About this project

Three years ago, I moved to Texas after spending my entire life in the Midwest. This summer, I will been spending 6 weeks traveling through Wisconsin, Minnesota and Iowa researching a cookbook and trying to figure out whether or not leaving was a mistake.

I have three goals with the cookbook: 1. to provide a younger generation's view of the North-Central Midwest and its cooking, as most books on the subject seem dated to me; 2. to provide a broader view of Midwestern cuisine that includes newer immigrant groups, like Hmong and Somalis, and 3. to provide a personal account of a road trip through Wisconsin, Iowa and Minnesota.

I intend to leave for Wisconsin July 1 and return to Texas in early-mid August. I am currently in the process of developing an itinerary of interviews to conduct as well as food festivals and restaurants to visit, and expect my schedule to be rather packed.

While I do have significant food writing experience (I am an associate editor at http://www.eatmedaily.com, and have written a cookbook before that was published through college's press), this is my first cookbook intended for widespread publication. While I intend to try to get a publishers advance to support the actual writing of the cookbook, including recipe development, I don't think I could acquire an agent without having a good chunk of the research completed.

So what do you say? Any amount of money to help me offset the cost of my research would be incredibly valuable to me, and regardless of whether I find a publisher or not I intend to make the results available, either via self-publishing or a blog. Thanks for your interest.