In an attempt to loosen a beginning
sentence for the new ideas I’ve been having about space, place, and cooking in
the kitchen, I performed a cursory
Internet search for “spatial cooking” but the only hits I found were about
cooking in space…like, outer space. NASA cooking. While I think that’s really
interesting, it’s not what I have been puzzling over while reading Topophrenia.
This all started when Michael was cooking dinner one evening and I wanted to
get an early start on my Human Ecology reading. I thought I would read all of
the introductions of the books we were assigned since many of the introductions
were not specifically required in the syllabus and I like reading
introductions. It’s like the whole book is in there in a nice, compact space.
The introduction is like a challenge to the author—can he repeat everything
he’s just written out in his full-length book in just 10 or so pages?
I had glanced through Topophrenia
and knew Michael would find it interesting. I also knew he likes to be read to
while cooking. I personally struggle with concentrating on cooking and
listening to something being read aloud to me, unless I have what I am cooking memorized.
I like to think I can listen but I end up asking him to go back and re-read. My
concentration weaves in and out as I’m sauteing mushrooms, crying into slices of
onion, or completely forgetting to add the garlic in my recipe for cooked
garlic because Michael got to a really interesting part in that New Yorker
article. When I’m reading aloud to Michael I can tell he’s not always
paying attention, but he still manages to split his mind into two and get the
whole gist of what I’m reading to him while also putting together spectacular food.
One winter we read aloud to each
other a book he was teaching for a class, called Braiding Sweetgrass by
Robin Wall Kimmerer, from which the class was reading one chapter a week. We
read it together in more than just the kitchen, but that’s often where we
engaged the text. I would sit on the floor in a corner and read aloud and he
would tell me when he needed something underlined or marked with one of his partial
triangles. He was teaching this book before we had moved in together, so I
think we spent more time actively engaged with reading aloud to each other. Now
that we live together and see each other every single day, sometimes for many
hours in a row, it’s easy to forget we enjoy it. We’ve also gotten so busy, me
with school, and he with so much extra work since his classes are both in
person and online, that we are fortunate if we’re in the same house together
when the other is cooking.
As we continue to explore how to
live together, I had recalled he really likes to be read aloud to and I offered
to read this introduction to him. I was part way through the introduction, and
a glass of wine (I don’t typically do my homework with wine, but this was a
Saturday night…), when Michael got to the part of his recipe that said he
needed egg noodles. Shit. We didn’t have any of those, only regular pasta. The
recipe, however, suggested spätzel as a replacement.
Michael and I had been thinking
about spätzel recently as our non-Valentine’s day tradition in February is to
eat at the Bavarian restaurant in Woodfin. Every time we go there we both say
we should try to make spätzel. It seems so simple and it is tasty (sie schmeckt
gut). I continued to read about the cartographic imperative of orienting
ourselves in space as Michael mentally cartographed the contents of our
refrigerator, one hand thoughtfully stroking his chin as he contemplated the
conditions for the possibility of spätzel. One recipe called for four eggs—no
can do. Another called for one egg. Perfect.
Perched on a stool in the kitchen
with my legs crossed, I continued reading aloud: “This can lead to productive
controversies, but it also takes the reader away from the literary text itself
and into entirely different places.” Where are we taken, I wondered? I took
another sip of wine. “The spätzel humanities, I mean, spatial humanities quite
rightly involves interdisciplinary approaches to their areas of inquiry.” Hmm.
Interdisciplinary approaches to spätzel. How might spätzel be approached in an
interdisciplinary fashion? I looked up from my book and saw Michael pouring
batter over our cheese grater that he had disassembled since we do not use the
side with the smaller holes anyway. Flour was scattered everywhere. He announced it was almost ready.
“You know, I don’t think I would
have tried to make spätzel if you hadn’t been reading,” Michael said to me as
we were taking our first bites of the baked vegetables and small, squiggly
noodles. “I would have just boiled other pasta and not tried something new.”
“So the condition for the
possibility of spätzel is me reading aloud?”
“Yep, apparently.”
“Okay,” I said. I would read aloud more
to him, gladly, and not just for spätzel.