a week of meals no. 79
meal plan for the first week of May 2025
Welcome to mamaeats, a twice-weekly newsletter (Tues. & Sat.) inspired by a simple + seasonal home life. I’m a mother of three, avid reader, gardener, and home cook who focuses on nourishing, whole food meals with a focus on plants. This newsletter is my labor of love—if you are not already, and are able to do so, please consider becoming a subscriber to support my work here, which takes time and effort. Doing so gives you access to all the archives and recipes (find the recipe index here), as well as cook-along videos which go along with most recipes. If a recurring payment is too much for you right now, but you’d still like to contribute, I’d be delighted to receive a one-off tip via my ko-fi. As always, thank you for being here, reading this newsletter, and sending me your thoughts.
Happy Saturday morning, dear reader, and happy May. Isn’t May gorgeous? One foot in spring, and one in summer. The delightful in-between and the last bit of cooler weather for us here in California for months on end (we usually don’t cool down below 90 degrees F, nor get rain again, until late October).
This week was largely spent in the chaos of the children’s various sports commitments and school commitments as the season begins to wrap up in preparation for the end of the school year. I was able to intersperse quite a bit of gardening in amongst the busy days, though, which acted as a satisfying counterbalance. The other thing I focused on was clearing out my winter closet to make way for the lightweight, breezy summer pieces that have been stored since the end of last summer. I had been building it up in my head and putting it off because it seemed such an insurmountable task with all the other things I also had to do. But, I was cheered, as ever, by May Sarton. I am up to November in her journals now, about 2/3 of the way through the book. I read it mainly in snatches—10 minutes after breakfast, while walking the 25 minutes to get James from school, waiting for the pasta pot to boil. I never fail to come away with something to roll around in my mind. Her entry for Wednesday, November 10th, 1982 reads:
I decided three days ago that I must make a start on raking and found I could do quite a lot in an hour and a half. I took it as a lesson that, when a task seems impossible, the thing to do is make a start at once, not wait for panic and fear of the effort to take over. And how fine it is to have some clear green lawn now around the big maple!
How fine, indeed, to have a clean closet with all my summer clothes back out again, old friends to rediscover. My goal for next week is to hand wash, air dry, and pack safely away the woolens. Then I will be done!
My reading of the Women’s Prize for Fiction continues this week with Sanam Mahloudji’s The Persians. I just finished it last night and found it to be both very entertaining and also very layered- there’s much more to the story than originally meets the eye. There are multiple narrators; different generations of Iranian women telling the saga of their family, and how it fractured in many ways with the 1979 revolution. The stories weave apart, then back together, then apart, much like the family itself. In the first few chapters, I wan’t sure if I would like it or not, as I tend to struggle with multiple storylines, but the characters were so richly nuanced that I had no trouble. I had a hard time putting it down, it was quite juicy!
Three lunches enjoyed this week (click on any photo to enlarge):
This week, the meal plan is replete with spring produce: artichokes, arugula, fava beans, all kinds of peas, fennel, and beets. We’ve got a good mix of salads to reflect the warmer weather here, but also are bolstered by a soup, pasta, and pizza. Some delightful looking cardamom cookies and another round of oat waffles add sweetness.
And one more thing, the May playlist from last year’s “may at the market” newsletter, if you’re in need of a new one: this is soft-ish mix of French songs to cook to on balmy spring evenings.