It's the end of Bread & Wine week. I've had so much fun thinking about community and friendship, cooking and grace, and what happens when we commit to serving those we love food at our table.
The first dinner party I ever threw was truly awful. I was a horrible cook, mostly because at that point in my life all I could do was bake chicken breasts and boil edamame. And most of the time I undercooked the chicken. I came across a cookbook that boasted an entire array of recipes that used only five ingredients. I figured I could at least handle that so I invited the only friends I'd made in New York thus far over for dinner. The five of us sat down to a meal made entirely of five ingredients and it was awful. Probably because it only used five ingredients, but mostly because I was an awful cook. It was so bad my friends couldn't even really pretend it was edible. Even my sweet friend Amy, the most encouraging person I know, said something along the lines of, "maybe you just need more practice cooking??"
Anyway, I've come a long way since that first dinner party in terms of the preparing and serving of food I cooked myself. But I've always maintained the importance of opening up your home and inviting others in. When you do that you are really just opening up yourself and allowing others to know you better. The joy and reward in this act is immeasurable. I've never felt closer to God than through the friendships and community He has provided.
So no matter where you are on the cooking spectrum, whether you're ordering pizza because you screwed up a five ingredient meal or cooking a duck, stuffed in a chicken, stuffed in a turkey (because that to me seems like the greatest of culinary feats), there should always be room around your table. As my friends and I discovered when discussing our best meals ever, the food itself carries very little weight in the memory. Usually our best meals ever have much more to do with the company we kept at the table.
Ok pals, so I'm a book pusher. It is one of my go to gifts and I use the max out of my Amazon Prime membership. I've given plenty of copies of Shauna's other two books away, so it seems only fitting that I end my Bread & Wine week with a giveaway! And since only like three and a half people read my blog your chances of winning are super good. I'm using Rafflecopter for the first time so if it totally fails me, just leave a comment letting me know it's not working. The giveaway is open until Sunday at midnight!
a Rafflecopter giveaway
I'll be back Monday to announce the winner. I hope I will anyway. We leave for vacation tomorrow so my posting will be limited. But I'm pretty sure I can hop onto the world wide web at some point to at least announce the winner! And if you are a robber who is reading this- go ahead and try to steal all my stuff while we're gone. Good luck finding the valuables amidst the one million boxes of crap we've packed up for our move. I don't own nice things 'cause I'm a forgetful klutz.
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