4B — Thursday, January 21, 2016
the b-side
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

By CATHERINE SULPIZIO

Daily Arts Writer

Winter break is nothing if 

not an endless buffet of volup-
tuary temptations. Almost two 
weeks at home in San Diego and 
another in Chicago offered up 
the requisite enchiladas from 
my 
family’s 
go-to 
Mexican 

place, Thai green curry for Star 
Wars screenings, a lazy brunch 
of frittata and a citrusy kale 
salad, a luxuriant New Year’s 
Eve feast in a subterranean den 
that began with risotto and 
ended with chocolate cake and 
then plenty of dark, muddy red 
wine that stained my lips crim-
son, Bloody Marys with extra 
horseradish and whiskey cock-
tails that staved off the Chica-
go chill — among other things.

But January is the icy month 

of atonement, a thought that 
echoed when I opened my 
refrigerator — after a long and 
decadent birthday weekend in 
Chicago — to reveal its spartan 
shelves and the lone survivors 
who had grimly soldiered on. 
When replenishing the refrig-
erator seems a particularly 
insurmountable 
challenge, 
I 

want a dish that comes together 
not from an involute choreog-
raphy performed by a troupe 
of ingredients, but arises from 
a few good alliances between 
wholesome, leafy compatriots. 
And when the weather takes on 

the climate of a refrigerator, I 
want something that simmers, 
boils and melds into itself on the 
stove. In short, what I longed 
for was lentil soup, the humble 
little dish that is both edifying 
and indulgent. The lentil har-
kens back to Ancient Grecians, 
who very much enjoyed them; 
their playwright Aristophanes 
said “you, who dare insult len-
til soup, sweetest of delicacies,” 
perhaps a hair defensively, in 
one of his plays.

The soup starts with a gener-

ous gloss of olive oil in a big pot 
— more than you would think 
necessary at the peak of New 
Year’s austerity — and a roughly 
chopped bouquet of vegetables: 
1 carrot, 1 yellow onion, 1 leek, 
3 cloves of garlic. But the magic 
of lentil soup is its chameleon 
form — substitute celery for the 
carrot, green onions for the leek 
and shallots for the onion, or 
whatever other root vegetables 
lurk in your pantry. The point is 

to chop as finely as you have the 
patience for, but uniformity is 
little prized. I chop roughly and 
quickly.

Sauté in olive oil until every-

thing has compressed and their 
aroma begins to make your 
kitchen feel hospitable again. 
After 10 minutes, add a very 
long glug of whatever wine 
or beer you have and a cup of 
dried green lentils, plus a can of 
crushed San Marzano tomatoes 
and another 2-3 cups of water. 
Stir and bring to a simmer. Add 
a palmful of salt, a pinch of hot 
smoked paprika, some stalks 
of thyme or bay leaves and a 
squeeze of lemon juice that will 
cut through winter. After this, 
cover and walk away.

45 minutes is enough time to 

read half of the London Review 
of Books you were gifted for 
Christmas, or for the more 
abstemious, take a brisk and 
nippy walk. And in 45 minutes, 
the hard, little lentils soften 
into velvet, and the shards of 
carrots, onions, leek, tomatoes, 
and garlic deliquesce into a silky 
base. The lemon and dark wine 
lend a richness to the stock not 
often found in vegetarian fare. I 
ladle it into a saucer and drizzle 
with more lemon and a shower 
of green onions, but it is equally 
good with a few drops of olive 
oil, a piece of au courant avoca-
do toast, or a handful of simply 
dressed arugula. 

Dear Gillian,

Not that anyone really says 

“sleep with somebody” anymore, 
but I literally don’t like sleep-
ing with other people. I find it 
anxiety-
inducing 
and awk-
ward and 
I 
never 

sleep 
well. 
On 

the 
other 

hand, 
I 

don’t want 
to be rude 
or 
sexist. 

Is 
sleep-

ing 
with 

someone 
essential to 
intimacy?

Thanks in advance,

 – Awkward in Ann Arbor

Dear Awk,
The poets say yes: sleep in your 

lover’s embrace. But the sleep sci-
entists say no: love your lover, but 
sleep alone, and if you need an 
embrace, try a pillow.

T.S. Eliot’s “A Dedication to my 

Wife” celebrates sleeping side by 
side as an embodiment of love and 
companionship: “To whom I owe 
the leaping delight / That quick-
ens my senses in our waking time/
And the rhythm that governs the 
repose of our sleeping time, / the 
breathing in unison.”

Yet scientific sleep studies have 

shown that bed partners not only 
breathe in discordant meter, but 
their body movements, duvet 
thefts, insomnias, and snores dis-
rupt one another’s sensitive and 
precious sleep cycles, which may 
leave couples resentful and want-
ing to punch one another.

There are probably a number of 

reasons that “sleeping with some-
one” came to be a euphemism for 
intimacy. Not only do they natu-
rally follow one another, but they 
both find us at our most vulner-
able and therefore require deep 
trust. Visual artists more typical-
ly portray a sleeping figure alone. 
Look at the contemporary painter 
Kehinde Wiley, who plays with 
western art historical iconogra-
phy and Black identity in his piece 
“Sleep,” drawing from the poses 

and imagery of both a solitary 
and graceful sleeping figure like 
“Giorgione Sleeping Venus and 
a fallen martyr like Carvaggio’s 
“Deposition and Entombment of 
Christ.” But when a second figure 
does share the sleeper’s canvas on 
occasion, there’s often a nod to 
voyeurism, discomfort or indigni-
ty. A classic example is Botticelli’s 
“Mars and Venus,” Venus watches 
alert as Mars slumbers unguard-
ed and exposed.

Their frequent metaphoric link 

to death is another bond between 
sleep and intimacy. The French 
call the latter “le petit mort” 
and the idea of sleep as a kind of 
temporary or reversible death is 
ubiquitous in the history of the 
arts. How about the final scene 
in Romeo and Juliet: she’s asleep, 
he thinks she’s dead, he kills him-
self, she wakes up, sees him dead 
and kills herself. Or look at John 
William Waterhouse’s “Sleep 
and his Half-brother Death.” 
Awk, your anxiety about sleep’s 
vulnerabilities — sleeptalking, 
or flailing about, or worse — is 
understandable.

Back in the day, when hous-

ing was scarcer, beds fewer and 
heating more primitive, shar-
ing beds, even with strangers, 
was not uncommon. Your feel-
ings of awkwardness about it 
are reflected throughout litera-
ture. Think Cassio and Iago in 
“Othello” getting their legs tan-
gled or the great scene in “Moby 
Dick” leading up to Ishmael and 
Queequeg sharing a bed at the 
Inn. It’s enough to make you leave 
the flannel robe and teddy bear at 
home.

One reason sneaking out in the 

dark hours of the night is consid-
ered sleazy, though, is that spend-
ing the night bridges the hours 
between the alluring evening of 
seduction, revelry and intoxi-
cation and the sober daylight 
of visibility, reality and reflec-
tion. George Balanchine’s ballet 
“La Sonnambula” (“The Sleep-
walker”), based on the opera of 
Vincenzo Bellini, explores the 
relation between the world of 
sleep, magic and dance and that of 
waking life with the pas de deux 
between The Sleepwalker and 
The Poet. Dorothy Parker’s Short 
Story “You Were Perfectly Fine” 
published in The New Yorker in 

1929, captures the abrupt panic of 
being yanked from one state to the 
next — recalling one’s drunken 
behavior the night before with the 
person next to you in the morning. 
Besides the obvious issue of con-
sent in a drunken hookup, seeing 
your lover through to the morning 
helps dispel or confirm the fear 
that Parker’s “lovely things” in a 
supposedly pivotal moment in the 
romance exist in only one half of 
the two’s collective memory.

Don’t worry AAA, there are 

some steps you can take with-
out sacrificing your beauty sleep 
or having to have a sleepover 
before you are ready. You can ask 
your boo to brunch and share the 
bonding pleasure of coffee and 
omelets without the prerequisite 
of sharing a bed beforehand. Or 
perhaps an afternoon movie at 
one of your homes where you can 
practice snuggling, or even a low-
stakes siesta as in Jean-François 
Millet’s “Noonday Rest.” In the 
meantime, the best way to avoid 
coming off as rude or sexist is to 
communicate, explaining exactly 
why you’re trekking through the 
snow back to your house at three 
in the morning instead of stay-
ing cozy, even if it sounds like an 
excuse. 

So no, Awky, sleeping with 

someone is not essential to inti-
macy; but intimacy, at least the 
meaningful version, does suggest 
that you should probably find a 
way to get comfortable with the 
sleeping part. Once you get to 
know your love interest on a few 
different levels, lit by both the 
sun and the moon, you might feel 
more and more at ease with the 
prospect of spending the night. I 
wonder if there isn’t some kind of 
tech fix for your issue. Have you 
tried something other than dorm-
issue twins, like a nice full or 
queen? How about earplugs? Or I 
know: one of those Sleep Number 
beds advertised on TV.

The point is, if you stick 

around through the dreaming 
until morning or beyond, who 
knows ...

Jakab is taking a little nap. 

If you wanna be her lover, 

email gillianj@umich.edu. 

CULTURAL CURES COLUMN

Do I have to share a 
bed with my lover?

GILLIAN 

JAKAB

Lentil soup, the most 
overlooked delicacy

COMMUNITY CULTURE NOTEBOOK

EPISODE REVIEW

 The room goes silent, the 
moment of truth awaits and the 
knife goes in, only to reveal the 
juicy, pink 
center of a 
perfectly 
cooked 
steak. Gor-
don Ramsay 
starts the 
applause 
and the 
crowd goes 
wild. Hungry foodies all over 
the nation salivate as they watch 
celebrities take the “MasterChef” 
stage for a shot to win $25,000 on 
behalf of a charity of their choos-
ing. For the 100th episode, four 

rounds of celebrities rumbled 
through the culinary arena, each 
with their unique mystery box of 
ingredients and 60 minutes for 
the competing stars to live out 
their “MasterChef” dreams.
 First up were “Empire” cast 
members Ta’Rhonda Jones and 
Kaitlin Doubleday, followed by 
a couples’s round with Terry 
Crews (“Brooklyn Nine-Nine”) 
and his wife Rebecca King 
— Crews battling for the best 
cupcake against Boris Kodjoe 
(“The Last Man on Earth”) and 
Nicole Ari Parker (“Rosewood”). 
Lobsters were poached, cupcakes 
were decorated and Gordon 
Ramsay needed “a touch more 

salt.” But most anticipated in the 
“MasterChef” special was the 
appearance of today’s “it” girl, 
supermodel Gigi Hadid, who 
went head to head with fellow 
Victoria’s Secret Model Devon 
Windsor. Hadid, the self-pro-
claimed foodie of her famous girl 
squad, tore up the kitchen as she 
crossed off one of her ultimate 
bucket list items. Two hours later, 
as the celebrities said goodbye to 
their “MasterChef” glory, the rest 
of the world was just a bit hun-
grier and a lot more skeptical of 
the raving reviews the culinary 
professionals dished out to the 
amateur contestants. — Danielle 
Yacobson

B

MasterChef

FOX

100th Episode

The lentil 

hearkens back 

to Ancient 
Grecians.