Italian Supper Courtesy of Suzanna!

Faithful Reader, I already told you that Suzanna, our 11-year-old daughter, asked us several days ago if she could prepare this evening's supper by herself. She found the recipes that she wanted to make, and I took her grocery shopping a couple days ago. She made one of the items yesterday afternoon (a salad that we thought would taste better after the flavors of the ingredients had time to meld) and the rest this afternoon. Susan was on hand to answer the occasional question, get down dishes from hard-to-reach shelves, and get things into and out of the hot oven--but otherwise Suzanna did it all on her own: chopping, grating, mixing, opening, adding, slicing, ladling, pouring, scooping, decorating, serving, and cleaning. She did a terrific job, and it was a fantastic meal. Here are more details from the chef herself:

Here is the cold pasta salad that Suzanna made yesterday. It has whole-grain thin spaghetti and chopped raw vegetables tossed in Italian dressing and topped with grated Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese. Isn't it attractive? And it's delicious and nutritious, too.

Suzanna baked and sliced two crusty loaves of bread and placed a couple broiled Italian meatballs on top. Here she is ladling marinara sauce over the meatballs (after which she sprinkled mozzarella cheese on top before serving). It tasted terrific!

Sorry--I just had to take a bite of the sandwich before I snapped a photo.

For dessert, Suzanna created "mice cream": a scoop of vanilla ice cream in a single-serving graham crust decorated to look like a mouse. Ears = Thin Mint cookies from the Girl Scouts; eyes and nose = M&M's; whiskers = chocolate jimmies; mouth and tail = Twizzlers