Oh, my dear friends,
Tonight’s regularly scheduled whimsy must be postponed until such time as my hands stop shaking.
Back on New Year’s Eve, when I made the resolution to write that culinary history of the use of eggs in baking, I was not just making up the most eccentric premise I could think of. In November I applied for a culinary writing fellowship, funded by the American Egg Board, for a four-week stay at the Writers Colony at Dairy Hollow Farm in Eureka Springs, Arkansas. The fellowship pays all expenses at the Colony to allow writers to work uninterrupted. I applied for the Egg Board fellowship as a lark, never thinking that anything would come of it. After all, I am not a published writer, save for a few long-archived food articles I wrote for the website foodies.com. I am not a historian. I have nothing to recommend me for such a prize other than a long attention span and the inclination to write a quirky historical.
The application deadline was November 15. At the bottom of the last page of the application was an announcement that all winners would be notified by December 15. December 15 came and went. Ah well, I said, never mind.
Ladies and gentlemen, there it was in today’s new e-mails, buried in the midst of dozens of letters from one of my e-groups. “WCDH American Egg Board Fellowship Results—at last,” said the subject hed. Let’s just get this over with, I thought, preparing to read a press release about someone else’s good news.
It was not a press release. It was not someone else’s good news.
Dear friends, I am the 2004 American Egg Board Fellow. Sometime in the next 12 months, hopefully in May or September, I am headed to the Ozarks for four weeks.
When this really sinks in, I am going to be thrilled and terrified. Now, though, I am just plain stunned.