Food Notes: 3/11

NEA deadlines, gnocchi, salt, doughnuts, and more

We made gnocchi.

But also today was the deadline for NEA prose applications. The grant, worth $50,000, is awarded every other year — so there’s a long gap between application deadlines. The program accepts around 2% of the 2,000 applicants. And that’s in the best of years.

There’s a pretty good chance the NEA won’t survive the next few weeks of chaotic government cuts. But the same could be said for the Republic, too. I decided to apply anyway.

I’ve been researching this project for the last eighteen months. The concept involves exploring the history of a variety of regional Italian American foods, traveling to thoose cities, and eating the food. Sounds simple, right?

In Red Sauce, I talked about how Italian American dishes became universal across the country, often to the point of becoming synonymous with American cuisine more generally. But it turns out every place Italian immigrants settled developed some kind of hyper local dish. I want to get these stories down before the foods disappear.

I’ve been working on the 8,000 word writing sample for the last few weeks, but felt a hurried pace the last few days. As you might imagine with a project about Italian American immigrant cuisine, it was particularly difficult to avoid using the word “immigrant,” one current administration’s banned words. I managed to avoid the word, and a few others, in those 20 pages.

The application is in and under process now.

So back to the gnocchi. We had some fresh ricotta and mixed it up with four. My wife kneaded it and cut it up. Then she cooked up a butter and sage sauce. This was all her. I had an NEA application to finish.

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Gotta Getta Gouda

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