i love pasta

it's a small silver pot, all metal and plain, full of cold water and a tiny bit of salt. it waits patiently while I arrange myself with a paperback and a wooden spoon into a comfortable pose at the edge of the stove.

some people let the water boil and then put the noodles in. not I. I would forget all about this small silver pot if I left it all alone on the stove.

the silence that settles just after the rattling slide of the pasta into the pot is just right. so silent and motionless, this pot full of uncooked noodles and unboiled water, and that's why I brought the book. but even so, no matter the gripping plot or enchanting prose, my eyes will watch the surface of the water as heat hisses into a fragile layer of white froth. what a great sound, that soft and deep whispering hiss. my spoon chases it, cuts and blocks and herds the froth and the noodles around and around and around.

back to the book. last evening it was Amy Krouse Rosenthal's Encyclopedia of an Ordinary Life (which was published in Swedish. and has its own theme song? random.), a sweet and altogether surprisingly short little thing. I must admit it was not a paperback. but it spread itself out rather nicely on the unheated half of our nice electric stove and cooperated everso obligingly as I attended once every three minutes to the slowly softening whole wheat linguini in my plain metal pot.

the pasta danced, swinging from the spoon. I blew on it before snatching it with my teeth out of its dance, three separate times before it was just soft enough. turn a page, test the pasta, turn a few more, test the pasta, all the while trying to keep that very hot, starchy froth from escaping onto the stovetop.

add tomato sauce, a little mozzarella. transfer the whole thing to a bowl, grab a fork, pull up the kitchen table, and the whole world turns warm and smooth and wonderful. you have pasta in front of you and pages to turn. perfect.