.
Her home is stunning.
There are the old things in her house that remind me of my childhood:
An endless display of ceramic breakables that line shelves in her kitchen and the living room and her bedroom.
A huge acrylic art piece that illustrates a Los Angeles strip of freeway, back lit by neon bulbs and crafted by the famed artist, Candace Kahn.
A delicate wall hanging of pastel trout fish painted on thin tin.
Then there are the new things in her house:
A pop art poster of Jeff Bridges as “The Dude” in The Big Lebowski.
A flamingo lamp that glows hot pink.
A garland of metal moons.
I love how the back side of my mother’s house is made entirely of glass. She’s treated always to a sweeping panorama of Santa Barbara below. The view is endless sky and hill and terra cotta roofs.
In the evening, she likes to recline in the backyard on her padded Adirondack chairs and watch as the hills turn dusty pink under the setting sun.
Her home is blue blankets and turquoise towels and sea foam sheets. There are framed paintings of sail boats in still bays and sea shells in the garden.
It’s maybe why I feel so at home when I’m at the sea.
I love how my mother’s home feels sentimental and familiar, but also, modern and chic, all at once.
Old and new.
This week, it’s my mother’s birthday.
In the spirit of old and new, with me moving home for a fresh start and also my mother turning a year older, I thought it might be nice to spend an afternoon in the kitchen together, cooking our favorite family recipes.
My mother is a fantastic cook.
I really love to watch her come alive in the kitchen.
From her, I inherited my love for pink seasoning salts and whole cloves of raw garlic. She taught me to be comfortable in the kitchen without a measuring spoon or a written recipe.
I had wanted to cook my childhood favorites with her, side-by-side, so that for her birthday I could give her the gift of creating something that we both love, together.
I drafted us a simple menu:
Lemon garlic chicken
Mashed potatoes
Caesar salad
We scheduled dinner for the Monday before her birthday.
The afternoon was hot and clear.
In the kitchen, the white tile counter tops, crowded with piles of lemons and San Pellegrino soda cans, shone bright and clean in the buttery 4 o’clock hour.
She turned on a playlist of funky music. It shuffled through a track list of songs by The Doors and B.B. King and Van Morrison.
I gathered ingredients from around the kitchen for our dinner while my mother remembered all the reasons I love these dishes.
The lemon chicken for it’s crispy skin and the citrusy butter jus that collects at the bottom of the pan (We both love any food with lots of lemon and garlic and lots and lots of salt).
The mashed potatoes for their silky texture and creamy taste.
The Caesar because the garlic-anchovy dressing reminds me of fondly of sizzling summers spent poolside in Palm Desert and of the many years that we celebrated my mother’s birthday with dinner at LG’s steakhouse in La Quinta.
For our own feast, we started with the chicken.
She preheated the oven to 450℉.
I rinsed the bird in a clean sink and cleaned out the insides. My mother instructed my to blot the skin dry with a paper towel because that’s the secret to achieving crispy skin.
I quartered a whole, white onion and stuffed half of it into the cavity with a halved lemon. Then, I stuffed an entire head of garlic cloves under the skin.
In our professional opinions, there really is no such thing as too much garlic.
We melted down a whole stick of butter and stirred it with the juice of two whole lemons. We poured the bright yellow butter inside the chicken and then rubbed it all over the outside bird.
My mother seasoned the chicken generously with Johnny’s Seasoning Salt and fresh-cracked pepper. She stuffed the insides with fresh rosemary sprigs and I lined the bottom of the pan with baby carrots and the rest of the white onion. I simply dressed the carrots with a drizzle of olive oil.
My mother taught me to cook a whole chicken on high heat for 15-20 minutes so that the skin can really crisp up. Then reduce the temperature to 350℉ and bake the bird until the juices run clear.
If you want to get technical, a chicken is cooked to done when the internal temperature reaches 165℉.
For us, that was about an hour-and-a-half.
Growing up, my mom never used a thermometer in the kitchen, and so now, neither do I.
We rely on our intuition.
I must say, we roasted a really perfect chicken.
Next we made mashed potatoes.
This was the dish that I needed the most help perfecting. I find that when I make mashed potatoes, they sometimes turn out too gummy.
“Start with a Russet or a Yukon Gold,” she told me. “They can stand up to a good mix and they have a nice and sweet flavor.”
I nicked my fingers about hundred times in peeling the potatoes. Usually, when I make mashed potatoes, I skip the peeling step. I like the earthy flavor that the skins lend to the buttery bite. But maybe that’s just me.
We boiled the peeled potatoes until they were nice and soft. We drained them into a big mixing bowl to let them cool.
And then, the trick to avoiding gummy potatoes: After letting them cool for about 20 minutes, mix them on low, with nothing. When they potatoes are well broken up, then add a generous splash of heavy whipping cream. Mix the cream into the potatoes until it’s incorporated and then mix in a half stick of butter. Lastly, mix in a big scoop of plain Greek yogurt for tartness.
Season with salt and pepper.
Good god damn, they were delicious mashed potatoes. Smooth and creamy and buttery and rich.
Finally, we made a Caesar.
The truth is that I don’t need any help in making this salad. I make it at home for Tim and I all the time.
Without my mother’s instruction, I mashed together four whole anchovy filets with four heads of mashed garlic. I whisked in a tablespoon of dijon mustard and two tablespoons of red wine vinegar. Next, a 1/2 tablespoon of Worcestershire sauce, one coddled egg yolk and a teaspoon of lemon juice. When the ingredients are well-mixed I added in a 1/2 cup of really good olive oil and a 1/4 cup of freshly grated Parmesan cheese.
We tossed the dressing with some crunchy-fresh Romaine lettuce hearts and voilà!
There we had the best god damn Caesar dressing you’ve ever had in your life.
Oh, and if you’re going to skip the anchovies when you make it at home, then just forget about it. Anchovies are what make a Caesar and Caesar and grow up and take a bite like an adult.
We had a delicious dinner.
My brother, Sam, and his girlfriend, Rebekah, came.
My friends came over, too.
Chis and John and Jenny and Dan.
My mother, who normally has a small appetite despite her love of big flavor, ate a whole plate of food.
I know she had a great time because she lives to entertain.
She danced with wild arms and big kicks to the blues band songs playing on the stereo. She bragged to my friends about how I was such a great cook and that I made the whole meal myself. She bellowed into her new toy megaphone, her favorite souvenir from her recent trip to France, that dinner was ready and help yourself.
It makes me happy to see my mom so happy.
We didn’t always get along so well, but it feels good to be back at home with her now, so that we can get pedicures at Aqua and watch Impractical Jokers on t.v. at night and soak in her new hot tub together.
A funny thing is that in the middle of the night on Monday, after the big feast, my mother and I both woke up at the same time in the middle of the night for a bite of something salty.
We are so much the same.
Mom, I hope that you have a very Happy Birthday and that all your wildest wishes come true. I hope that all time time I make you proud. Thank you for loving me with all of your heart. And for also loving Tim. And Lars. It makes me happy to know that you’ve found true love in pink sunsets and specialty cheeses. In crime story television and flower scented candles and crooked houses in New Orleans.
I hope that on your birthday you feel really full.
I love you, Mom.
Happy birthday.
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