It didn't seem like such a good idea

Claire's been helping me with dinner lately. Anytime she sees me standing at the counter, she starts shoving a chair across the room while hollering "I make dinnah! I make dinnah!" I obligingly shuffle over to make room for the chair. I chop, Claire puts the chopped goods into bowls. We talk about "sharp" and "hot." She sneaks bites. I pretend not to see that her cheeks are bulging with a quarter of a pound of chopped vegetables. She rearranges my silverware drawer, licking all the forks. I don't care.

Then this evening, I was making chicken and dumplings. I'd cooked the chicken and the stock last night, so was pulling chicken off bones while waiting for the stock to melt. "I do it! I make dinnah! I do the chick-kin!" I thought to myself that maybe letting Claire do the chick-kin wasn't such a good idea. Before I could come up with an alternate job, she had her hands in the pile of bones. She pulled out a leg and started peeling off hunks of meat. Figuring that what's done was done, I let her continue. I just kept a close eye for bones in the bowl and made sure she got the pieces with the big bones.

Wouldn't you know that I got a bone in my bowl - and it was from one of the bony pieces that I did. I do believe that Claire might be a chef savant!