Pardon the cheesy title - I could not resist.

In college I rarely cooked meals. I either ate something really simple (hamburger helper, anyone?) or I went out to eat. Needless to say, I gained a lot of weight the first couple years in college. The end of my junior year I realized that if calories consumed were more than calories spent, I gained weight. I started eating healthy and counting calories.

Fortunately, this led me to start actually cooking --- unfortunately it led me to have very boring meal selections. Baked chicken, broiled fish, brown rice, steamed veggies, and other very simple and very lite foods were a part of my weekly regulars. I was never adventurous in the kitchen, I rarely looked up recipes unless they were from a health Web site and had nutritional information. That limited me severely.

At some point I started cooking for my now-husband (then boyfriend). He would quickly tire of my baked chicken, so I started branching out a little and found recipes that were not from health Web sites (but did still have nutritional content!). I know, I was a maniac. After he'd shower me with compliments on my more risky meals, it inspired me to explore more.

My cousin (and roommate at the time), Liz, got me a subscription to the Rachael Ray Magazine back when it first came out in 2006. I smiled, and thanked her for noticing that I was learning to cook, but secretly I was disappointed because Rachel not only left out nutritional content --- but she also cooked with butter and olive oil! Quel Horreur!

Well, let's just say Liz opened up a floodgate. By that point I was no longer trying to lose weight, instead I was (and still am) just maintaining my current weight. That meant that using butter or olive oil was OK and hubby LOVED that fact. Then I got the Bon Appetit subscription from my sister, and it just added fuel to the fire. From that point on, I made dinner mostly every night and I tried at least one new recipe a week. I'm still doing it and loving it and finding recipes from all sorts of places.

Despite my excitement for new recipes, and despite the fact that I still try new things very often, I've been very timid in creating my own recipes. I have, in the recent past, modified recipes with success. Sometimes even changing a recipe quite drastically, but I still needed it written down and in front of me. And when it comes to baking, I'm even more weary of tweaking.

That is, until this weekend. I've started this new thing where every Sunday afternoon I bake a dessert and then hubby and I nibble on it all week long after dinner. We used to eat ice cream most nights, but now that we're no longer in Louisiana and there's no Blue Bell Ice Cream - well, it just aint the same. So this Sunday I'm looking through my cookbook trying to decide on what to make (well, more trying to figure what I have on hand that I can make) when I decided on peanut butter cookies.

I had a huge bag of marshmallows from last week's easy Rice Krispy Treats dessert, and I was really itching to include them. So I decided I'd make a cookie "pie" and then top it with marshmallows and chocolate chips. I put things in the bowl, in the oven, went through all the steps... and... well... it came out.... as a disaster!

My husband says I can only call it a disaster if it was so bad that we threw it away, and we didn't have to, so it wasn't a disaster per se, but it was not as I intended it to be. Regardless, I know what I did wrong, and I know what needs to be done right, so you can bet your bottom dollar that I will post this recipe as a success very soon!

So... I want to hear your messes and successes! SPILL! Eye-wink

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