I recently read a cute anecdote about a recipe gone wrong. The story reminded me of some of my own cooking mishaps. You know of my cardboard pizza, but I can promise you that was not the worst of my culinary disasters. I think the worst one would have to be my 10-Alarm Chili. Yes, I said "10."

You see, when we were first married, we were both working full time and going to school at night. It was hard and exhausting, so I blame all mistakes on my lack of sleep. Anyway, I was making a lovely pot of chili when I realized I had no chili powder. Typical! Thinking to save myself a trip to the store, I decided to used crushed chili peppers instead. This is not really a bad idea IF you don't use the same amount of chili peppers as you do chili powder. Actually, I didn't mean to add that much, but the cap came off while I was sprinkling it in, and I just shrugged my shoulders, continued stirring it in, and thought Oh well, Jason likes it spicy. NOT THAT SPICY!

It was inedible. One bite set my mouth, my throat, my nose, my chest, and my stomach on fire. We had to toss the entire pot and call for pizza. I learned a great lesson that day: more is not always better.

Now, if we could just get hold of that concept in all areas of our lives. More money. More time. More cars. Bigger. Better. The problem? We get so caught up in working to attain more that we forget to be thankful for what we have. It's great to have goals, but if we lose all joy and gratitude because of constantly striving for greater things, we're liable to get burned. . .and I'm not talking about chili peppers.