Many people tell Meredith Goad that she has the best job in Maine, and most of the time she agrees. Maine has a crazy appetite for food stories, and it’s Meredith’s job to satisfy those cravings with juicy tales from chefs, food producers, local farms, and the state’s fast-growing restaurant scene. Her work appears in Wednesday’s Business section and the Sunday Food & Dining section, and occasionally, but not as often as she’d like, on the front page. A native of Memphis, Tenn., Meredith shamelessly flaunts her knowledge of good barbecue in front of her Yankee friends. She earned a bachelor of science degree in wildlife biology from Colorado State University, then studied science writing at the University of Missouri, where she received a master’s degree in journalism. She spent the first 20 years of her career covering science and environmental news, then switched to features in 2004, just as Portland’s food scene was taking off. Her own most memorable meal? Back in the 1980s, on assignment in Finland, she shared a dinner of reindeer and Russian vodka with Maryland’s governor and a bunch of hungry scientists. Meredith lives in Portland, but spends much of her time off back in Tennessee - either visiting family, or in online archives, researching her family’s history.