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

by Shauna Niequist

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.