Cooking with Mary Catherine

I was reading the FoodDay section in the Oregonian this week and a great article caught my eye.
"Scout wins honor with food-bank recipes"

And it goes on to talk about how an outstanding young lady named Mary Catherine Muniz spent dozens of hours composing and testing recipes that could easily be made with ingredients commonly distributed by food banks....then she compiled them into a booklet...and gave it to the West Linn Food Pantry....and was awarded a Gold Award, the Girl Scouts highest honor.

Now I'm sure some of you foodies will not find the recipes in Mary Catherine's book appetizing and I can only imagine the migraine inducing complaining some folks will do with regards to the origin of particular ingredients, health value, and/or degrees of political correctness...fortunately for me I don't have to listen to any of it. What's important here is that a young American citizen took an interest in their community and devoted over 70 hours of time to a wonderfully altruistic activity. When is the last time you did anything like that? How about your kids? Do you encourage them to devote time to social/community service?

Don't worry. I won't go off on my rant about how our country has managed to produce successive generations of weak-minded, weak-bodied individuals with no schooling or interest in the concepts of nationalism, patriotism, or responsibility...

Well I say Bravo!, Mary Catherine. You are precisely the type of person I want my two year old daughter looking toward for inspiration as she develops into a young lady.