Posts about living in, understanding, and finding the best of mavenhood.
The Digital Magazine
By midlife, friends are collected from different seasons. There are people who grew up with us, coworkers from the early stages of our careers, friends we kept after another relationship ended, and friends we met through a hobby, at an event, or in an online forum. Each one sees us through the lens of how we connected; none of them has seen every chapter.
In The Five Star Weekend, a television adaptation of a bestseller by Elin Hilderbrand on Peacock TV, friends from different stages of life come together to support one of their own navigating a personal crisis. Jennifer Garner leads the ensemble cast as Hollis Shaw, an internet-famous baker inviting one close female friend from each chapter of her life for a girls’ weekend in Nantucket. One of the through lines of the show tests whether friendships built on a single chapter hold up under pressure when combined. The other key cast, including Regina Hall, Chloe Sevigny, Gemma Chan, and D’Arcy Carden, are each in the midst of their own midlife challenges, mimicking the reality of any group chat that moves from career pivots to health to questionable relationships. Where they are individually plays as much a role in whether they can form a cohesive supportive group as proximity.
The show presents a version of midlife that some women aspire to: a flexible enough schedule to accept a last-minute weekend invitation. The waterfront homes, restaurants, beaches, and sunsets of Nantucket make it easy to understand why everyone who could accept the invitation did. If someone invited me, I’d go because this is my speed. It raised the question: which of my friends would show up, even if it isn’t their thing? There’s a fine line between a popularity test and support in crisis that isn’t always easy to see, and Hollis is testing exactly that line with her invitation list.
The people who have known us the longest don’t always know the people we’ve become, and the friends we make later in life see us differently. The Five Star Weekend asks whether all of those relationships can exist in the same place at the same time. For most of these characters, the friendships held up.
The more I watched, the more I thought about how lucky Hollis was to have so many women willing to figure it out for her sake. Bringing together friends from different chapters of your life could have backfired in so many more ways than it did. There are certainly stories that weren’t shared, or standing dates for things that worked at one point in time and not in others, and the potential for misunderstandings.
That’s where the series asks viewers to make its biggest leap. Years of resentment begin to soften surprisingly quickly, and a relationship that seemed unlikely to recover makes a full about-face over the weekend, testing the show’s other through line: how much we change and how much we stay the same.
The show also tosses in a cheat on the question of how much we stay the same. Raise your hand if the ex who could have been the love of your life is still in love with you. Keep it up if he aged like a supermodel.
The Five Star Weekend delivers on a female-centered storyline featuring midlife women, a beautiful coastal setting, and drama. Watch it for the plot twists, the cast, or to see what an internet-famous baker’s Nantucket weekend looks like in closeup. Any one of those reasons is enough.
One final thought: this series introduces questions worth sitting with about friendships and who we are. How well do the people who’ve known us the longest really know the women we’ve become? And do we really know anyone unless they let us?
Social media creators share plenty of clever ways to sneak more fiber and protein into meals people love, without turning dinner into a science experiment.
This batch of meal-prep hacks rounds up some of the best ideas, credited to the specific cook or creator when we could trace it. Some ideas are familiar concepts from a grandmother’s kitchen, with a fresh twist. No matter which ones you try, future you will be grateful you set yourself up for success.
Add more fiber
- Add quinoa and lentils to white rice. Kylie Sakaida adds 1 cup white rice, ½ cup quinoa and ½ cup lentils to a rice cooker with approximately 3 cups water. The cooked mixture can replace plain rice in bowls, sides and stuffed vegetables.
Source: Kylie Sakaida, @nutritionbykylie on TikTok - Stretch ground beef with cooked lentils. Add brown, black or green lentils to seasoned ground beef for tacos, meat sauce, sloppy joes or shepherd’s pie. Katie Lee Biegel adds 1 cup cooked lentils to taco meat.
Source: Katie Lee Biegel, “Fiber-Packed Tacos,” EatingWell - Turn hummus into salad dressing. Joy Bauer mixes ¼ cup hummus with 1½ tablespoons water, 1 tablespoon olive oil, 1 teaspoon lemon juice, salt and smoked paprika. It turns a prepared dip into a creamy dressing with added fiber.
Source: Joy Bauer, “Hummus Dressing“ - Make two kinds of high-fiber jelly from psyllium husk. For juice jelly, quickly stir 2 tablespoons psyllium husk powder into 75 milliliters of tart cherry, grape, cranberry or blueberry juice and let it thicken for five to 10 minutes. For berry jam, blend frozen strawberries or mixed berries with ground chia seeds, psyllium husk, honey and water.
Sources: Dr. Joseph Salhab, Instagram reel (high-fiber fruit jelly), and Rupy Aujla, “Gut-Boosting Berry Jam,” The Doctor’s Kitchen - Add nutritional yeast to homemade pizza crust or sauce. Mix it directly into the dough or marinara for more fiber, protein and savory flavor. It can also help a lower-cheese pizza taste cheesier.
Source: White Blank Space, “Thin Crust Pizza Dough” - Replace breadcrumbs with crushed high-fiber cereal. Liz Weiss uses 1 cup Fiber One Original in a batch of eight Mediterranean tuna cakes. The cereal binds the mixture, gives the cakes a crisp exterior and brings each two-cake serving to 7 grams of fiber. The same idea can work in meatballs or as a coating for chicken.
Source: Liz Weiss, “Crispy Mediterranean Fiber One Cereal Tuna Cakes“ - Blend white beans into marinara or creamy soups. Purée drained white beans with the sauce or soup until smooth. The beans add fiber and protein while making the finished dish thicker and creamier.
Source: @cookwithangelika, Instagram reel
Add more protein
- Cook pasta or grains in bone broth. Replace the cooking water with chicken or beef bone broth. Pasta, rice, quinoa and other grains absorb some of the broth as they cook, adding flavor and some of the broth’s protein.
Source: @thedeliciousnutritionist, YouTube Shorts - Replace ricotta with blended cottage cheese in lasagna. Blend the cottage cheese before assembling the lasagna for a smoother consistency. You can usually replace the ricotta in equal measure.
Source: Andrea Rivera Wawrzyn, “I Never Use Ricotta for the Best-Tasting Lasagna,” The Kitchn - Blend cottage cheese into marinara or pasta sauce. Blend the cottage cheese with marinara, Parmesan and a little pasta water to make a creamy, higher-protein sauce.
Source: Yumna Jawad, “Cottage Cheese Pasta Sauce,” Feel Good Foodie - Use cottage cheese as the base of a reheatable cheese sauce. Tom Walsh blends cottage cheese with a smaller amount of strongly flavored cheese, milk, nutritional yeast and seasonings. Add a few tablespoons of milk when reheating if the sauce becomes too thick.
Source: Tom Walsh, @stealth_health_life on Instagram - Add cottage cheese to scrambled eggs or egg bakes. Joy Bauer mixes ¼ cup cottage cheese with two eggs for a scramble containing more than 20 grams of protein. Blending the cottage cheese first works well for egg bakes and gives them a smoother texture.
Source: Joy Bauer, “High-Protein Scrambled Eggs with Cottage Cheese“ - Cook egg whites into oatmeal. Add liquid egg whites near the end of cooking and continue stirring until the oats thicken. The egg whites blend into the oatmeal and give it a creamier texture.
Source: Liz Marino, “Egg White Oatmeal,” The Clean Eating Couple - Mix powdered peanut butter with regular peanut butter. Reconstitute the powder with a little water, then mix it with conventional peanut butter. The regular peanut butter keeps the familiar flavor and richness while the powdered version adds volume and protein.
Source: Blair Cooley, Instagram reel (this version mixes the powder with liquid) - Make Pro-tatoes and protein gravy from the same pot. Cook cubed potatoes in chicken bone broth, then drain them over a bowl so none of the broth is lost. Blend cottage cheese with some of the reserved broth, pour it over the potatoes and mash. Mix in an egg and a touch of butter extract for additional protein and buttery flavor. Finally, thicken more of the reserved bone broth to make gravy. The published batch uses 5 pounds of russet potatoes, 3 quarts of chicken bone broth, 1½ cups cottage cheese, 1 egg and ½ teaspoon butter extract.
Source: @cooking_comedy_chaos, “Pro-tay-toes,” via cooked.wiki, original Instagram reel - Turn hard-boiled eggs into high-protein mayonnaise. Blend three hard-boiled eggs with ⅓ cup water, 2 teaspoons vinegar, 2 tablespoons oil and salt to taste. Use it for sandwiches, tuna salad, chicken salad or egg salad.
Source: Alison Lethorn, @homechefalison on Instagram
Upgrade dessert
- Turn white beans into five-minute cookie dough. Blend a drained can of white beans with oat flour, almond flour, peanut butter and maple syrup, then fold in chocolate chips. The beans disappear into the dough while adding fiber and plant protein.
Source: Alissa Steinberg, @healthyu_dietitian on Instagram - Turn silken tofu into chocolate mousse. Blend 400 grams silken tofu with 200 grams melted dark chocolate, ½ teaspoon vanilla and 3 tablespoons maple syrup for approximately three minutes. Divide it into containers and refrigerate until set.
Source: @lea.martine, Instagram reel, “Recipe for my viral vegan high protein chocolate mousse” - Whip Greek yogurt with sugar-free Jell-O. Combine Greek yogurt with dissolved sugar-free Jell-O, whip until smooth and chill until set. Garnish with raspberries.
Source: Rena Awada, “Fluffy Greek Yogurt Jello,” Healthy Fitness Meals - Make the viral Japanese yogurt cheesecake. Layer ½ cup thick Greek yogurt with 3 Biscoff cookies per serving in a jar or container, alternating layers until full. Cover and refrigerate overnight (at least 8 hours). The cookies absorb moisture from the yogurt and soften into cake-like layers.
Source: Hannah Kling, “Viral Japanese Cheesecake (Greek Yogurt + Biscoff Cookies),” Lovely Delites - Make three-ingredient protein muffins with cake mix and a bottled shake. Amy Britton combines one box of zero-sugar cake mix with one 42-gram Core Power vanilla protein shake and one single-serving Ratio Protein Greek yogurt. Her batch made approximately 13 muffins and baked at 350°F for about 20 minutes.
Source: Amy Britton, Instagram reel - Make 10-minute protein cookie dough. Emma of @emmabfit mixes 2 tablespoons melted peanut butter, ¼ cup Greek yogurt, 1 tablespoon honey, one serving vanilla protein powder and 1 tablespoon almond flour. Stir in chocolate chips, then freeze for 10 minutes.
Source: Emma, @emmabfit on TikTok - Make faux Reese’s balls with powdered peanut butter and applesauce. Mix 1 cup powdered peanut butter with ½ cup unsweetened applesauce. Form the mixture into approximately 16 balls, chill and coat them with ½ cup melted chocolate chips.
Source: @slowslimmer, Instagram reel - Replace most of the oil in boxed brownies with canned pumpkin. Erin Clarke combines a box of brownie mix with ½ cup pumpkin purée and 2 tablespoons oil. The pumpkin keeps the brownies moist while adding another plant to dessert.
Source: Erin Clarke, @wellplated Instagram
