A week of grants and trotters

Where does the time go?

It's already mid-December and I've been terribly remiss in my postings. Needless to say I've had quite a lot on my proverbial plate this month, including a scholarship application for a food writing conference and a grant proposal. The grant proposal is in its final days, meaning that I've been scrutinizing each word, making a lot of coffee and waking up at 4am to fret in the darkness. I'm proposing a food-based oral history project for Northern Maine, a region with a remarkable ethnic diversity and a wonderful mix of the kinds of foods we ought to be preserving. While the food of New England is perhaps less storied than that of, say, the South or Northern California, there's a lot of very cool stuff happening there now and I'm proposing to go and record it.

The rest of the time I'm busying myself with holiday preparations. We've invited a gang of friends over for a Sunday holiday supper and I've been brainstorming and planning for the meal. The words "pig foot" have made it on to my grocery list for several days running--who knew it was so difficult to find a pig foot. I don't want to ruin the surprise for dinner guests who might be reading, but I'll be sure to give a full update on the meal on Monday.