Hungry

It's no secret, I love food.  I always have.  I love preparing food, I love serving food to others, I love thinking through what someone else may enjoy eating around my table, I love to read cookbooks and memoirs that focus on food, and while I love healthy food I've also never been one to deprive myself of some random craving and ice cream is always, always in my freezer.  The real kind, with full fat, full cream, and chocolate.  (The other night I was making a grocery list and asked my husband how much ice cream we had left for the next week.  He said "oh there's plenty."  I looked later and there were three scoops.  Apparently he and I have a different definition of "plenty" when it comes to ice cream.)  When Shauna Niequist announced that she was working on a book all about food, faith, community,  and fellowship around a table, a book which was going to include recipes, I went a little nuts.  Her first two books had a huge impact on my life so I could not wait for this one.  Bread and Wine: A Love Letter to Life Around the Table with Recipes, doesn't release until April 9, but I had the privilege of receiving an advance reading copy and was given the opportunity to read it ahead of time and write some reflections and reviews.

This book made me hungry.  The recipes Shauna included--and the descriptions of amazing food--made my mouth water from beginning to end.  I flew through this book in 2 days (yes it was THAT good!) and when I finished I immediately said "I have to cook something."  It was midnight so I decided tackling her enchilada recipe could at least wait until morning, but I swear I dreamed about enchiladas that night.  They were so easy to make and so beyond delicious I couldn't quite contain myself.  Just about every single recipe in this book looks simple enough that anyone could successfully cook them, which is one thing I really appreciated.  I hate reading recipes that have mystery ingredients my husband wouldn't touch or call for strange sounding kitchen tools I wouldn't have room to store in my little apartment.  Shauna's book is the opposite of that.  She gently coaxes her readers to open their refrigerators and get lost in the rhythmic beauty of chopping, slicing, sauteing and mixing.  She invites us to think about how we feed our bodies (her chapters on how changing the way she and her husband eat has greatly affected their physical health were incredibly inspiring to me) and how we nurture our souls around the kitchen table.  And she does so without ever once making me feel guilty for those nights when frozen pizza ends up on the menu. 

This book made me hungry in so many other ways though, because it's not just a book about food.  It's a book about what happens when we take time to admit that we need to care for ourselves, to feed our bodies.  It is a book about what happens when we feed others, when we feed more than just their bodies around our tables but when we intentionally feed their souls. It's a book about hospitality, about opening up our front doors and by doing so opening up our lives to our neighbors, our friends, our family members.  It's scary to do so, and she spends a lot of time helping us think about how much of a tendency we have to hide with our doors locked so no one sees the mess inside.  Bread and Wine made me hungry to continue sharing meals in community with others.  She inspired me to invite people into our home more often, and made me long for a cooking club of my own (anyone reading this want to start one??).  She made me hungry to travel more and taste the goodness of the variety of cultures that fill this earth.  She made me hungry to continue remembering and reflecting on the meals that have shaped our lives.  I did this a long time ago in a post called The Menu of our Lives but reading this book made me want to add to this list.  So much life happens around a table and Shauna's gift of words and imagery captures these moments so well. 

One of my favorite lines from the book has bounced around in my head these past two weeks.  Shauna is quoting her friend Shane when he tells her "the genius of communion, of bread and wine, is that bread is the food of the poor and wine the drink of the privileged, and that every time we see those two together, we are reminded of what we share instead of what divides us."  We all need the nourishment of food.  We all need to fill our bellies and feed our bodies. But we also all need community.  We need arms around us to catch us when we fall, to hold us up and pray for us when all we can choke out are the ragged, broken prayers of grief.  We all need to come find rest at the table our Lord invited us to on that night he was betrayed.  This is a book about all of those things.  So go on, pour yourself a glass of wine, settle in with something delicious, and savor the words Shauna shares.  You'll be hungry when you're done reading, hungry for more of the abundance this life has to offer.