I’m loving the February issue of Living. There is a terrific section about healthy comfort foods. I dog eared every single page of that section! My first test drive was with chicken parm. This isn’t something I make often, but I do like it.

The first thing I like about the recipe is Martha says to use chicken breast halves. I’ve decided I am going halve my chicken breasts (length-wise, so you cut the thickness in half) all the time from now on. A whole breast is too much for one person, plus they take forever to cook because they are so thick. So, thanks Martha, for making me realize this.

The breading for the chicken is made from Triscuits, which struck me as very non-Martha! I dutifully went out and bought a box though, which made Mr. MarthaAndMe extremely  happy. One of his most favorite snacks in the whole world is Triscuits with American cheese and pepperoni, heated in the toaster oven. This always strikes me as such a 70s suburbia snack! Maybe I should have bought him some Tang to go with it.

You pulverize the crackers in the Cuisinart with parsley, oregano and salt and pepper. Dredge the chicken in egg white, then in the cracker mix. Martha says this recipe makes 6 chicken breast halves. My cracker mix was barely enough to coat 4 halves. Fortunately, I was only feeding 4 people, so I poached the rest of my chicken and saved it for lunchtime salads later in the week.

Martha has you make your own tomato sauce for this – canned diced tomatoes, onion, garlic and salt whizzed in the Cuisinart. Brown the chicken in the oven for 10 min at 425 then pour the sauce over it and sprinkle mozzarella cheese and bake for 20 min. The recipe worked perfectly (other than the glitch with the crackers). The chicken was perfectly cooked. The sauce tasted ok. I served whole wheat spaghetti with this and fortunately I had the foresight to open and heat a can of jarred spaghetti sauce because there wasn’t enough for the pasta. I prefer the jarred sauce. I do like to make my own spaghetti sauce in the summer when my dad brings me a bushel of his tomatoes. It’s a lot of work and you end up with such a small amount, but it tastes wonderful. Martha’s sauce didn’t compare to that summertime sauce or to the jarred kind. That being said, this is a nice, pretty quick, healthy recipe for chicken parm, but I would probably just use jarred sauce next time.