While home, my sister joined me in the challenge. Together, we were going to attempt to learn how to cook! Or, at least attempt to make something slightly edible. It happened to be Valentine's Day, so she was thinking of making a perfect Valentines dinner for her fiancé, since it was much too cold to leave the house for more than 30 seconds at a time.
At first, this seemed like a piece of cake; we'd just whip up a tastebud popping, joy happening, bring peace to world inducing meal. But actual cooking is no pouring fake cheese over (probably fake) pasta and nuking it for a couple of minutes to get mac and cheese. Unfortunately, we were going to have to cut vegetables, pre-heat the oven, and keep from burning our house down. This may not seem like much, but between my sister and I, we've combined to give many a chin dropping expressions in the kitchen. To give a little taste of this, my sister once tried to make tea. A simple task, right? Wrong. Instead of turning the stove flame on, she just turned on the gas. Leaving us in a similar situation Cousin Eddie gave to Clark Griswold in Christmas Vacation: "I pity the person who lights a match within ten yards of it." Luckily for us, my mom smelt danger before any Uncle Lewis could light his stogie and blow us all up. I'm sure this happens to the best chefs in the world. Rachel Ray and Guy Fieri have both done this thousands of times, probably.
But like the great Elsa once belted, "The past is in the past!" We were determined to make the best meal ever or die trying (Dying was an actual possibility, though). The first step? Crack open the cook books and find the inspirational meal. After around an hour of looking through every page of different books, it was time for a snack break. Looking up meals really works up an appetite. Especially the ones with the pictures of the mouth-watering dinners. Cook books sure know how to make you hungry.
After our "break," it was running close to 4pm, and we didn't have a dish or ingredients for anything. At this point, my mom decided to take over. She wasn't about to be a participant in a failed experiment. Like all great moms, she was somehow able to turn our disappointment into a positive. Instead of saying we failed and should never think about entering the kitchen again, she offered up the idea of making a dessert instead. We could do this - we were back!
My sister went straight to her favorite blog to track a simple but exquisite dessert (I was personally shocked she didn't come here. But whatever.). Luckily, she found something fast that looked feasible. In no time, sleeves were pushed up, Italian aprons were on to provide inspiration, and we were rolling out dough. We felt like real contestants on Hell's Kitchen with Ramsay yelling at us in the background. 
The best part about this dessert was the fact that it only needed 10 minutes in the oven. Not even long enough for us to forget about it! While taking them out of the oven, we knew we made something amazing! The sweet smell of Nutella, strawberries, peanut butter, and sugar overtook the kitchen, instead of gas and a fire. The two of us were on our way to stardom! 
After handing them out like Ralphie giving his teacher the fruit basket in The Christmas Story, we were self-proclaimed champs of the kitchen! With visions of franchising bakeries devoted to this delicacy dancing through our heads, my sister looked at them one more time and said, "Huh, I think all we did was just make an Uncrustable." True. She was right. Although we just made a simple frozen lunch, we still made something! And the best part, we didn't burn anything down - only set off the fire alarm once or twice. In our minds, we were champs! A sibling duo that can take down any challenge thrown our way!
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