May always feels like the month when the year begins to properly open up. The evenings stretch, the garden starts asking for attention, and food shifts towards the bright, simple things that suit longer days.
It’s not quite high summer yet, but there are hints of it everywhere: the first outdoor lunches, bunches of asparagus, tomatoes that taste better with olive oil and salt, and weekends that suddenly feel full of possibility.
In this month’s letter, I’ve been thinking about that early-summer feeling. There’s a little seasonal cooking, a simple salad for the first garden table of the year, a timely wander through Wimbledon, and a sharply unsettling book about performance, identity and the stories we sell.
Sunblush tomatoes feel like one of those small kitchen projects that quietly announces summer is on the way. They take ordinary tomatoes and turn them into something deeper and sweeter: slow, glossy, full of concentrated flavour, and ready to lift almost anything they touch.
I like them scattered through salads, spooned onto toast, folded into pasta, or served as part of an early summer table with olives, cheese and good bread. They’re also exactly the sort of thing worth making ahead, ready for the first lazy lunches and longer evenings of the season.
My sunblush tomatoes recipe is here if you’re ready to bring a little Mediterranean warmth into the kitchen.
For something properly of the moment, I’ve also been making a simple roast asparagus salad with peppery rocket, toasted pine nuts and shavings of pecorino. It’s dressed with little more than lemon juice, olive oil, salt and black pepper, which is really all good asparagus needs when it’s in season.
Roasting gives the spears a little sweetness at the edges, while the rocket keeps everything fresh and lively. It’s the sort of salad that works beside roast chicken, with good bread for lunch, or as part of a late-spring table with sunblush tomatoes and something cold in the glass.
For a quick version: roast trimmed asparagus with olive oil, salt and pepper until just tender, then toss with rocket, toasted pine nuts, pecorino shavings, lemon juice and a final drizzle of good olive oil.
If May has a flavour, I think it might be this: green, sharp, simple, and ready for the table in minutes.
And if you’re stocking up on seasonal vegetables, Riverford is offering £15 off your second order through my referral link. I receive the same as a thank-you, which makes it a nice way to support the site as well.
With summer edging closer, Wimbledon naturally starts to come back into view. Not just the Championships, though of course they bring their own atmosphere, but Wimbledon as a place: the Village, the Common, leafy walks, good pubs, cafés, and that unmistakable early-summer London feeling.
It’s the sort of area that works beautifully when you give it a little time. Wander through the Village, head towards the Common, settle in somewhere for lunch, and you get a very different side of London from the usual rush between landmarks.
My Wimbledon guide is a good starting point if you’re planning a summer visit and want to explore the area beyond the tennis.
If you are visiting during tennis season, a little planning goes a long way. Accommodation fills quickly, transport gets busier, and the best days are often the ones with a little space built around them: somewhere to wander before or after, a proper lunch, and a plan that doesn’t rely entirely on the courts.
Southfields and Wimbledon Park suit the Championships well, while Wimbledon Village has more of that leafy, pub-lunch, summer-afternoon feeling. If you’re using the trip as part of a wider London break, staying slightly further out can also make sense.
My where to stay in Wimbledon guide breaks the area down by travel style, so you can choose the base that fits the kind of trip you’re planning. If you’re booking accommodation, these Wimbledon stay options may also be useful. They use affiliate links, which help support Culinary Travels at no extra cost to you.
This month’s book is Yesteryear by Caro Claire Burke, and it is absolutely unhinged in the best possible way.
Natalie Heller Mills has built an empire as the perfect tradwife influencer: farmhouse kitchen, beautiful children, rugged cowboy husband, endless sourdough, and a soft-focus version of “simple living” that millions are watching and buying into. Except, of course, none of it is quite real. Behind the scenes there are nannies, producers, modern shortcuts and a whole operation keeping the illusion alive.
Then one morning Natalie wakes up and everything looks the same, only it isn’t. Same house, same family, same land, but suddenly the life she has been performing feels terrifyingly literal, with no edits, no props and no escape hatch.
What starts as a sharp, uncomfortable look at influencer culture, motherhood, beauty standards and the pressure to present a perfect life online turns into something much darker and stranger. Natalie is deeply unlikeable, wildly self-involved and completely gripping, which is exactly the kind of character I love being trapped with on the page.
What stayed with me most was the idea of performance: how easily a life can be constructed, sold and eventually believed. It’s chaotic, unsettling and a bit deranged in places, but I’m still thinking about it, which usually says everything.
You can read more about Yesteryear on Instagram if you’re curious.
May feels like the month when things begin to gather pace. Meals move towards the garden table, weekends start to fill with plans, and summer begins to feel less like a distant idea and more like something edging closer.
Over the next few weeks, I’ll be leaning into that shift with more seasonal cooking, travel planning, and the kind of pieces that make the most of longer days without rushing through them.
Until then, I hope May brings you something good to eat, somewhere lovely to wander, and perhaps a book that keeps you thinking long after you’ve put it down.
If you’d like a little more between letters, I’m sharing kitchen notes, travel planning, bookish bits and the odd behind-the-scenes wobble over on Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest and, newly, TikTok too.
Georgina
Culinary Travels
