How Molly Baz Restocked Her Kitchen After the LA Fires
After the fires, Baz craved the familiar touchpoints of her daily routine, which she’d come to associate with home. One was the Hasami Porcelain Mug that she reached for to drink her morning cappuccinos, which she makes with Táche pistachio nut milk. (She buys shelf-stable cartons in bulk so they’re a bit more affordable.)
When it came time to replace her mugs, she knew they had to be from Hasami Porcelain. “I could have gone out and gotten a different mug, but I wanted that mug,” Baz recalls — it was about the tactile feeling of home, even when home was no longer there. “I remember getting those Hasami mugs and being like, thank god, I’m drinking coffee out of my mug, my morning feels right again.”
Besides the large version being the perfect size, in Baz’s opinion, for lattes and cappuccinos, Los Angeles–designed, Japan-made Hasami Porcelain drinkware and dishware is modular and stackable, which makes for neater storage. They’re also machine-washable and microwave-safe.
Baz described her family as “that type of household that has fresh-squeezed citrus juice in the fridge.” She prefers a manual juicer to an electric one, though she acknowledges that an electric juicer might be more effective and more time-efficient.
“I just don’t want to hear excess noise, and I feel myself finding a lot of joy in simple rituals,” she says. “I think that’s maybe getting older … or it’s your house burning down and realizing what’s important.”
Baz favors the retro-style Ra Chand J500 Juicer, which she had originally bought for her husband, a furniture and interiors designer, as a gift. “We really stand for good design in this household, and you can’t beat the look of that,” she says. “It looks like it belongs in a Parisian bistro.” (A theme.)
The couple drink juice and wine from vintage Dansk juice glasses, which they’d inherited from her husband’s grandmother but lost to the fire. They found them again on eBay. For Baz, seeking out a beautiful drinking glass (with personal meaning) encapsulates a sensibility that losing her home to fire has only strengthened. “Everything can be beauty,” she said.
“It’s so easy to let the mundane activities of life feel like things that just pass by and are just things you have to do to survive.” More than thinking of these moments in terms of utility alone, you can “set them up intentionally in your life so they feed your soul.”
One such moment: Tea time. Baz’s go-tos are Mariage Frères Earl Grey French Blue, an aromatic, loose-leaf Earl Grey speckled with periwinkle blue flowers, and Kettl Soba Cha, a buckwheat tea (we recommend Kettl Uji Genmaimatcha in our guide to our favorite teas).
“It feels like self-care when I drink tea,” says Baz. “I’ve never been a self-care person, but interestingly, post-fires I felt like everything’s so out of control in my life, and I need to take care of the one thing I do have — which is me and my family.”
As she looks ahead, Baz has learned that what feels like home can be surprisingly portable, even after devastating loss. One small, final example is her favorite candle, the Le Labo Cedre 11 Candle, which she notes is a luxury item. The scented candle had been in every room of the old house, infusing the space with clean but cozy notes of cedar and musk. “This was the scent of our home,” she says. “When physical objects are no longer, how can you tap into your other senses to bring back memories?”
“It’s interesting to be able to think about bringing scents with us,” Baz mused. “Scents don’t go anywhere, in the same way that music can be so evocative. And music never goes away. It’s always there. You can always tap into a memory through music.”
For Baz, feeling at home is the hug of a beloved scent, the faithful dutch oven that sears just so, the pinch pot of dependable salt, the handshake of a favorite mug. It’s the daily rituals that make the habitual beautiful. And it’s especially her family and her relationship with herself. These things rely on neither walls nor roof.
This article was edited by Catherine Kast and Maxine Builder.
