Bread and Wine

     As I was reading the introduction to Bread and Wine, I was thinking, "This is going to be some hippie love fest with recipes thrown in; this book is trying too hard." If you know me, those thoughts won't come as a surprise. But by the time I read the second chapter, I was in love with this book. I read about one hundred fifty pages that same night. I kept saying to myself, "This woman IS me"...although, shockingly, my husband is not in a band, and I've never officiated a wedding. But I loved her for all the ways we're alike and for all the ways we're different.

     I could literally go chapter by chapter and tell how each one helped me, encouraged me, or humored me. But you all did read the book. So I'm assuming you don't need me to walk through it line by line (but that would be so fun if we were all in the same spot physically). I will share some things I found particularly relatable. 

     I have always experienced some amount of body and appetite shame. I'm starting to think body image issues must be attached to that second X chromosome because it's rare to find a woman who loves everything about her body. In any case, I don't love much about mine. But I loved what Shauna (yes, we're on a first name basis) had to say in "hungry," "feasting and fasting," "swimsuit, ready or not," and really throughout the book about body image. It is important to be healthy and to not idolize food, but it's also important to accept your body for what it is rather than hate it for what it isn't. And I love her encouragements to both be sustained by food and enjoy it. Food is a gift from God. It's main purpose is to give energy for life, but--like with so many other gifts from God--it comes with a bonus: it can be enjoyable. So, now I have three-ish times a day to feel thankful for that gift instead of shamed by it.

     I loved "delicious everywhere." I dare anyone to read that and not want to travel.

     One of the most relatable chapters for me was "enough." I had to read it out loud to Anthony, which I'm sure he just loved. I feel like I could've written every sentence, and I'm seeing as I get older that fertility issues are so heartbreakingly common. Maybe it's the food additives or the GMOs... or maybe--and I think this hits closer to home--it has been this way since God's promise to Eve that "in pain you will bring forth children." I believe that refers to more than just the pain of pregnancy and child birth...it can also mean the pain that comes from the absence of those things. But God is often so gracious to give us peace in those times, and I'm happy to say that he gave me a moment of clarity as He did with Shauna. Mine was not as poetic as hers; there were no safety goggles from a friend. But the first time I was able to feel truly happy for a pregnant friend in the midst of my own infertility--that was a real gift from Him. And I'm especially glad I got to feel that bitterness-free happiness before he gave us our miracle baby.

     Overall, this book really inspired me to just be with people. I'm really learning that a fancy meal isn't necessary, a clean house isn't necessary, quiet kids aren't necessary. I do really love it when all of those things happen at once (I think I can remember a time like that...maybe in 2011, ha), but they aren't necessary. I want more and more to have people in our home even if I feed them maybe-expired turkey sandwiches that they have to make themselves and then have them toss laundry off the couch to find a seat. I'm starting to believe (despite my upbringing) that what Shauna says is true: no one is obsessed with our failings. We are all too consumed with our own shortcomings. So get together and compare triumphs or horrors or laughable moments from the day. Try to focus on what is rather what isn't.

     I did make the bacon-wrapped dates for a shower last weekend, but I forgot to take a picture! And I also intend to make several of the other recipes. Maybe in 2017. ;)

The daily-ness of food.

Loved the book. I'm also not editing and am not a grammar scholar so bear with me :).

I don't like eating. I enjoy good food. I love sitting down, drinking, laughing, talking, appetizers and desserts and the intimacy it brings is a welcome relief to the chaos of my days. However, the daily-ness of food makes me cray-cray (like the young kids say for crazy).

My first pregnancy in 2006 was a doozy for sure. Constant nausea. Throwing up in the trash can at my desk. Eating piles of oranges just so I didn't puke. Every morning I would get up and drink a huge protein shake, full knowing by 9 a.m. it would be in the trash can. And I think that is when my dislike for eating began.

After birthing and nursing a healthy 8lb. 7oz. baby boy, I was ravenous. I would eat all day. But, inevitably after eating I would get unbearable stomach pain. I had pinned certain foods that made me feel the worst and in the end was eating entire batches of oatmeal cookies since it was the only food that didn't make me sick. When Parker was 6 months old I found myself laying on his nursery floor with a fever, severe stomach pain, and mastitis. After months of pain I finally discovered it was my gallbladder. Because of the surgery I weaned him cold-turkey (another story for another day. OUCH...like boobs up to my collar bones.) I had my gallbladder removed. I was no longer hungry because I wasn't nursing. I was scared to eat because I feared having stomach pain again.

I ate to survive and no more. 

Two years later I began puking again. So for 9 months I puked and still managed to gain 40 pounds. One month before I gave birth to my 9 lb. baby boy, Owen, my first-born, Parker, was diagnosed with severe food allergies to dairy, egg and peanut. And not like "he might get a tummy ache if he eats these foods"…like "if he eats these foods he could go into anaphylactic shock and die."

Parker and I began eating to survive.

Nursing a 9 lb. baby boy is a full.time.job. When I wasn't nursing, I was eating oatmeal cookies made without dairy, nuts or eggs.

The days of exhaustion, stress and fear of food wore on. Food was always on my mind. WHAT AM I GOING TO FEED THEM!?!?! IS IT REALLY TIME TO EAT AGAIN!??!?!? And every night I would get the boys to bed and eat LARGE bags of peanut M&M's to make up for my lack of calories from the day.

I found new recipes. We began eating plain meats, fruits and vegetables. To this day, my kids eat anything. I vividly remember walking through the grocery store with an infant car-seat and 2-year-old in the basket crying and screaming "Why can't we buy brussel sprouts? You never buy me brussel sprouts." Yep. People looked at me like I was cray-cray (see definition above.)

Food was a means to an end.

In 2012 God saw fit to give me the daughter I never knew I always wanted, Olivia Kate. After 7 months of puking she came 2 months early, weighing 3lb. 14 oz. due to maternal complications with severe pre-eclampsia and HELLP syndrome. She was fine. I was not. (Another story for another day. Think - emergency surgery, abdominal hematoma, 3 units of blood and blood pressures varying from 220/190 and 20/60)

After 10 days in the hospital, I came home with a hemoglobin of 6.5. My husband, Sean, would feed me handfuls of spinach and Ensure. Because Olivia couldn't tolerate my breast milk I was cutting EVERYTHING out of my diet. First no dairy. Then no soy. I ate raisin bran with almond milk and bananas. I drank Non-dairy Ensure shakes. And I ate handfuls of spinach.

There is no joy in eating handfuls of spinach. Food was fuel for my ailing body and nothing more.

After 8 weeks in the hospital, Olivia Kate came home to her 2 (hungry) big brothers. And so began the jigsaw puzzle of feeding my family.

I loved this book because it allowed me to think about my relationship with food. It forced me to stare down the enemy and say "NO MORE!" I will not be a slave to my fear of food. I refuse to allow Satan to steal the joy from my family gathering around the dinner table and eating food that feeds not only our bodies but souls.

The morning after I began reading this book, my son Owen woke me up. The first thing he asked me, "What are we having for supper tonight, Mom?" And I thought, "I don't know, but something GOOD!" And I made their favorite smoked salmon, asparagus, and couscous with extra mushrooms (just how they like it) and a big fruit salad…And it was wonderful. And we prayed, talked, laughed, asked questions, yelled, whined, and spilled. And as I was sweeping and vacuuming up a MILLION pieces of couscous that seemed to miss their mouths, I cried.

I cried for giving Satan victory without even seeing it. I cried for the days of hurrying through meals because it was just to survive. And I cried out to God to redeem what had been lost. And I yelled at Satan, and I felt like Joseph in Genesis 50:20 when he says to his brothers, "You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives."

And I know God will. I just know it. Because, my friends, that is who He is.

And here is a sweet picture of my "eat-anything-constantly-hungry-growing-an-inch-a-night" children who LOVE to eat.

Please pray for me...that God will strengthen my feeble heart and give me the selfless desire to serve my family in a way that is so foreign and uncomfortable to me.

All glory to God, Jess

New Food issues

So I will make this short and sweet.  I loved this book and enjoyed the entire thing.  It was an easy read and I tried several recipes.

Since our adoption I have been so overwhelmed with life I have not entertained people in my home like I used to.  This book really encouraged me to step out and start doing it more, and find a love for trying new recipes and making them my own.

My sweet Adanech has really bad food anxiety so every meal, morning, noon and night is filled with anxiety.  She stares at me all the time and as the years have gone by I have grown more and more weary of it all.  She always wants more and would eat until vomiting every meal if I let her.  She counts her food and everyones food and worries about it and cries about it and when she hears me in the kitchen she has to be where she can watch me.   It is so tiring and I do not enjoy meals ever in her presence.  So I now have an eating disorder I believe.  As I watch her love her food too much, I hate mine.  I will not eat just so she doesn't stare at me.  With that said I am not ok with that and I am working on eating three meals.  I am having all kinds of health issues right now and more then ever I need to be having good eating habits.  Pray for me ladies!!  I want to teach Addie how to have a healthy relationship with food.  And don't worry by not eat I mean I don't eat while she is around and then eat by myself.  I eat plenty just not a healthy relationship with it all.

Ok now for the pictures of the food I tried.

Gaia Cookies pg.210  Love love them!!  I used blueberry craisins and gluten free flour and they were wonderful.  Everything else I used same to recipe.  Yum so good in the fridge.

 Breakfast Quinoa pg. 72  I love this so much!!  I have made it several times and it will become a regular for me.  

Annette's Enchiladas pg. 143  Loved this and it was better the next day.  I will make it again but add more corn tortillas to add more substance.

Nigella's Flourless Chocolate Brownies.  Yum so good and so rich.

I will be making many more of the recipes and cannot wait!!

Ok so our book for June is short but I think it will be great.

10 people every Christian should know.

Embracing the Bread and the Wine....Love, Rest, and Grace.

Let me start off by saying I am not planning on editing this.. I hope you don't grimace too much when you read. I don't want to go back and change what I really mean. Thank you for indulging me.

I love to cook.

It happened by accident really. My grandmother had Alzheimer's disease and lived with us a for a season of my childhood my mother spend many evening with her. When she was hospitalized my mother spent her evenings there, with her. While my dad and brother would have been fine fending for themselves those evenings, I enjoyed the time and space in a kitchen trying to figure out how to feed people. Little did I know those moments stolen in the kitchen were a foreshadowing, a dry run, of the life of feeding a family of six I would eventually lead. Once my grandmother passed, I was soon shooed out of the kitchen. As my mother and I did not have a mentor/mentee  relationship. The kitchen was her domain. I fell back in line.

Fast forward to marriage, moving to a farm, and 4 kiddos in 5 years, and I was a quick study in cooking. I really learned to love it. I love feeding people. I love trying new things, different cultural foods and a myriad a spices. But the hardest part? Sitting down to eat with people.

In Shauna Niequest's book, "Bread and Wine," she hit the nail on the head when she expressed that:

"Both the church and modern life, together and separately, have wandered away from the table.....modern life has pushed us into faux food and fast food and highly engineered food products cased in sterile packages that we eat in the car or on the subway-as though we're astronauts, as though we cannot be bothered by a meal."

What hit me right between the eyes when reading that was that eating with others is intimate and beautiful. And that intimacy is something we avoid. Something I like to avoid.

I have had disordered eating for as long as I can remember. There's not really a category for it, just messed up, marked by food anxiety and feeling of unworthiness that correlates to food and eating in front of people. {Weird.} 

I fear the intimacy that the table brings.

I love cooking for others.

I love being an isolated astronaut.

But I do want to practice that intimacy.

Learn how to be intimate.

At the table.

As as Niequest mentioned, food connects us with memories. Comfort at it's best. It connects with people; their stories, their hearts and their journeys. It's time well invested. 

She hit the nail on the head when she talked about dealing with our own insecurities in the "Magical White Bean Soup" chapter:

"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....Let's be courageous in these days. Let's choose love and rest and grace. Let's use the minutes and hours to create memories with the people we love instead of dragging them on one more errand or shushing them while we accomplish one more....thing."

That has become my prayer, that I am fully there, at the table. Love, rest and grace. 

I loved this book with a million kinds of puffy hearts. I only tried a couple of the recipes but I hope to try more. This book has pushed, encouraged and compelled me to make my table more intimate, a place where joy, tears and life happen. 

Love, rest and grace. 

****

Looking forward to your thoughts ladies.

Good pick Jen!