This summer, three of our daughter’s Shannon’s friends came from Washington, D.C., to attend her wedding. Shannon lived in D.C. for six years and made many good friends while she was there. When my husband, Clif, and I visited her, we met and become fond of some of those friends, in particular Matt, Alvaro, and George, the ones who came to her wedding. Matt and Alvaro have even stayed with us in Maine while visiting Shannon.

While in D.C., Shannon earned a reputation of being, shall we say, an indifferent cook. Therefore, at the wedding, when I told Matt and Alvaro what a good cook Shannon had become, they were incredulous. Well, if only they could have had dinner at Shannon’s place on Saturday. It would have made true believers out of them.

Any meal that family and friends cook for me is a good meal. I love to cook, but I also love it when people cook for me, and while I appreciate good food, the act of cooking, the loving-kindness behind it, is just as important to me as the quality of the food. So when Shannon invited Clif and me over for a meal to celebrate the end of my radiation treatment, I immediately said, “Yes, please!”

I have watched Shannon’s progress in the kitchen and have tasted the results, so I knew I was going to get good food. However, I was totally unprepared for the meal she (and Mike!) made for us: Cornish game hens, moist and delicately flavored with lemon and fresh thyme; roasted carrots and fingerling potatoes; a fennel and green bean salad with feta and olives; and, the grand finishing touch, a homemade chocolate cake (Shannon’s specialty).

There couldn’t have been a better meal at any of Maine’s good restaurants, and we have quite a few of them, especially in Portland.

This fine meal also goes to show that where there is a will there is a way. Shannon and Mike live in a very small apartment with a tiny kitchen. They have an oven that cooks on screech—suitable for roasted dishes but not so much for a cake. Therefore, Shannon had to make the cake in two batches and cook the layers one at a time in her toaster oven. The results were everything you could hope for in a cake—light, fluffy, and, most important, not dry.

So when people whine that they can’t cook because their kitchens are too small or they don’t have the right equipment or something isn’t working quite right, I think of Shannon and one word comes to mind: balderdash!

Time and time again, Shannon has proved them wrong.