The time of divine dining inspiration is upon us again. Every January a slew of wizards from around the food world raise their whisk-wands and peer into crystal cheese balls to prognosticate food trends.

Professional wine and food writers [ahem] morph into vittles and vin visionaries; TV and radio broadcasters opine about what will be munched and slurped in the New Year; and even the stainless-steeled industrialized National Restaurant Association peeks into the intestines of a sacrificial lamb to soothsay what will be plated and poured. All have ideas about the coming food trends.

And all, it seems, cannot let a year go by without making some sort of portentous revelation about the potato.

Fries will be on everyone’s lips in 2012. But forget using that passé corn oil for frying potatoes. Instead, we will see the spuds peeled and cut into skinny sticks that are fried in beef fat or duck fat or pork fat. And some eateries plan to allow diners to design their own baked potatoes. (Seems like a good idea, but such indulgence could go berserk and get scary. I, for one, never want to hear a waiter ask: “Would you like nuts with that hot fudge topping, madam?”)

The James Beard Foundation says we will all pay greater attention to doughnuts. And because of the vampire frenzy that tooth-marked 2011 (The Twilight Saga, True Blood, etc.), chefs have begun incorporating blood into their dishes – blood pancakes, sauces thickened with blood and, I’m sorry to report, et cetera.

ABC News predicts diva status for the grilled cheese sandwich. No more plastic-wrapped synthetic cheese melted between two slices of white bread. Instead, my personal comfort food gets swanked up with elegant stuff like Époisses (a strong-smelling cow’s milk cheese that the legendary epicure Brillat-Savarin termed “the king of all cheeses”) tucked inside thick slices of freshly baked cinnamon-raisin-oatmeal bread.

And yes, if one precedent-setting restaurant in San Francisco can inspire others to mimic its chic paradigm, there will be grilled-cheese-sandwich-infused vodka available at the bar.

The National Restaurant Association fortune-tells that by 2014 there will be 1.4 million jobs available in the culinary industry. Apparently a great many of us have decided to enroll in professional cooking schools. And while slaving over hot stoves in order to ace a diploma might seem the goal, the truth is, the secret desire – what the novice nosh-makers really want – is to be discovered as the next Bobby Flay or Paula Deen or Masaharu Morimoto and to star in their own Food Network show.

Speaking of the Food Network: From that popular cable channel we hear that Peruvian food will be the next craze. I have a question. Just exactly what is Peruvian food?

As the three staples of Peruvian cuisine are corn, potatoes and beans and as there are very few honest-to-God ancient Incans still around, the cooking techniques in Peru have been heavily influenced for centuries by immigrants from Spain, China, Africa, Italy and Japan. So, I ask again, Just what is Peruvian food?

No such conundrum exists with Korean food, however, and it too wins an eminent position on the 2012 food trend list. This will be the “Year of Kimchi,” say a rash of gustatory pundits. The pungent, fermented cabbage will replace sauerkraut on your Reuben sandwich and take the place of iceberg lettuce on your hamburger.

Additionally, the world will go gaga over the Korean dish called bibimbap. Translation of bibimbap is “mixed meal,” and the recipe seems simple enough: Fill a bowl with warm rice, spoon over some sautéed vegetables and sliced beef, top with chili pepper paste and a fried egg. The cute part is to make sure everything’s arranged so that the color of each item is seen in the bowl before the diner mashes everything together.

National Public Radio has ordained that we will all clomp off into woods to go foraging. It is in the name of self-reliance and survivalist thinking that we’ll do this. Just imagine, what if we woke tomorrow to find H*E*B had disappeared? So, pull on those L. L. Bean Alpine Trekkers and let’s get out there and start hunting for pawpaws and dandelion greens. We’ll also need some pine needles (to make the sauce for wild boar), pinon nuts, chickweed, violets, ramps, poke salad, fiddleheads, nettles and giant puffballs (wild mushrooms that measure 12-inches in diameter and are best when sautéed in tamari).

What else?

* Eating breakfast will become more hip, with savory dishes (e.g. pigs in blankets, pork chops, filet mignon and offal meats such as sweetbreads and veal hearts) served with your orange juice rather than something sweet (cinnamon buns, French toast, blueberry pancakes).

* We will see a traffic jam of food trucks – as well as all manner of street food sold from kiosks, tents, stands, umbrella-topped pushcarts – parked out on the curbs of America. A recent survey conducted by the National Restaurant Association reported that 59 percent of us would be happy to eat on the street.

* Coupon-clipping continues to find as many eager enthusiasts as scrapbooking and blogging.

* A simple bowl of ice cream will be terrorized by chefs who insist the world is ready for horseradish or foie gras to be tossed into the ice cream maker.

* We will find the supermarket lanes blocked by hordes of people with carts askew stalled for the purpose of reading every label on every product before buying.

Not that I can say for certain that any of these food trends will prove to be valid, but I do hold out hope for the predicted future of fish skins. Culinary gurus say the skin’s the thing this year, and the best candidates for getting a crispy, crackly skin out of a hot-oiled pan are sea bass, sturgeon and salmon. No catfish, the skin’s too tough. And no trout, the skin’s as flimsy as a two-timer’s story about where he’s been all night.