a week of meals no. 82
meal plan for the last 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.
Good morning friends! Another Saturday is here, and another meal plan to share. Before we know it, June will be here, and with it, summer! Glorious summer, with it’s languorous pace and endless sunshine and swimming and good things to eat. I’m very much looking forward to it. How was your week? I’ve had a rough time of it lately and decided to take the day off with a fellow mother friend, we left the children at home with the dads and headed straight to the beach. We hiked a beautiful spot at Point Reyes, a favorite area for us both. There is something about the ocean that always brings immediate peace for me, any problems and stresses on my mind recede and I can just appreciate the beauty of the present moment. I always think of the lines from the E.E. Cummings poem, ‘maggie and milly and molly and may’:
For whatever we lose(like a you or a me)
it’s always ourselves we find in the sea
The day was beautiful- clear and sunny; we saw wildflowers and birds and otters, by-the-wind sailors washed up on shore, and sat for ages on the sand, just chatting about anything and everything. My friend made us a delicious lunch of an incredibly tasty chickpea salad over basmati rice, and on our way back home we stopped for a scoop of our favorite ice cream, Frankie & Jo’s. What a gem of a day! I highly recommend taking a day every once in a while just for you, if possible, to indulge in your pleasures and nothing else! I strive to do it at least once each season.
The vegetable garden has been growing steadily, with our first zucchini (‘Ronde de Nice’) and green beans (‘Blue Lake’) almost ready to harvest, and raspberries steadily turning red. I am continuing to plant a few more cosmos and zinnia seeds for cut flowers through the summer, but other than that, am finished planting! If you are interested in more about the garden, I wrote a newsletter detailing all about it this week, which you can find here. If you have a garden, how’s it growing?
This weekend we are going camping with a group of friends from James’ nursery school, and I am so looking forward to it. What a treat it will be to spend a few days outside- I grew up camping, and really love it. The weather looks like it’s going to be perfect, too, which is such a bonus- not too hot and not too cold.
Below, you’ll find the meal plan for the week, which has all kinds of good things to eat: gingery meatballs, a favorite chili, a refreshing grain bowl, our beloved black bean brownies (yes, they really are very tasty and not like beans).
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 double batch of chickpeas- soaking extra chickpeas to make hummus, and putting half of the hummus in the freezer to take camping with us. Make bread dough to bake two oat porridge sourdough boules on Monday morning.
Sunday: honey ginger tofu meatballs, rice, green beans (sorry for the instagram link, but you should be able to see it in your browser even if you don’t have IG)
Monday: veg chorizo chili, with all the toppings- cashew cream, cilantro, tortilla chips, avocado, green onions, chopped tomatoes
Tuesday: leftover chili with toppings, served over sweet potato oven fries
Wednesday: veg bowls with brown rice/amaranth (making extra to have leftovers for the following night), moroccan beet salad, chickpeas, feta
Thursday: Hetty McKinnon’s mapo tofu fried rice with the leftover grains from last night
Friday: camping! we always make minestrone at home and bring it with us, along with a loaf of sourdough, for a fuss-free first night meal.
Saturday: camping! pasta (orecchiette) with pesto and white beans (bringing a jar of pesto from our freezer in the ice chest, canned cannellini beans)
weekend bake: camping, but making black bean brownies on thursday to take. and we’ll roast marshmallows, of course.
weekend breakfast: camping- so, just granola with blueberries and tetrapak soymilk.
p.s.—leaving you with a poem for the week, as always. This one a beautiful snippet I’ve been ruminating on recently, from a quite long dramatic poem called Empedocles on Etna, by Matthew Arnold. See you Tuesday, xx A
If you missed it:
i’m not sure quite how to explain it, but your posts transport me to a different world- kind of the feeling i get when i read a book! they’re very comforting, wholesome, and inspiring. i really appreciate you sharing them🩷 enjoy camping next weekend!