Bread & Wine: a Review

It's Bread & Wine week!  I'm talking all things Bread & Wine in honor of Shauna Niequist's new book Bread & Wine: a Love Letter to Life Around the Table, with Recipes.  Yesterday's post was inspired by this beautiful book.  Today I'm reviewing and tomorrow I'll share all about my Bread & Wine dinner party!

Confession: I have loved Shauna Niequist’s writing since I first cracked open Cold Tangerines years ago.  I devoured Bittersweet in about two days, eight weeks post partum with a baby boy who didn’t sleep for more than twenty minutes at a time.  I have given her books to countless friends, even photocopied chapters and mailed them to people who I think may find comfort in her words.  My book club read Bittersweet.  I pre-ordered Bread & Wine for a few of my girlfriends as Christmas gifts.  I may not be the most unbiased reviewer ever.

Bread & Wine: A Love Letter to Life Around the Table, with Recipes is Shauna’s third book.  Like her previous two she writes in an essay/short story style.  This time many of her essays include recipes at the end.  Framed around nourishing our friendships and ourselves, it’s a book about food but also much more than food.  It’s about inviting people into our homes and into our lives.  And, like all of Shauna’s books, it’s about grace and community and friendship and how God’s presence permeates it all.

I’m not a food person like Shauna.  I don’t read cookbooks for fun, and Bread & Wine was an education on descriptive culinary words.  But that didn’t take away from my enjoyment of her book purely on a food and recipe level.  Buy this book for the Goat Cheese Biscuit recipe alone (more on that tomorrow!).  I found myself itching to get into the kitchen, to experiment, to play.  Her recipes are freeing, generous, graceful.  She writes about how she cooks a particular recipe and then punts to you, granting permission to experiment and play, all while maintaining the notion that everyone can cook.  I mean the girl can make baking bread seem totally approachable.  These are normal every day kind of recipes, no fancy kitchen gadgets or extensive food knowledge required.  Her style and approach to cooking make me think Shauna is full of grace.     

Bread & Wine is so much more than a book about cooking and dinner parties though.  It’s about friendship and shame and community.  It’s about fasting and feasting and nourishment.  It’s about the big, beautiful thing that happens when we open ourselves up to friendship and community.  I am a community girl.  People are my thing and there have been a seasons in my life where real, raw, authentic, vulnerable community happened.  It is sacred.  Shauna gets that and this book is ultimately a tribute to that.  To letting people in, warts and all.  To showing up even if you aren’t sure you should.  To taking time to build friendships because they are worth it.   Cooking and dinner parties are the vehicles to get you to this sacred place of community.  There is nothing more precious or honoring than nourishing our loved ones with food yes, but also with love and attention and support.  Shauna gets that and this book will help you to see it too.

Shauna is one of those writers who seems to be “in my head” so to speak.  She articulates beautifully the thoughts and feelings that I am wrestling with.  She gives a voice to ideas and struggles I assume I am alone in.  I feel like she gets me.  Or maybe I get her.  Our childhoods have the similar backdrop of suburban Chicago.  I once worked at her church and share mutual friends.  (Fun fact- our dinner party paths crossed in one of her stories from Bread & Wine.  I had a dinner party on the same night as her “New Year’s Eve in the middle of January” party and we both invited the same person.  Our friend chose her dinner J).  We have a lot of little things in common.  She feels like someone I grew up with, live next door to, work alongside. 

But even if we didn’t have these shared experiences in common I think I would still love Shauna’s writing.  She is one of those authors who is beautifully, captivatingly honest.  She paints a picture of community and life I want to be a part of.  Shauna tells stories in a way that invites you to tell your own stories.   She illuminates the crazy beautiful every day moments of her own life in a way that sheds light onto your own crazy beautiful everyday moments.  I found myself remembering stories I hadn’t thought about in years, suddenly seeing a new gems of wisdom nestled in between the who, what, where, when details.

I can’t recommend it enough.  Go out and get yourself a copy.  Let it become covered in food spills and watermarks and dog-ear all the recipes you want to try.  Love this book well.   And then heed it and gather your community around your table.  See what God does when you open yourself up to others.

Check back here on Friday ‘cause I’m giving away a copy of Bread & Wine