Welcome to mama eats, a twice-weekly newsletter (Tues. & Sat.) inspired by a simple + seasonal home life. This week’s post on beans is free to read. I try to provide as much free content as possible, however, this newsletter is a labor of love and I am a busy mother of three. If you have the means and find value in what I share, please consider becoming a paid subscriber, which also gives you the benefit of access to the growing archive (posts over a month old).
note: this is based on a post I wrote in July 2021, with extensive edits made July 2024. This pot of beans is a foundational recipe for me, I use it all of the time and in all seasons. For example, the white bean, tomato, herb salad I recently shared here is a summer staple made from these beans. A summer minestrone I will share next Tuesday also utilizes these beans as a base. A good pot of beans is something everyone should have up their sleeve, in my opinion.
I frequent the local library- the same one I went to as a child, in fact- there’s something viscerally comforting about this continuity. I also find satisfaction in the fact that many people frequent it, from all different ages and walks of life, drawn like moths to the light of this communal space. Elderly ladies picking up their holds, students furrowing brows over computers in the study room in holy silence, children throwing tantrums over every possible thing and pulling out book after book from the shelf to rifle through delightedly in the children’s section. Mothers sitting in nearby chairs and talking with each other, deeply enjoying a bit of adult connection whilst the children are occupied. Everyone seeking their own kind of solace here, the smell of both musty and new pages mingling. This is where you fall in love with books.
My favorite row is, big surprise, the food and cooking one, particularly the international subsection. All the way in the back, the quiet area, where life seems to slow and I feel like I can take a deep breath and quiet my mind. I don’t actually own many cookbooks at all, mostly because I find that they never get much use- with a few exceptions: my Alice Waters, Ottolenghi, Marcella Hazan, David Tanis, faithful friends that are well worn with loose bindings and sauce-splattered pages, which often get pulled off my shelf and consulted, like calling up your mum on the phone to talk you through that nostalgic recipe she makes. Reassuring. All the same, I do actually love cookbooks, and often check out towering stacks of them to thumb through, feeling the same thrill I used to get while poring over my mom’s Bon Appetit magazines as a kid, all the exciting ingredients and foods and photographs, unfolding a whole new world in front of me, via food, always food.
While looking through the aforementioned row, I came across a book. It’s called The Tuscan Year and is quite slim, really a Hemingway-sized slip of a book, paperback, I nearly missed it because it was almost imperceptibly wedged between 2 much more giant books. In it, Elizabeth Romer “recounts the daily life and food preparation of the Cerotti family, her neighbors in a valley between Umbria and Tuscany” month by month, a snapshot of a year in food; gardening, cooking, stories and lovely little line drawings all tumbling through, just as much about daily life as it is about the food, as it should be- food is always woven into life. This is the type of food I like to read about- what people actually eat daily. Not when you are trying to be fancy or having people over or dressing things up. Just the day to day things that are both delicious and humble. Thumbing through the book quickly, I knew I would like it, and hurriedly checked it out, typing my library card number rapid fire into the self checkout (I know mine by heart, a fact which I derive an interesting sort of satisfaction, kind of like when you transfer something into a container and it fits just so and you can’t help but be a bit smug).
I did like it. In fact, I liked it so much that I ordered a copy of my own, which is now boookmarked with slips of scrap paper and marked up with my notes in the margin. In particular, I got hung up on a part that talked about beans, white beans in particular,