Alan says I have to blog about this and I am an obedient sort of wife. [Shut up, Bo, I hear you laughing.]

Saturday morning Alan and I watched a couple of shows on Food Network - 30 Minute Meals, because how can you not love Rachael Ray? She's so cute! and perky! and makes me want to put EVOO in everything! even martinis! and ice cream! Seriously, she's adorable. After 30 Minute Meals, Everyday Italian is on. I don't like that show nearly as well, for a couple of reasons. One, some of the recipes start out sounding pretty good but sooner or later something foul happens to them (like eggplant or cauliflower) that makes me cringe, and two, Giada's personal appearance bothers me. She's very beautiful, no doubt, but she has this inordinately long, slender neck with a big bobblehead perched on top, and watching her show I can never quite shake the feeling that, any minute now, she will turn back abruptly to check her sauce, we'll hear an awful snap, and that head will just roll off onto her trendy granite countertops, and bounce around, and some show minion will have to rush out with the heavy-duty tongs to save the day.

But that's not what I started to tell you about; I was gonna share an easy, tasty dessert recipe. As Rachael would say, it's deee-LISH! I watched Giada make these orange/nut squares and as I was watching, I had a familiar feeling: her basic idea was great, her methods were sound, but she kept going so far down the sweet path that the eventual result made my teeth hurt just thinking about it. This has happened before, most memorably when she made amaretto ice-cream floats, also with chocolate-hazelnut gelato. So anyway we were watching and I said arrogantly to Alan, "I can make that. Only MINE will be better." And I did. And it was.

So here is a recipe for great dessert bars, inspired by, stolen from and Helly-improved upon Giada De Laurentiis.

Start with a roll of Pillsbury sugar cookie dough. Set it out at room temperature for 10 minutes or so to make it easier to work with. Preheat your oven according to package directions (I think it's 350).

Take a rectangular cookie sheet and give it a quick spurt of non-stick spray or cover it with aluminum foil. I used both - er, cover with the foil first, then spray that. You're going to spread the cookie dough out into a flat sheet, like pizza dough. Giada used her hands but I thought that would be too sticky, or require too much oil to not be sticky, so I took a sheet of plastic wrap, put it over the dough, and rolled it out. This is the Helly touch: okay, yeah, so I rolled it out using a Rolling Rock bottle (seriously. I did.) but if you have a rolling pin you can use that too. Take time and get it even. Burnt sugar cookie is teh nasty.

Stick that in the oven to bake - oh, er, remove your Rolling Rock bottle and plastic wrap first. While that's going, take another small pan and toast some walnut pieces and slivered almonds. You can buy them whole and chop them if you want, but Planters sells them in small, perfect sized bags already in pieces/slivered, respectively. Those are gonna toast at the same temp as the cookie dough bakes, but only for about 8 minutes. So keep a watch or a sniff out on those, don't forget and burn your nuts. Sprocket cautions against nut-burn.

Melt some Nestle Toll-House morsels. Giada melted an entire bag over the stove in a double boiler (more on this later) but I'm too lazy to do things the difficult way when there's an easy way, so I shook about 1/4 of the bag into a small Pyrex dish and microwaved it. Microwave the chips for 10 - 15 seconds at a time and stir them with a spatula in between microwavings - you want the chocolate smooth and melted but if you 'wave them too long at a time, sections of the chocolate will burn and smell nasty. Trust me on this. It probably won't take much more than a minute total, depending on your microwave, but once it's at the point that you can easily stir it, like frosting, that's enough. Leave it alone for now and shake your nut pan.

Nothing to do now until your cookie dough is golden brown and lovely.

Now, here Giada and I part ways. She felt that orange marmalade was an appropriate additive at this point, but an icky-sweet uber-sugared gel on top of baked sugar topped with chocolate made me heave. I felt that (and it was upon this point that I spoke arrogantly to Alan) in lieu of orange marmalade, lemon curd would be PERFECT. The tart citrus would be a perfect complement to the sweets and who doesn't love the buttery smoothness of lemon curd??? So earlier, on the same shopping expedition whereby we obtained cookie dough, nut pieces and Nestle Toll-House morsels, I bought a 10-oz. jar of luscious Dickenson's Lemon Curd.

You don't have to wait for the cookie to cool; leave it in the pan and using a small spatula, 'frost' the surface with the lemon curd. It happens that the 10-oz jar was the perfect size for my 9" x 13" cookie sheet: it was enough to generously coat the entire surface without skimpy spots, nor did we have a couple teaspoons left mouldering in the jar. But if yours is bigger or smaller, adjust accordingly.

Take the toasted nut pieces and scatter them over the surface. It doesn't have to be a perfect, artistic arrangement; all you're trying to do is make sure there's a bit of nutty goodness on any given slice.

Now, remember that chocolate we left in the microwave? Hit it for 6 seconds or so (depending on your microwave) and give it a stir. Then using a fork or your spatula (I used a spatula, but I have an itty-bitty one that made fine lines easy) drizzle melted chocolate over the top. Here is where I have An Issue with Giada: she went to all the trouble to use a double boiler to melt her chocolate and she melted the WHOLE PACK of Toll House morsels, and then she put like three hairline chocolate dribbles on the whole damn dessert. I wasn't gonna frost it in an inch of chocolate, don't misunderstand me, but if you're gonna put some damn chocolate, I say put it there for flavor, not AESTHETICS! So I put more, but in teeny tiny drizzles so that they crisscrossed all over but the chocolate itself was in small lines, not huge gobs. I used about 1/4 of the package of morsels, melted.

That's it. Cut them into bars or into tastes if you're like me and believe dessert doesn't count as calories so long as it's in tiny bites and not a big whole wedge. They're good warm but even better chilled.

Alan liked them immensely and wants to make frequent preparation of lemon bars a condition of our marriage. He took some to work today. That's about it, other than I scorn you, Giada! You and your orange-marmalade-eatin' self! Lemon curd. I'm tellin' you. You won't be sorry.