Calculator confirms that it's one thousand, three hundred thirty-three!

Unfortunately the total of 1,333 was not the amount of money Blaine won with his silly lottery numbers, which ended up being a bust as only 1 of 36 matched the winning picks in Saturday's Lotto drawing.

The big total also was not the offensive yardage generated Sunday by superstar Peyton Manning and the undefeated Indianapolis Colts (12-0), who are crushing opponents at every turn this season.  And it wasn't the number of new Bears fans who came out of the woodwork after the team finally beat Green Bay at Soldier Field for its eighth-straight victory after a 1-3 start.

One thousand, three hundred thirty-three was the absurdly large number of items baked by the four Picks girls on Saturday and Sunday in their annual baking extravaganza, squashing their previous record of 1,106 set two years ago (see Week 16 Picks story from 2003).  It was somewhat of a going-away party for the old and dilapidated kitchen, which will be torn down to the studs, redesigned and rebuilt in the spring for even better production.

The high-powered female baking machine proved to be most effective without male involvement, as brief appearances by Blaine and Trevor seemed to slow production.  An alleged "lack of communication" led to Blaine burning white chocolate chips and dumping them into a pot of boiling water, while Trevor's dipped shortbread assembly line work led to disappearing cookies as they failed to reach the end after being lost in his mouth.  Best that the boys stay out of the way because the record number could have been higher.

From largest to smallest, the 13 varieties of tasty snacks were chocolate covered pretzels (368), chocolate chip cookies (156), harvest spiced nuts (120), cracker candy (116), fudge (96), oatmeal candy (86), peanut butter blossoms (83), white chocolate raspberry cookies (69), butterscotch drops (51), dipped shortbread cookies (51), jam thumbprints (47), crunchy fudge sandwiches (45) and lemon pistachio biscottis (45).

The teenage girls were directed in the kitchen as always by the masterful QT Pie, voted America's best baker this year in a limited local poll.  Ali's crunching of the Corn Flakes created the butterscotch drops, and she loved rolling balls of dough in the egg whites for the jam thumbprints.  Of course the actual thumbprints were Nicki's, and Lil Girl also took charge of the chocolate chip cookies.  D.J.'s fancy touch and design work was best displayed in the oatmeal candy and white chocolate raspberry cookies, which turned out to be the greatest ever, according to at least one biased judge.