Food https://www.thesunmagazine.org/rss en-us Because I became allergic to chocolate when I was seventeen because a rash spread on my chest when I ate mole sauce at Sanborns; because acne populated my face every time I drank hot cocoa; because I believed it to be easy to give up something I loved

]]> http://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/28991 Sun, 31 May 2026 15:00:00 -0400 https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/606-because-i-became-allergic-to-chocolate-when-i-was-seventeen Eating Free leathtonino@gmail.com Perhaps this isn’t the case at all Embassy Suites, but in Flagstaff, Arizona, between 5 and 7 pm, the hotel provides unlimited snacks and beer, gratis. I’ll repeat that: unlimited. Granted, I never imbibed more than three Michelobs and a cubic yard of Chex mix, but still. The possibility of unlimited is delectable.

]]> http://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/28940 Sat, 28 Feb 2026 12:00:00 -0500 https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/603-eating-free 603-20-hart-preview.jpg 603 - Hart - Tonino Crop to Cup Many of the coffee-producing countries still operate as if they are under the rule of a colonizer. You’ve got this country that was ruled from the outside as a production mechanism for the good of other countries, right? And once they gain their freedom, things aren’t going to immediately start working out well, because now they’ve got to develop their own political systems.

]]> http://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/28892 Wed, 31 Dec 2025 12:32:45 -0500 https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/601-crop-to-cup 601-4-skadson-preview.jpg 601 - Skadson - Cohen Stirring the Pot Leading a strike, starting trouble between sisters, feeding strangers

]]> http://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/28904 Wed, 31 Dec 2025 12:00:00 -0500 https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/601-stirring-the-pot 601-32-stone-preview.jpg 601 - Stone - Stirring the Pot Love in All Directions Sometimes you had to conjure your own joy. Scratch that. Most of the time you had to conjure your own joy. So you had better suck it up and start chopping onions.

]]> http://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/28902 Wed, 31 Dec 2025 12:00:00 -0500 https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/601-love-in-all-directions 601-44-fields-preview.jpg 601 - Fields - Mandelbaum Sunbeams

I went out to the kitchen to make coffee—yards of coffee. Rich, strong, bitter, boiling hot, ruthless, depraved. The lifeblood of tired men.

Raymond Chandler, The Long Goodbye

]]> http://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/28901 Wed, 31 Dec 2025 12:00:00 -0500 https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/601-sunbeams 601-49-povenz-preview.jpg 601 - Povenz - Sunbeams The Danish Then I felt a small admiration for the Man With The Danish, who hoped to give away excess food rather than throw it in the trash. Maybe I should have accepted the Danish, although I didn’t want it. By turning it down resentfully, I might have discouraged him from ever offering food to a stranger again. But there’s no time to think when someone thrusts a sudden dessert in your face.

]]> http://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/28898 Wed, 31 Dec 2025 12:00:00 -0500 https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/601-the-danish 601-40-began-preview.jpg 601 - Beban - Sparrow The Body Eats I want to keep eating. I want life. More life. I want to turn from the simple facts of my existence to consider bigger mysteries, to fret about what might be, to remember what is no more. I want to imagine something other than this food in front of me, already a commodity on some assembly line, moving away from me.

]]> http://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/28897 Wed, 31 Dec 2025 12:00:00 -0500 https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/601-the-body-eats 601-20-easley-preview.jpg 601 - Easley - Safransky Bad Lunch I’d come to think of being a chef on a yacht as a kind of psycho-spiritual quest, like Homer’s Odyssey, only instead of tumultuous seas and six-headed monsters, our challenges were wealthy clients who arrived by private jet with Louis Vuitton purses on their arms.

]]> http://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/28895 Wed, 31 Dec 2025 12:00:00 -0500 https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/601-bad-lunch 601-14-bonnet-preview.jpg 601 - Bonnet - Maron Airborne Studies done with animals in labs don’t totally replicate the way humans get infected, which involves mucus, saliva, and other pathogens. We don’t know the full complexity of that interaction.

]]> http://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/28824 Sun, 31 Aug 2025 12:00:00 -0400 https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/seema-lakdawala-airborne-viruses-spread-pandemic-597 597-4-weil-preview.jpg 597 - Weil - Leviton Start with Overripe Bananas You have to start with overripe bananas. Really overripe—not yellow with a couple of streaks but two thin-skinned ones that can hardly contain their own soft flesh. You should be able to smell banana from across your kitchen.

]]> http://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/28817 Thu, 31 Jul 2025 12:00:00 -0400 https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/start-with-overripe-bananas-spurgeon-essay-596 596-44-gelsthorpe-preview.jpg 596 - Gelsthorpe - Spurgeon Conversations With A Banana Spider The smell of wild honeysuckle was everywhere, and the mango trees sagged with the weight of their fruit. I’d often hear the ripe ones fall to the street with a heavy, wet thud, or else bang off the metal roofs of outbuildings where homeless wanderers sometimes slept. This abundance of fruit made Loreto seem like an impossible place to starve, yet I saw a few souls who looked like they were trying their best to do just that. Was it legal, I wondered, to simply reach up and pull a ripe mango from someone else’s tree? Being a foreigner with money, I didn’t need to find out.

]]> http://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/28726 Fri, 28 Feb 2025 12:00:00 -0500 https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/591-conversations-with-a-banana-spider 591-40-thomas-preview.jpg 591-Thomas-Zoby Crossroads The South is made to carry the nation’s slop jar. That’s deliberate, because then the United States doesn’t have to actually contend with all of its violence. We just put the blame on that region where bad stuff happens and where those backward people are. I don’t think it’s incidental, either, that it is the Blackest region culturally (and demographically) speaking. So it is at once seen as the most racist and the Blackest.

]]> http://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/28612 Tue, 31 Dec 2024 12:00:14 -0500 https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/589-crossroads 589-4-amberg-preview.jpg 589 - Amberg - Martin Butter I went on absorbing Beth’s hostile digs until a new patient stole her attention from me. Louise had a round face, dark curly hair, and a generous, pear-shaped body. Her weight seemed concentrated in her thighs. When she arrived at lunch for the first time, her figure filling the doorframe, Beth’s eyes brightened as if she were an African lion coming upon a gazelle. I could practically feel my tormentor’s focus lift off me.

]]> http://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/28601 Thu, 31 Oct 2024 12:00:00 -0400 https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/587-butter 587-24-bruce-preview.jpg 587 - Bruce - Maron Blind History China is racist. Russia is racist. The US is racist. . . . Africans need to bet on each other. The Black Diaspora and the Global South need to bet on and support each other.

]]> http://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/28546 Sat, 31 Aug 2024 00:00:00 -0400 https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/585-blind-history 585-4-mwasi-preview.jpg 585 - Mwasi - Cohen - 1 Sunbeams

Food has powers. It picks us up from our lonely corners and sits us back down, together. It pulls us out of ourselves, to the kitchen, to the table, to the diner down the block. At the same time, it draws us inward. Food is the keeper of our memories, connecting us with our pasts and with our people.

Jessica Fechtor

]]> http://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/28511 Mon, 01 Jul 2024 00:00:00 -0400 https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/583-sunbeams 583 - Hart - Sunbeams - Preview 583 - Hart - Sunbeams To the Bone “To the Bone” is an ongoing photography project documenting daily life and work on a small family farm in the Hudson Valley. Emily, a single mother, manages their small farm with the help of her children. My intention is to explore the strength, dignity and love that keeps them deeply connected as a family, to each other and to their unique way of life on the farm.

]]> http://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/28507 Mon, 01 Jul 2024 00:00:00 -0400 https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/583-to-the-bone 583 - Beitler - Beitler - 01 - Preview 583 - Beitler - Beitler - 01 Canada Day The drive from Homer, Alaska, to Casper, Wyoming, is more than three thousand miles, much of it on winding two-lane highways where moose and bears slip from the underbrush and stand in the road. It had already been a rough trip.

]]> http://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/28503 Mon, 01 Jul 2024 00:00:00 -0400 https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/583-canada-day 583 - Hill - Zoby - Preview 583 - Hill - Zoby A Seat at the Table wyattww@gmail.com The terrible emotions I was filled with are the truth of what it means to be alive. When you live, something else dies. Even if you only eat plants, animals die for you to be able to eat. We do not talk about that often enough.

]]> http://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/28502 Mon, 01 Jul 2024 00:00:00 -0400 https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/568-a-seat-at-the-table 583 - Egevang - Williams - 01 - Preview 583 - Egevang - Williams - 01 Taste Family recipes, mystery street foods, thrift-shop outfits

]]> http://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/28419 Tue, 30 Apr 2024 00:05:00 -0400 https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/28419-taste 581-32-smogor-preview.jpg 581 - Smogor - Taste In the Freezer she kept pig haunches, / the shoulder joints of cows, / buffalo neck and guts, / all stuck to the ziplock bags. / If anyone ever asked, / Mother simply laughed.

]]> http://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/28416 Tue, 30 Apr 2024 00:00:43 -0400 https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/28416-in-the-freezer Don’t Think Too Hard about Avocados I swear my brain wasn’t always like this. I used to daydream during church sermons, school lessons, and long bus rides. I may have been a shy, awkward nerd with good grades and bad social skills, but inside I was building worlds, whole continents created from nothing and populated with sprawling cities, brave heroes, and looming threats. These days the continents are barren, the heroes defenseless against spotted produce.

]]> http://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/26018 Thu, 29 Feb 2024 05:10:00 -0500 https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/26018-don-t-think-too-hard-about-avocados 579 - Bell - Stephenson Abandon All Expectations The fish is now thrashing at the surface. Unlike every other captain I have seen, Cuervo uses a net, not a gaff, to bring it aboard. He has enough experience to know that, by the time a full-grown yellowtail is brought to the boat, it has essentially fought itself to death. Rich lets the captain take over, and Cuervo handles the marvelous creature with a tenderness that has been missing from most of my charter-fishing experiences.

]]> http://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/24800 Sun, 31 Dec 2023 05:00:00 -0500 https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/24800-abandon-all-expectations The Salmonella Special In twelve months I hadn’t set foot in a supermarket, hadn’t compared the prices of two brands of bread, hadn’t stood in a checkout line to buy anything, not even a pack of Tic Tacs. Everything I ate had been thrown away. Everything I ate, I’d found first.

]]> http://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/25818 Tue, 31 Oct 2023 04:10:00 -0400 https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/25818-the-salmonella-special I Eat My Words Yes, it’s cruel. An unseemly gluttony. / Trapping the ortolan buntings, forcing / them to gorge in the dark, mouthfeel of seeds / their only comfort in that closed, blank space.

]]> http://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/22066 Sat, 30 Sep 2023 04:05:00 -0400 https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/22066-i-eat-my-words Coffee A family business, a workplace lifeline, a reminder of home

]]> http://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/27202 Fri, 30 Jun 2023 04:00:00 -0400 https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/27202-coffee Curve-Billed Thrasher chera.h.miller@gmail.com The curve-billed thrasher digs the small purple potatoes / from the raised garden beds and ruins them. / He sets them back into the hollows in which they grew, / each speared neatly once through the heart.

]]> http://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/26631 Wed, 31 May 2023 04:00:00 -0400 https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/26631-curve-billed-thrasher Updated Portrait In A Grocery Store Most days I stick to the periphery — / produce and eggs and chicken and cheese — / but tonight I am buying peanut butter, / which here is inexplicably placed / with the popcorn and chips.

]]> http://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/26282 Sun, 31 Jul 2022 04:05:00 -0400 https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/26282-updated-portrait-in-a-grocery-store In Texas, Thinking Of Georgia It must have been forty years ago, / my brother and sisters, our mom and dad, / gathered around the fat television / before our Saturday supper / to watch my skinny father / make the evening news.

]]> http://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/24928 Thu, 30 Jun 2022 04:05:00 -0400 https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/24928-in-texas-thinking-of-georgia Sunbeams

Eating puts us in touch with all that we share with the other animals, and all that sets us apart.

Michael Pollan

]]> http://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/22660 Sat, 30 Apr 2022 04:00:00 -0400 https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/22660-sunbeams