Bread and Wine: A Love Letter to Life Around the Table with Recipes

by Shauna Niequist

Bread is bread, and wine is wine, but bread-and-wine is another thing entirely. The two together are the sacred and the material at once, the heaven and earth, the divine and the daily.

What makes me feel alive and connected to God’s voice and spirit in this world is creating opportunities for the people I love to rest and connect and be fed at my table. I believe it’s the way I was made, and I believe it matters. For many years, I didn’t let it matter, for a whole constellation of reasons, but part of becoming yourself, in a deeply spiritual way, is finding the words to tell the truth about what it is you really love. In the words of my favorite poet, Mary Oliver, it’s about “letting the soft animal of your body love what it loves.”

I know there are people who see food primarily as calories, nutrients, complex bundles of energy for the whirring machines of our bodies. I know them, but they’re not my people. They’re in the same general category of people who wear sensible shoes and read manuals. Good people, but entirely foreign to me.

When you eat, I want you to think of God, of the holiness of hands that feed us, of the provision we are given every time we eat. When you eat bread and you drink wine, I want you to think about the body and the blood every time, not just when the bread and wine show up in church, but when they show up anywhere— on a picnic table or a hardwood floor or a beach.

“When you wake up in the morning, Pooh,” said Piglet at last, “what’s the first thing you say to yourself?” “What’s for breakfast?” said Pooh. “What do you say, Piglet?” “I say, I wonder what’s going to happen exciting today?” said Piglet. Pooh nodded thoughtfully. “It’s the same thing,” he said. A. A. MILNE, Winnie-the-Pooh

And it all started around the table, once a month and sometimes more. We bump into one another in the kitchen, sliding pans in and out of the oven, setting and resetting the timer. We know one another’s kitchens by heart — where Casey keeps her knives and how many pans will fit in Brannon’s oven. It seems like we’ve been meeting together forever, but we realized last night that it’s been three years this month, and that’s worth remembering for me—that it doesn’t take a decade, and it doesn’t take three times a week. Once a month, give or take, for three years, and what we’ve built is impressive—strong, complex, multifaceted. Like a curry or boeuf bourguignon, something you cook for hours and hours, allowing the flavors to develop over time, changing and deepening with each passing hour on the heat. You don’t always know what’s going to come of it, but you put the time in anyway, and then, after a long, long time, you realize with great clarity why you put the time in: for this night, for these hours around the table, for the complexity and richness of flavors that are so lovely and unexpected you’re still thinking about them the next day.

What matters is that one of the ways we grow up is by declaring what we love.

I love the table. I love food and what it means and what it does and how it feels in my hands. And that might be healthy, and it might be a reaction to a world that would love me more if I starved myself, and it’s probably always going to be a mix of the two. In any case, it’s morning and I’m hungry. Which is not the same as weak or addicted or shameful. I’m hungry. And I’m thinking about dinner, not just tonight, but the next night and the next. There are two kinds of people, and I’m tired of pretending I’m the other.

A vinaigrette is usually 3 parts oil to 1 part acid, but I tend to do 2 parts oil to 1 part acid because I love that sharp, puckery vinegar taste. The vinaigrette I make most often is so simple —just Dijon, balsamic vinegar, salt, pepper, and olive oil.

the best way to taste it is to dip a lettuce leaf in the vinaigrette and see how it tastes on the leaf.

And instead of vinegar, you can use a citrus juice as your acid — pink grapefruit juice is lovely in a vinaigrette over baby spinach,

Risotto lets you know what’s happening at every turn. Risotto-making is the exact opposite of baking, where it all happens in the oven without you. Risotto shouts out each step, invites you to notice each change. It’s physical and active and clear. I like that about risotto. It’s also endlessly versatile. Shrimp and peas? Asparagus and lemon zest? Sundried tomatoes?—so many options.

Learn, little by little, meal by meal, to feed yourself and the people you love, because food is one of the ways we love each other, and the table is one of the most sacred places we gather.

if you know me at all, you know that one of my most cracked-up, terribly errant beliefs is that skinny people are always happy. Because I think I would be happy all day long if I was skinny. If something upset me, I would just look down at my long, skinny legs—happiness! If my heart was broken, I’d just put on a bikini—and that sadness would vanish.

It had reached fever pitch—consuming, obsessive, frantic. Unsustainable. It was like an addiction, and that moment was like getting sober—raw, silent, clear-eyed, the absolute stillness after a storm. It felt like praying.

I want to cultivate a deep sense of gratitude, of groundedness, of enough, even while I’m longing for something more. The longing and the gratitude, both. I’m practicing believing that God knows more than I know, that he sees what I can’t, that he’s weaving a future I can’t even imagine from where I sit this morning.

mirepoix (pronounced meer-pwah) — the three things you need for almost every classic French recipe: onion, carrot, celery. Italian mirepoix: fennel, onion, shallots. If you’re cooking Creole or Cajun food, it shifts a bit, and it’s called the holy trinity: onion, celery, green pepper.

there are interesting, smart, kind people just absolutely everywhere, and that when you do things you care about, you find quick kinship with people who are passionate about those same things.

Cooking is so elemental, almost violent: knife, fire, chop, blaze.

the difference between restaurant cooking and home cooking—and often, too, the difference between great flavor and tasteless food—is two things: more heat and more seasoning. His constant refrain as he made his way around the kitchen: “More heat. More salt. More butter.”

high-quality ingredients like Maldon sea salt and good butter mean you use so much less while creating so much more flavor.

Steak au Poivre with Cognac Pan Sauce Adapted from The Chopping Block I’m not a huge steak person, but if I’m going to eat one, this is it—the steak of my dreams. I love the peppercorns and the crust that the cast iron forms, and more than anything, I love this sauce. When I do make the steak, I serve it with roasted broccoli and roasted potatoes, and I put the sauce over everything. And sometimes I serve the sauce over chicken —even if you’re not a red-meat eater, try the sauce. My prediction is that you will find yourself dreaming about it, and you might even prowl around your kitchen, looking for things to pour it over. Rice? Bread? Broccoli? Done, done, and done. Ingredients 6 steaks, 5 to 6 ounces each (filet mignon, New York strip, or rib eye) ¼ cup whole black peppercorns Sea salt 2 tablespoons olive oil 2 tablespoons butter For the sauce: 2 shallots, sliced ½ cup cognac or brandy 2 tablespoons Dijon 1 cup chicken stock or broth 1 cup half and half Instructions Let steaks sit at room temperature on a towel for about 30 minutes to draw out moisture. Crack peppercorns using a cast-iron skillet. Salt both sides of the steaks and then press in cracked peppercorns generously on both sides. Heat the cast-iron skillet over medium-high heat. Add olive oil and one tablespoon of butter. When the butter is melted, add the steaks and cook on first side until there’s a dark sear, 3 to 5 minutes. Flip the steaks, add remaining butter, and cook to desired doneness — 2 minutes for ...

I wasn’t home enough between trips to get un-tired and un-lonely. I wasn’t seeing my friends and family enough, and although I met wonderful people everywhere I went, I said good-bye to them at the airport. At a certain point, I was lonely for everyone.

As ever, I recreated better than I rested—when I was home between trips, I cooked, threw parties, called/texted/emailed, read, went out for dinner, shopped. But I didn’t really stop, listen, feel. When I did, it scared me a little. There had to be a better way. It had to be all right to admit that I was tired, that it was hard.

What I’m finding is that when I’m hungry, lots of times what I really want more than food is an external voice to say, “You’ve done enough. It’s OK to be tired. You can take a break. I’ll take care of you. I see how hard you’re trying.” There is, though, no voice that can say that except the voice of God. The work I’m doing now is to let those words fall deeply on me, to give myself permission to be tired, to be weak, to need.

one’s tears are a guide, that when something makes you cry, it means something. If we pay attention to our tears, they’ll show us something about ourselves.

I want to be everywhere at once. I want a full English breakfast at a pub in London, and hot buttery naan in New Delhi for lunch. I want conch fritters at a beach bar in the Bahamas, and an ice-cold Fanta overlooking Lake Victoria. I want Cowgirl Creamery’s Triple Creme Brie at the Ferry Plaza Farmers Market in San Francisco, and the gingerbread pancakes from Magnolia Cafe in Austin. I want it all—all the tastes, all the smells, all the stories and memories and traditions, all the textures and flavors and experiences, all running down my chin, all over my fingers.

Sometimes people ask me why I travel so much, and specifically why we travel with Henry so often. I think they think it’s easier to keep the kids at home, in their routines, surrounded by their stuff. It is. But we travel because it’s there. Because Capri exists and Kenya exists and Tel Aviv exists, and I want to taste every bite of it. We travel because I want my kids to learn, as I learned, that there are a million ways to live, a million ways to eat, a million ways to dress and speak and view the world. I want them to know that “our way” isn’t the right way, but just one way, that children all over the world, no matter how different they seem, are just like the children in our neighborhood—they love to play, to discover, to learn.

Mango Chicken Curry Adapted from Sally Sampson’s The $50 Dinner Party (Simon & Schuster, 1998). I do know that as far as recipes go, this looks like a hard one because it has such a long list of ingredients, but it’s mostly just chopping and throwing things in. Allow yourself plenty of time to chop, but that’s the extent of the difficulty. There are no tricky techniques involved, I promise. I double the recipe for dinner parties of 10 to 12 people, and serve it with a very simple green salad and pita bread or naan. We’re always glad for leftovers, because I think it might even be better the next day. Ingredients ¼ cup flour 2 tablespoons curry powder 1 teaspoon sea salt ¼ teaspoon cayenne pepper 2½-3 pounds boneless, skinless chicken breasts, cut into small pieces 2 – 4 tablespoons olive oil 2 garlic cloves, chopped 1 red onion, chopped 1 tablespoon fresh ginger, chopped 1 red bell pepper, chopped 4 cups chicken broth ¼ cup currants or raisins 2 roma tomatoes, diced 1 mango, pitted and diced 1 tablespoon fresh lime juice 3 tablespoons fresh cilantro, chopped 3 tablespoons fresh basil, chopped Instructions Mix together flour, curry powder, salt, and cayenne pepper. Toss chicken breast pieces into the flour mixture. Add 1 to 2 tablespoons olive oil to a pan, and cook chicken on medium-high heat until browned, about 5 minutes on each side. Set aside. Add additional 1 to 2 tablespoons olive oil and cook garlic, red onion, ginger, and red pepper until onion is golden, about 4 m...

What people are craving isn’t perfection. People aren’t longing to be impressed; they’re longing to feel like they’re home. If you create a space full of love and character and creativity and soul, they’ll take off their shoes and curl up with gratitude and rest, no matter how small, no matter how undone, no matter how odd.

The doctor assessed quickly that the problem was inflammation, and that essentially, Aaron’s body was working so hard to heal the inflammation caused on an ongoing basis by eating foods his body can’t process that it was unable to heal other parts of his body, namely, his hands.

The heart of hospitality is about creating space for someone to feel seen and heard and loved. It’s about declaring your table a safe zone, a place of warmth and nourishment. Part of that, then, is honoring the way God made our bodies, and feeding them in the ways they need to be fed.

“have it your way” is a fast-food ad campaign, not a compelling rationale for how we should gather around one another’s tables.

So this is the dance, it seems to me: to be the kind of host who honors the needs of the people who gather around his or her table, and to be the kind of guest who comes to the table to learn, not to demand.

She teaches me, through her words and her actions, that if you take the next right step, if you live a life of radical and honest prayer, if you allow yourself to be led by God’s Spirit, no matter how far from home and familiarity it takes you, you won’t have to worry about what you want to be when you grow up. You’ll be too busy living a life of passion and daring.

Sometimes I meet women who are so passionate they’re about to jump out of their skin. Their kids are getting older and the house is quiet and they want to do something. They want to get their hands really dirty and dive neck deep into something that keeps them up at night. They don’t know what to do. They don’t know how to move forward, so they’re vibrating with pent-up passion turning rapidly to frustration.

And when I talk to them, I tell them the story of my mom. I tell them there’s still so much time and still so much to be done. I tell them it doesn’t have to be full-time, or all-or-nothing, or all-at-once. I tell them what my mom tells me—that you just have to take one step, and that when you do, the next one will appear. I tell them the path doesn’t have to be a straight line, and that often it only makes sense when you look back at it. I tell them that when my mom was my age, she was a stay-at-home mom. She wasn’t yet an oil painter or a potter or an AIDS activist or an expert on peacekeeping. There’s still time, I tell them and I tell myself. There’s still time.

We don’t learn to love each other well in the easy moments. Anyone is good company at a cocktail party. But love is born when we misunderstand one another and make it right, when we cry in the kitchen, when we show up uninvited with magazines and granola bars, in an effort to say, I love you.

God never meant man to be a purely spiritual creature. That is why He uses material things like bread and wine to put the new life into us. We may think this rather crude and unspiritual. God does not: He invented eating. He likes matter. He invented it. C. S. LEWIS, Mere Christianity

was on autopilot, and I didn’t know what I needed, let alone how to say it.

I want people to sit down and feel at home, not like there’s a scientist in the kitchen but like there’s a sister there, someone who loves them, who understands their history and wants to remind them of something lovely, who wants to recall together a sweet time.

I abandoned well-intentioned but time-consuming projects. And in their place I’m making rest and space priorities, so that what I offer to my family is more than a brittle mask over a wound-up and depleted soul. My intention for this season is present over perfect.

I cohosted a party, and one of the things I brought was frozen meatballs. I was planning, of course, to make them from scratch. But it was too much for me, too much time and energy I don’t have at this time of the year. And, of course, no one cared. That’s the lesson in this for people like me who sometimes get wound up about doing things perfectly: 90 percent of the people in your life won’t know the difference between, say, fresh and frozen, or handmade and store-bought, and the 10 percent who do notice are just as stressed-out as you are, and your willingness to choose simplicity just might set them free to do the same.

Either I can be here, fully here, my imperfect, messy, tired but wholly present self, or I can miss it—this moment, this conversation, this time around the table, whatever it is—because I’m trying, and failing, to be perfect, keep the house perfect, make the meal perfect, ensure the gift is perfect. But this season I’m not trying for perfect. I’m just trying to show up, every time, with honesty and attentiveness.

My prayer is that we’ll find ourselves drawn closer and closer to the heart of the story, the beautiful, beating heart of it all, that the chaos around us and within us will recede, and the most important things will be clear and lovely at every turn. I pray that we’ll understand the transforming power that lies in saying no, because it’s an act of faith, a tangible demonstration of the belief that you are so much more than what you do. I pray that we’ll live with intention, hope, and love in this wild season and in every season, and that the God who loves us will bring new life to our worn-out hearts this year and every year, that we’ll live, truly and deeply, in the present, instead of waiting, waiting, waiting for perfect.

Five might be the perfect age for a human—smart and sweet, the perfect mash-up of little and big. Still full of kisses, but discovering something new about the world every day too.

My grandma is eighty-two, and I love to look at old photographs of her and my grandpa. She told me one morning while we were flipping the pages of an album that getting old is like carrying all these selves with you. She said she remembers just how that thirteen-year-old in the picture felt, and how that nineteen-year-old bride felt, and how that thirty-year-old on the back of a motorcycle felt. She said you carry them inside you, collecting them along the way, more and more and more selves inside you with each passing year, like those Russian dolls, stacking one inside the other, nesting within themselves, waiting to be discovered, one and then another.

It’s the making of those harder, better choices right while everything’s a mess that makes the mess a little more manageable.

But entertaining isn’t a sport or a competition. It’s an act of love, if you let it be. You can twist it and turn it into anything you want—a way to show off your house, a way to compete with your friends, a way to earn love and approval. Or you can decide that every time you open your door, it’s an act of love, not performance or competition or striving. You can decide that every time people gather around your table, your goal is nourishment, not neurotic proving. You can decide.

Dark Chocolate Sea Salted Toffee Every toffee recipe I’ve read says you need a candy thermometer. I don’t have one. I meant to borrow one, but I got impatient late one night and tried the toffee anyway. You know what? We were fine without that pesky candy thermometer. Just keep an eye on the toffee. Keep stirring like you’re tending to a very finicky risotto. For a while it’s melted butter yellow, sort of popcorn-colored, but then there’s a very definite turn, right around the 8- or 9-minute mark, when the soft yellow blooms into amber. That’s your moment — when it turns caramel-colored, like cappuccino almost. Turn off the heat and pour. And don’t try to eat it off the spoon at that point, whatever you do. I speak from experience, of course. I find that the toffee gets a little melty if you leave it out on the counter, so I keep it in the fridge and serve a little plate of it after dinner with vanilla ice cream and coffee. Ingredients 1 cup butter (2 sticks) 2 cups sugar 1 cup dark chocolate chips 1 teaspoon coarse sea salt Instructions In a saucepan, combine butter and sugar, and bring to a boil. Over medium-high heat, keep stirring until it turns a deep amber color. Remove from heat and pour onto a rimmed baking sheet lined with parchment paper. Refrigerate at least 30 minutes, or until cool and solid to the touch. Melt chocolate chips in a glass bowl over a pot of gently boiling water. When the chocolate is smooth, pour it over the toffee and spread with a spatula. Spr...