how cool is this?

So Mariah, age 14, has decided she wants to cook dinner for us once a week. She has a fairly limited repertoire so far, but is more than willing to expand. Until yesterday, her succesfully completed dishes included chicken parmesan, a spinach/bacon salad and lemon linguine that she got from watching Nigella on tapes my sister sent, and calzone from a kids' cookbook my mom gave her years ago. Last winter, I received Nigella Lawson's Forever Summer, and Mariah started browsing it yesterday for more recipes. She came up with lemony shrimp salad--sort of like a caesar salad with shrimp, only the dressing is (duh) lemony. And then I gave her No Knead to Need, because Suzanne Dunaway's rosemary filoncino is not only easy but to die for. And then she made a peach/raspberry crisp from a recipe my mom gave her, and we ate like royalty. She's now promised to make dinner every Monday. OK, so I have to take her shopping and be around in case of need (she still has trouble taking things out of the oven), but still--I'll take it. Especially because she likes to eat salad that she makes, and is otherwise close to allergic to vegetables.