a week of meals no. 86
meal plan for the fourth week of June 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 dear readers, how are you this week? Are you settling into a summer rhythm? This week the weather continued to be quite cool for us, making it so pleasant to head out and do anything at any time of day—usually we are well into the 100 degree mark at this point in June, but we’ve had 80s and 90s instead. An absolute luxury!
With the weather continuing to be so nice, we’ve kept up with biking as our main form of transportation, which has been a delight! I’ve only filled the car with gas once, at the beginning of the month, and have almost a full tank left. It was one of my intentions for this year, to reduce reliance on car travel. I enjoy biking alot, and for me it’s more about just getting used to the habit— leaving a bit earlier, making sure I have everything with me, bringing water. We have one large bike, a Dutch type shortbed bakfiets (bought on Craigslist 8 years ago) which we jokingly refer to as our SUV. This is what we use to haul groceries home in, and where James rides. We also have a very light, wonderfully minimal, very beautiful fixed gear bike I bought from Linus at the same time (it’s the Roadster Classic in white, and worth every penny, in my opinion). It is super fast and a delight to ride, which is handy for getting around quickly if you don’t have to take much with you (and if you don’t have a small child to bring!) We love both our bikes so much!
Anyways, the summer rhythm. I sat down and wrote out one for us as I felt us floating out to sea a bit as we adjusted to the removal of school and other activities, and the addition of others— my oldest child started her summer job, my youngest child will be in swim lessons. Simply having a framework of roughly what to expect during the days makes for much less whining and churlish moods, I find (on my part and the children’s! ha).
a few small, simple pleasures enjoyed this week:
Reading: Lili Anolik’s Didion & Babitz, a nonfiction book that I think is perfect for a pool/beach— it’s not super serious, and it’s so juicy and easy to get into. A nice change of pace for me! Interspersed with Foreign Fruit, a reading recommendation from a friend, and another nonfiction book— this one part memoir and part history of the orange. Excellent!
Notebook for recipes: Lately I’ve been writing down the recipes that I have bookmarked on my phone and computer— you know, those ones that you use often enough for it to be annoying to keep pulling them up. I write them in a basic graph lined composition notebook. It’s been lovely to pull it off the shelf instead of reaching for my phone.
Morning gardening: I’ve been waking up early, flinging all the windows open to let in the cool air, and going for a walk while it’s nice out. Upon my return, I have coffee and breakfast, then work in the garden— weeding, watering, pruning, deadheading, harvesting, picking off pests. It’s such a beautiful start to my day and well worth getting up early for.
Longform essays: When I was at the library recently, I picked up a copy of The New Yorker, on a whim (our library sells recent back issues for 25 cents!!) and couldn’t believe how much I’ve missed reading longform essays in print. It was a delight to lazily read through them, do the crossword, laugh over the cartoons, pass it to my husband, discuss…
very good breakfasts, lunches, and snacks I ate this week:
Ahead is the meal plan, which is so fresh and fun this week with the extravagantly flavored and colored summer produce. Let me know if you’ve had a summer meal you’ve been obsessed with lately? Love hearing what everyone else is eating.
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 white beans and chickpeas. Make bread dough to bake sourdough boules on Monday morning. Bake granola for breakfasts/snacks.
Sunday: chickpeas al limone; tomato and shallot salad (slice good, juicy, deep red tomatoes, sprinkle salt over them, strew over minced shallot, capers, torn basil leaves, a bit of good red wine vinegar, and drizzle them whole thing generously with olive oil)
Monday: summer rolls with almond miso dip
Tuesday: black rice salad with mango and peanuts from Bon Appetit June 2012; will serve with 5 minute silken tofu salad
Wednesday: zucchini chickpea fritters (will write up this recipe soon to share), tzatziki, cherry tomato salad, foccacia from the freezer (I always make a double batch of any baked bread thing I make, and stow the other half in the freezer for another time- very handy)
Thursday: panzanella using the sourdough from earlier in the week; sautéed zucchini with red wine vinegar and mint
Friday: pizza night; sourdough crust, topped with leftover sauteed zucchini, mozzarella, zucchini flowers, basil, calabrian chile paste + sliced tomato salad (as detailed above for Wednesday)
Saturday: burger night; these buns (I use olive oil instead of butter as per usual with everything lol, and flax egg, double the recipe and freeze half for next week- it makes 8, but the kids eat the extras as sandwich buns in the next few days) + lemon artichoke white bean burgers (made these last week and froze extras for this week). Sweet potato fries (I cut up sweet potatoes, toss with olive oil, garlic powder, salt, and ancho chile powder, then roast in the oven till caramelized). If it’s too hot for the oven, I’ll cut the fries and switch to a simple green side salad. But I might decided to double up and bake the cake at the same time, especially if the evening will cool down.
weekend bake: gf almond and plum cake (our plum tree is just ripening!!) will also be making batches of creamy plum sorbet for the freezer (let me know if you want this recipe), and maybe even a small batch of plum jam
weekend breakfast: croissants, fruit and cappuccino! Making a batch of croissants and freezing them to bake off as desired on the weekend, a fun summer project with the children. Using a recipe from a book my friend brough me back from Paris (thanks lovely M)
p.s.—leaving you with a poem for the week, as always. This one for the solstice x A
If you missed it:
Love all of this!
I love the idea of writing my favorite recipes into a book! That will happily be one of my summer creative projects now:) thank you!