I met food designer Sarah Masoni at the tail end of New York’s Summer Fancy Food Show, a bi-annual convention for the kinds of prepackaged substances typically found at a neighborhood grocery store. During our conversation at her booth in the “Incubator Village” section, Masoni was hounded by friends and fans who wanted to shake hands, take a picture, and talk shop—an almost celebrity-like status earned from her long history in the business of injecting inventive ideas into the things we eat. As the director of the product and process development program at Oregon State University’s Food Innovation Center, a multidisciplinary partnership with the Oregon Department of Agriculture, Masoni works with food entrepreneurs who want to grow a kernel of an idea into a full-fledged business. At the convention, several of the booths around her were operated by people she has advised, all of whom gushed about her creativity, generosity, and brilliance.