Quick Comfort over the Loss of a Car

I sold my car today.

It’s my old car actually; I’ve been driving the new one for over a year. I had given the old car to my mother, who had moved out of state and needed a vehicle to use on her brief but regular visits back to California. My old car went into semi-retirement in Marin, where it was happy amongst the green trees and ample parking opportunities.

But my mom didn’t like my old car; it made noises she wasn’t used to, the seat was too low for a woman barely five feet tall, she worried about the brakes. When she moved back to California last December she gave me back the keys and told me to sell the old thing.

Now I had never sold a car before and was a little intimidated. Then I got sick with the flu. I didn’t have the energy to vacuum or wash it, I didn’t even have the energy to take it to have someone else clean it. And it was raining nearly every day—not good conditions to photograph the vehicle to post it online for sale.

So it sat and sat, while I hassled with having to park two cars in the city, trying to remember to move them for street cleaning, trying to remember where I had parked them in the first place.

This week I finally cleaned out the car and had it washed and waxed. And, in a rare break between rain showers, I drove out to the beach and took a few pictures against the backdrop of a crashing ocean. My car is a rather adventurous thing, you see, not a city car at all, and needed to be photographed in her natural habitat. That evening I gathered all the info and photos and posted it online.



Two days later I was driving around the city with a woman who had come down from Chico, two and a half hours to the north, to look at my car. It was my first test drive. She—and the car-savvy friend who had come to help her—asked me questions, looked under the hood, and offered to pay me exactly what I wanted for it.

I was stunned, it was all happening so fast. I had read advice online on how to prepare your car for sale and give a test drive, but I hadn’t yet read the sections on how to sell the car. I thought it would take longer. And, if truth be told, I was oddly reluctant to give these strangers my car. But here was this woman who wanted it and was about to count out a large amount of cash.

The woman’s friend looked at me as I stuttered and stalled and he smiled. “Are you experiencing seller’s remorse?” he asked.

I was, I couldn’t help it. A wave of memories came flooding back, all the adventures I had experienced in that car—camping trips and ski trips and the first time I drove Coleman Valley Road. This was the car I had bought when I came back from Asia, after nearly a decade of being away from the Bay Area. This was the car that helped me explore the homeland I had so long been absent from, helped me remember how much I love this place. From bumping down dirt roads in the Trinity Alps to reach my favorite backpacking trailheads, to long drives up and down the rugged coastline, to rediscovering familiar curves of the roads over Mt. Tam and through the farmland of West Marin. This was the vehicle that brought me back to the landscape of my childhood, my terroir, and facilitated my growing love affair with it as an adult. And, on the subject of love affairs, it brought back memories of A, my partner on so many of these adventures.

Now I know someone will read this and have snooty thoughts about Californians and their love of cars (hell, there are San Franciscans reading this who are fuming that I've been taking up two city parking spaces). Someone somewhere is rolling their eyes about Americans and their over-consumption of oil. I will be the first to agree with you all. After all, I used to bicycle commute to work—from Marin to San Francisco, over an hour each way. Now I work at home and drive as little as possible. For me it was never the car, it was the adventures we embarked on together (yes, squandering oil as we went).

But all such things must come to an end. I sent the woman and her friend off to have dinner and when they returned I was prepared with forms and proper protocol. Papers, cash, and keys exchanged hands, and she drove off in my dear and much appreciated car (I'll stop short of saying I loved the thing, I do have some sense of perspective). It is heading north to Chico with its new owner who is a graphic artist. Whereas I wanted a station wagon for camping gear, mountain bikes, and the occasional set of skis or snowboard, she wants to be able to transport canvases and the set decorations she does for a local children’s theater. I have a feeling it’s found a good home. I hope so.

After they left I wandered around the house aimlessly. The rain was coming down hard and the house felt big, dark, cold. I was a little embarrassed to call anyone and tell them I was in mourning for my car, but it did feel like a melancholy loss, the end of an era (in case you’re wondering, yes, I have been called nostalgic; the first time when I was 11 and had to go look up the word in a dictionary to find out what it meant). Instead I ended up in the kitchen, where I did what I always do when I find myself in need of warmth and comfort: I made a pot of soup for dinner.

As much as I love soups I’ve not made chicken soup much in my life, almost never. Here I wanted to see if I could make chicken soup fast and easy, using homemade stock I had frozen and chicken breasts, also from the freezer. I wanted to see if I could make it look like the ads for chicken soup that you see on TV. Those soups always look so perfect, with their cubed carrots and potatoes and noodles, but every time I’ve bought a can of chicken soup it’s tasted oddly like canned pet food.

Noooo, I haven’t actually tasted canned pet food (though there was that incident with dry cat food when my brother and I were very little . . . ). To me chicken soup in a can tastes the way canned pet food smells. Perhaps it’s something with the canning process but I think it’s gross. I wanted to see if I could go it one better.



QUICK COMFORT CHICKEN SOUP

3 tbs olive oil
1 medium small onion or 1/2 of a large one, chopped (about 1/2 cup)
2 carrots, cubed (about 1 1/2 cup)
1 large potato, peeled and cubed (about 2 1/2 cups)
3 stalks celery, cut into medium dice (about 2 cups)
2 cups chicken, cut into cubes (about two chicken breasts)
8 cups chicken stock (the quality of your soup depends on the quality of your stock, homemade is far and away the best--for this I used a rich chicken stock, the kind that goes to jelly when it is chilled)
3 cups pasta* (I used farfalle, but spirals or egg noodles would be good)
2 1/2 tsp salt (this will depend on the saltiness of your stock)
pepper to taste
3 tbs chopped fresh parsley

Put the chicken stock in a medium sized pot on a high flame.

In a large pot begin to sauté the onion in the olive oil. After a few minutes add the carrots. Stir and sauté a few minutes more before adding the potato. Stir again and a few minutes later add the celery. You can use a bit more oil if the vegetables begin to stick, or turn down the flame as needed.

If the stock is boiling by now, add the noodles, stir, and let cook.

With a wooden spoon, move the sautéed vegetables over to the side of the pot. In the remaining space, add the chicken. Return the flame to high and make sure to stir the chicken pieces so that they all begin to brown. If you have any caramelization from the vegetables, the juices from the chicken will begin to deglaze the pot. When all the chicken seems mostly done, stir the veggies in with the chicken.

Taste the noodles. When they are done pour the noodles and stock into the pot with the chicken and vegetables. Add salt and pepper and bring to a boil. Add three quarters of the parsley, leaving a bit for garnish. Ladle into bowls, serve hot, feel better.

This whole process took under 30 minutes—fast, delicious, and comforting (Rachael Ray would be proud).

In case you're wondering, yes, it was “mmm, mmm good.”

*For those who are gluten-free, you could always use rice or rice noodles here.

PS. It might sound strange but the next day I added about a tbs of miso and some chopped bok choy to the soup. My life has been unimagineably enriched by a little dose of Asia, and I wondered what it might do to this American-style soup. Guess what, it was great. Perhaps that's what's missing in the canned version . . .