Heat and hope and attention

About the author

Sam van Zweden

Sam van Zweden is a non-fiction writer interested in food, memory, mental health and the body. Her debut book, Eating with My Mouth Open,...

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Eat me in the city

MemoirThe idea of having my body lovingly prepared and cooked as a feast for friends seems like a particularly beautiful death to me, and one that needs careful planning and consideration.

EssayAlthough non-dairy milks are hardly unique to the US, there seemed something distinctly ‘American’ about the consumerist techno-utopianism of engineered nutrition. In its seductive promises and dazzling abundance, in its massification and drive for profit, and its bold-yet-arrogant ambition, the world of plant milks became a metonym for everything I loved and loathed about US culture. Give me a carton of Blue Diamond Almond Breeze and you have given me America.

The party for Crabs

FictionAs she lists the night’s specials, Claire attempts to figure out the party’s dynamic. Shared complexions make the elegant woman the little girl’s mother, surely. It’s the women’s relationship she can’t figure out. University friends? Distant cousins? Their conversation seems too polite for either. Unnatural.