Welcome to mama eats, a twice-weekly newsletter inspired by a simple + seasonal home life. This week’s post, a week of meals, is free to all readers. I try to provide as much free content as possible, however, this newsletter is a labor of love and I am a busy mother to three. If you have the means, and find value in what I share, please consider becoming a paid subscriber, which also gives you access to the growing archive of posts older than a month.
Good morning, friends, and welcome to the weekend! It’s a beautiful morning here, a bit of a break in the heat of the last few days, which has felt so oppressive. There’s a point in September when you live in California, when you just are so ready for autumn to come. Our summers stretch looooong. Living vicariously through you, my friends in northern states.
This week has felt short and long at the same time, we are still getting settled into our new rhythms of school. James got to attend his nursery school one day, and will go for the full 3 days (3 hrs/day) next week. Unsurprisingly, he’s been extra tired as he undergoes this change. Some of you were asking if it’s in daycare and why he doesn’t just remain at home with me? I am homeschooling my middle child through our local independent study program this year (we’ve used it before, in K and 1st, and the teachers and enrichment programs there are incredible) as public school wasn't working well for him. So, having James in something gives me a little flexibility to work one on one with my homeschooling child while also being a wonderful way to build community for both James and I. We are at a local parent-nursery co-operative, meaning that all parents work there at least once every two weeks, and that we are co-educators and co-learners along with our child. It’s such a special environment, and I am so glad we have found it.
This week, I finished reading Octavia E. Butler’s Parable of the Sower, a science fiction novel set in California in the year 2025, where widespread drought, fires, food insecurity, and homelessness plague humanity, with the government becoming more and more useless as chaos and mob rule triumph. The main character is a young woman who has a rare condition of hyper empathy and we follow her struggle to survive, and thrive, in a disintegrating world. Although the content is bleak and gutting at times, Butler is such a masterful storyteller, and she weaves hope and beauty and love through the tale as well. Unbelievably prescient and wise for a book written in 1993.
Next, I read The Children’s Bach by Helen Garner. I had such a time with this one! Prior to reading, I had heard such excellent things, and media reviews calling it such things as “a jewel”, “masterpiece”, “a beloved work”, and overall I would say yes, what an incredible piece of writing in this novella about relationships and people, deeply sad yet so spot on sometimes. Her writing is clear, unsparing, precise and filled with the most beautiful descriptions. However, there are scenes which made me very uncomfortable to read. One of the characters, Billy, a child who is non verbal and possibly autistic, is talked about in the most dehumanizing and appalling way. I get that it was written in 1984, and that being a caretaker is indescribably hard, but really! What a blot on this book. If you’ve read it, I would be so interested to hear your thoughts. In poetry, I am working my way through Jane Hirshfields’ After.
Moving on to lighter topics! In food this week, we’ve got lots of sweetcorn (final call!), a chili, pasta, enchiladas, and a wonderful cornbread, plus an apple tart and a spicy peach cocktail. Have you made anything delicious lately? I’d love to hear! Here’s a few meals enjoyed this week:
the meal plan
Sunday: roasted tomato soup with couscous, sourdough, white bean salad
Monday: chili with cornbread: using this recipe this week, I like to use the Mutti brand canned cherry tomatoes instead of the diced tomatoes, if I can find it. For the cornbread, I’m using the recipe from Bryant Terry’s Vegetable Kingdom cookbook (which I own and is great), the recipe can also be found here.
Tuesday: chard, black bean, corn enchiladas (recipes for enchiladas and sauce can be found in here, scroll down to Tuesday)
Wednesday: leftover enchiladas
Thursday: sheet pan tofu with corn and chiles + rice, pickled onions, cilantro cashew cream (scroll to the very bottom of this post)
Friday: pizza night; dough recipe here; topped with orange peppers, yellow tomatoes, red onion, and mozzarella
Saturday: creamy sweetcorn pasta with basil
cocktail: September heatwave with maybe the last peaches of the season!
weekend bake: apple tart
midweek treat: apple cinnamon muffins
weekend breakfast: apple cinnamon waffles, almond butter, maple yogurt
I hope you are enjoying September so far, and that you have a beautiful week. Leaving you with this poem that seems so apt for the week as I pull out my tomatoes to make way for winter vegetable plantings. xx A
Wow. The “Parable of the Sower”, written in 1993 - seems like a knowing then of the now.