The story (an urban legend by the way) circulated in the late 1990s via email. I know, because that's where I actually got the recipe back in 1997! Anyway, the story goes that a woman was eating lunch at Neiman Marcus and liked the cookie she had for dessert so much she asked for the recipe. They said no, so she asked if she could buy it instead. They said sure, it's "two-fifty" to which the woman assumed meant $2.50. A month later upon receiving her credit card statement, she discovered they meant $250.00. After complaining to Neiman Marcus and trying to get her money back, to no avail by the way, she decided to get revenge. So she sent the recipe via email and asked people to forward it to all their friends. There's no truth to the story, it was a chain letter that circulated for years. But the cookie recipe is amazing, even if we don't know where it really came from!