A challenge to myself.

So a while back I wrote a couple posts about Shauna Niequist's books.  They are seriously a breath of fresh air.  Amidst all the intense seminary novels I was reading a year ago, her books were about all I could handle diving into at that time and that seems to be the case now that I have a little one as well!  Dan, being the wonderful husband that he is, preordered her book Bread and Wine for me.  And then, my replacement at Trinity just happens to be her sister in law and she got me a SIGNED copy of Bread and Wine.  Basically what I'm trying to say is that Shauna and I are pretty much bffs now. 

Anyway, I was really excited when she started talking about her next book.  It has a similar feel to her last books, mainly a collection of short stories, but she has a recipe at the end of each one.  I think I enjoyed this one so much because we have very similar thoughts about food- but she's a much better cook then me- hence her publishing a cook book.  I love how she talks about certain foods taking her back to a certain place and time in her life.. because really.. food does that for me, too.  I was trying to explain this to Dan and he laughed at me.  Dan doesn't live to eat, he eats to live.  Which means he can even skip lunch because he's so caught up doing other things.  That is craziness to me.  At breakfast I'm already thinking about lunch.  It's a blessing and curse.

However, I love how Shauna so perfectly puts into words how food is given to us by God to enjoy with one another and how eating meals around the table also creates community.  That is something I have loved here in Chicago.  While I love going out to eat, our budget however does not.  So, our friends have enjoyed having each other over, sharing meals, glasses of wine, and desserts.  Some of my favorite memories here in Chicago have been created over the dinner table.

So, you're probably wondering what the challenge is that I referenced to in the title.  Over the next couple months (or maybe year... a lot of her recipes call for ingredients from Trader Joe's and while there is one literally 2 minutes away from our house now.. in New York the closest one is either in Albany or Rochester.. both are over 2 hours away from where we're going to be living!)  Dan and I know from experience that it takes a while to make new friends when you move to a new city, so we are going to have lots of down time with each other :)  So I figured this is a perfect time to find some new favorite recipes and expand my cooking repertoire.  (I don't think I've ever used that word on this blog.. I hope that made sense...) I've already made a couple of them but I'll post about those recipes later.

Some of her recipes call for ingredients I've never bought (like goat cheese!) but I'm going to try to stick to them as much as I can - this will be a growing experience... really for Dan more than me :)  I'm excited to start cooking new food and sharing it with you along the way!