a week of meals no. 81
meal plan for the third 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.
Hello friend, and welcome to another Saturday newsletter. Here we are in mid-May, and things are beautiful here in our little California valley. We continue on the rotating carousel of seasonal flowers: from pansies and bulbs to roses and larkspur, with the nigella just blooming and poppies just about to open. Flowers bring me such joy in life. This week was full and lovely. We had Mother’s Day, a end of season gathering at the creek for our nature group, we gardened both in our own space and at my grandmother’s, planted more seeds and deadheaded the first flush of roses. The end of the school year crush is still upon us (apparently now it’s known as “Maycember”) but I felt better about it this week than last week for some reason. Maybe because I was able to get outside more? It seems to always be the answer, that and community.
In reading news: I finished Eurotrash from the International Booker Prize longlist, which was a wild ride- in turns hilarious and sobering. I’m still processing what I thought of it, but I think the blurb from the Booker site sums it up perfectly: “A jaded writer takes his spiky mother and her ill-gotten wealth on a road trip in this tragicomic and absurd semi-autobiographical novel.” I next moved on to Roisín O’Donnell’s Nesting, from the Women’s Prize for Fiction longlist, which is the story of a woman escaping an emotionally abusive, controlling relationship. Set in Ireland, I thought it was quite well done, but was hard to read for me personally as I have experienced this firsthand.
Now I’m reading a small and wonderful book called Dept. of Speculation, written by Jenny Offill. It’s fantastic, and I am regretting that I picked this up as a library book, because I want to underline everything (and I’m not one for writing/underlining in books normally). Motherhood and identity, marriage and philosophical musings all thrown in one breathless story that is told in quirky, disjointed yet complementary paragraphs written in beautiful language.
Moving on to the food: dinners this week include several beet dishes (sweet and earthy, I adore beets and they are abundant right now), more chickpea stew (we all love this one), a delicious looking fried rice, creamy bean salad and sourdough focaccia, and some sweet little chewy- crisp lemon almond biscuits to round off the week. Strawberries have been dessert to nearly every meal! They are exquisite at the moment, deep red all the way through, sweet as sugar.
the meal plan
weekend prep work: clean out the fridge, go to the farmer’s market and grocery store to re-stock pantry and fridge. Soak and cook a pot of cannellini beans and chickpeas- soaking extra chickpeas to make hummus, and putting half of the hummus in the freezer for later (yes, hummus freezes beautifully.) Bake a batch of orange vanilla granola for kid breakfasts. Make bread dough to bake two oat porridge sourdough boules on Monday morning.
Sunday: beet chickpea fritters with tzatziki and whole wheat pita; sauteed garden favas with olive oil, garlic, tossed with mint and lemon
Monday: mediterranean chickpea stew again, with toasted, garlic-rubbed, olive oiled sourdough bread; steamed whole artichokes with aioli to dip, for a starter.
Tuesday: leftover chickpea stew + will cook a pot of rice and add some of that into the bowls- leaving leftover rice for tomorrow, moroccan beet salad
Wednesday: Hetty McKinnon’s mapo tofu fried rice with the leftover rice
Thursday: marinated sun dried tomato white bean salad, focaccia, arugula salad
Friday: pizza night and cinema club- watching Back to the Future, pizza will be Roberta’s crust (make it Thursday am after breakfast and stick it in the fridge) with mozz, green olives, red onion to top + arugula, parm, and lemon salad
Saturday: vignarola (baby artichoke, pea, spring onion, fava beans stewed in white wine and olive oil), almond ricotta, leftover focaccia
weekend bake: Nigel Slater’s almond and lemon shortcakes
weekend breakfast: oat waffles, strawberry rhubarb compote (I just roast or simmer with sugar and orange juice), vanilla yogurt
p.s.—leaving you with a poem for the week, as always. Have a beautiful week and thank you for reading and being here and sharing your time with me. I hope to have a garden tour newsletter soon based on reader suggestion xx A
If you missed it:
April favorites
rose garden notes, a what I ate video, 4 spring recipes, notes on films and books enjoyed this month