Bread and Wine

A Love Letter to Life Around the Table with Recipes

Shauna Niequist

Zondervan

ISBN: 9780310328179

Description:

As a follow up to her two bestselling books, Bittersweet and Cold Tangerines, author and blogger Shauna Niequist returns with the perfect read for those who love food and value the community and connection of family and friends around the table. Bread and Wine is a collection of essays about family relationships, friendships, and the meals that bring us together. This mix of Anne Lamott and Barefoot Contessa is a funny, honest, and vulnerable spiritual memoir. Bread and Wine is a celebration of food shared, reminding readers of the joy found in a life around the table. It’s about the ways God teaches and nourishes people as they nourish the people around them. It’s about hunger, both physical and otherwise, and the connections between the two. With wonderful recipes included, from Bacon-Wrapped Dates to Mango Chicken Curry to Blueberry Crisp, readers will be able to recreate the comforting and satisfying meals that come to life in Bread and Wine.

My View:

A beautifully written and well executed book that melds a love of cooking and sharing recipes with honest true to the heart stories of life. I have not read this author before and I was heartened to read someone who shares so many of my beliefs about food; “marketing and advertising campaigns urging us to eat out or buy already prepared foods want us to think that plain old cooking is difficult and not worth learning……The trend began in the 1950’s…….in order to sell canned food and cake mixes, advertisers had to convince American women that cooking is too hard and troublesome for our modern world. But it wasn’t true then and it isn’t true now….If you put in the time, the learning, the trying, the mess, and the failure, at the end you will have learned to feed yourself and the people you love, and that’s a skill for life.” (p.41)

Niequist and I share another major view on food; “when you are dependent on prepared foods, you don’t get to decide how something is seasoned… You don’t get to add flavour according to your geography, your story, your table.”(p.42)  I love the message that is so clearly proclaimed in this book; “our goal, remember, is to feed around our table the people we love. We are not chefs or restaurateurs or culinary school graduates and we shouldn’t try to be. Make it (food) the way people you love want to eat it. Make it the way you love it.”(p.51) I love cooking for the people I love; for my family.  I love to bake their favourite cakes, makes jams and pickles and meals for boisterous get togethers. Food and cooking are such an important part of how we connect to our community and I am so pleased to find another who passionately shares this view.

Niequist is a great conversational writer, when you read this book you feel that she is sitting across the table enjoying a coffee or perhaps a glass of wine and indulging you with her stories of life, of relationships, of body image, of juggling the pressures of the modern world. She talks to YOU.  The reader is her friend. Sprinkled in this conversation are many delicious sounding recipes that I will soon be trying in my kitchen.

I really enjoyed this read, the life stories and the recipes. The spirituality that seasons this book works because it honours the author’s voice. This is a book I will highly recommend.