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

by Shauna Niequist

And like more and more people, I think, we don’t work in offices or conventional workplaces, where we have set hours we’re working and hours we’re not. There are so many good things that go with that—flexibility, freedom, lots of time with our kids. At the same time, though, we’ve realized it means we’re sort of working all the time. Aaron will get out of bed to run down to the studio to listen to a mix a producer sends him. I get emails about upcoming events while I’m nursing or at a museum or watching Henry’s soccer practice. The best part about blending all those boundaries is also the worst part about blending all those boundaries: we’re always connected to everyone all the time. While I’m face-to-face with my grandmother, my phone is vibrating with Facebook comments or emails from J.Crew. When I’m in Dallas, I’m texting a friend in Reno and answering a question for my editor in Eugene and sending a photo to my mother-in-law back home.

It’s so easy to think that because you can’t do something extraordinary, you can’t do anything at all. It’s easy to decide that if you can’t overhaul your entire life in one fell swoop, then you might as well just do nothing. We started where we could, with what we had.

We have so much more than we need, and we spend a lot of our time managing our stuff, picking it up and organizing it and finding places for it. That’s not how I want to live.

You never know while it’s happening what will burn in your memory, sacred and profound. It seems like most of the things we try to make profound never are, lost in our insistence and fretting and posing. When we want something to be momentous, it rarely is. Life is disobedient in that way, insisting on surprising us with its magic, stubbornly unwilling to be glittery on command.

Melody and I are as different as two people can be. She’s introverted, organized, routine oriented, cautious; I’m loud, messy, chaotic, chronically overscheduled. She loves meat and potatoes and Classic Coke; I love goat cheese and vinegar and red wine. She wears flip-flops and T-shirts at every possible turn; I consider both leopard and sequins to be neutrals, and I dyed the tips of my hair hot pink this spring.

Because Todd is my only sibling, and I am his, there’s something completely singular about our relationship. There’s no one on earth who has shared our history, no one on earth who can see the world from the corner that we alone inhabit.

Mar-a-Lago Turkey Burgers Adapted from O, The Oprah Magazine. Apparently when Oprah visited Donald Trump at his famous Palm Beach house, Mar-a-Lago, his chef served these amazing turkey burgers. She asked for the recipe because they were the best turkey burgers she’d ever had. And I completely agree with her. I love these burgers. This ingredient list might put you off, both because it’s a little kooky and because it requires a pretty serious amount of chopping. Do not be deterred. Seriously. Settle in for a nice meditative chopping session, or enlist some pals and pass out the apples, the celery, the scallions—or feel free to use your food processor for chopping. This isn’t a recipe you want to start a half hour before your friends come over for a barbecue. Make them the night before, and while you’re at it, make a double batch and freeze half. The burgers take a while to assemble, and then they do need to chill for a while. But once they’re assembled and chilling, you’re going to be so happy about your dinner. I promise. The secret ingredient in these burgers is mango chutney — I’m a huge mango chutney fan. One of my favorite predinner snacks is crackers with sharp white cheddar and mango chutney, and my favorite way to make chicken salad is by mixing diced cooked chicken with cream cheese, mango chutney, and a little curry powder. Trader Joe’s makes a good mango chutney, and most grocery stores carry it in the international/ethnic aisle in the Indian food section — some...

Simplest Dark Chocolate Mousse Adapted from Bon Appetit There is nothing more French, of course, than chocolate mousse, but you already know I’m a terrible baker, and the idea of tempering eggs is more than I can manage. This mousse, then, is the ultimate cheater mousse since it has only three ingredients, since it contains no eggs and no butter, and since there’s no cooking, actually, aside from melting together the cream, chocolate, and honey. Even I can handle that. It does require you to whisk until your arm practically falls off, but I feel like that’s good exercise, right? And you can always use an electric mixer if you’d rather. You can serve the mousse in individual ramekins or footed glasses, but I like to serve it in juice glasses, casual and sweet, with a bowl of raspberries. Ingredients 2 cups (1 pint) chilled heavy cream, divided 1½ cups (12 ounces) dark chocolate chips ¼ cup honey Instructions Stir ¾ cup cream, chocolate, and honey in saucepan over low heat until smooth. Cool for a few minutes, stirring occasionally. In a separate bowl, beat ¾ cup cream to soft peaks. Fold cream into chocolate mixture in 2 additions. Divide mousse among 6 glasses or ramekins. Refrigerate until set, about 2 hours. Whisk the remaining ½ cup cream to firm peaks. Spoon a little bit of cream on top of each mousse. Top with a couple berries, or just serve the fruit alongside. SERVES: 6

The sacraments are tangible ways to represent intangible ideas: new life becomes something we can feel and smell and see when we baptize in water. The idea of a Savior, of a sacrifice, of body and blood so many centuries ago, fills our senses and invades our present when our fingers break bread and our mouths fill with wine. We don’t experience this connection, this remembering, this intimate memory and celebration of Christ, only at the altar. We experience it, or at least we could, every time the bread and wine are present—essentially, every time we are fed. During that last meal, that last gathering of dear friends and disciples, Jesus was inviting us to gather around a table and remember, in church buildings and outside of them, during the sacrament of Communion and outside of it. When you offer peace instead of division, when you offer faith instead of fear, when you offer someone a place at your table instead of keeping them out because they’re different or messy or wrong somehow, you represent the heart of Christ. We tend to believe that what we’ve done is too bad—that our sins and mistakes are beyond repair, and our faults and failures too deep and ugly. That’s what shame tells us. But if we take a chance and come to the table, and if when we are there we are treated with respect and esteem and kindness, then that voice of shame recedes, just for a little while, enough to let the voice of truth, of hope, of Christ himself, get planted a little deeper and a little d...

My friend Shane says the genius of Communion, of bread and wine, is that bread is the food of the poor and wine the drink of the privileged, and that every time we see those two together, we are reminded of what we share instead of what divides us.

Sullivan Street Bread Ingredients and instructions by Jim Lahey, owner of Sullivan Street Bakery. I’ve been hearing about this recipe for years, but my fear of yeast has kept me away. And then all at once, on a cool fall day, I plunged in, and I have to tell you, this is incredible bread, and incredibly easy. A few notes: I use my beloved, battered, scratched Le Creuset dutch oven, and it works perfectly. Also, every time I make it, I hope that this time it’s going to rise into a huge, puffy, impressive sphere, and really, it never does. Mine never doubles the way the recipe says it will. This is nerve-racking every time, and then the bread is delicious every time. Like life, right? We freak out, generally, for nothing. That’s how this bread is. It makes me nervous and makes me certain I’ve failed, and then it delights me with that crusty, crackling, gorgeous loaf. Bread baking is an emotional roller coaster. Hold on tight. Also, I use cornmeal to dust it because I like the gritty yellowness, and I’m pretty generous with it, especially on the tea towel so it doesn’t get all sticky. A few more things: the recipe instructs you to let the dough rest for 12 hours—feel free to leave it longer than that, but not shorter. At our house, I bake it at 450 degrees for 45 minutes, and that’s perfect. You might find that 500 works better for you, or that in your oven you need the whole hour, but my recommendation is that you start with 450 and 45 minutes. And then call me and yell and ...

The table is where time stops. It’s where we look people in the eye, where we tell the truth about how hard it is, where we make space to listen to the whole story, not the textable sound bite.

I want you to invest yourself wholly and deeply in friendship, God’s greatest evidence of himself here on earth. More than anything, I want you to come to the table. In all sorts of ways, both literally and metaphorically, come to the table.