After cuddling up on the couch, admit it you cuddle up with cooking magazines, and examining the free issue I found an entire meal to make: Parmesan Crusted Chicken with a Sage Cream sauce, Roasted Potatoes, and Roasted Green Beans.  Well almost complete, the green beans are my own recipe, and from my own garden, but the other two recipes are from Cuisine at Home.  I found the Cuisine at Home recipes, and corresponding articles describing what to do, easy to understand but a bit confusing when preparing.  The article describes some important aspects of preparing the recipe but these are not detailed in the recipe itself. This format is also present in some of the Cook's Illustrated recipes.  Perhaps others can read the article and recipe at the same time but to me it’s confusing. 

The meal itself was not too difficult to make, but since it had three dishes, four if you count preparation of the sauce, I would not call it an easy meal.  For whatever reason, it also came out a bit greasy.  Now I realize that the chicken was sautéed and that the potatoes and beans were mixed in oil before roasting, but I didn't expect the meal to be as greasy as it was.  One reason may have been that the bread crumbs used to crust the chicken were somewhat large in size.  Generally, when I bread chicken, I use very fine bread crumbs but this recipe specifically stated that the breadcrumbs should vary in size with some being as large as peas.  The variation in breadcrumb size seemed to allow more oil to remain in the gaps.  Well, at least that’s my guess as to why it was greasy.  Despite this, however, the chicken was excellent and both Husband and I enjoyed the meal. 

Now perhaps I could stop here but instead I know I hinted at agony and I don’t want to leave you hanging.  Besides I want to share with you what happened when I went to make this meal.  See I had a problem, perhaps you have had this happen to you at one time or another, when I went to start cooking I couldn't find the magazine and subsequently the recipe that I was supposed to cook! UGH!  I spent about 30 minutes searching all over the house, calling Husband to see where and when he last saw it etc.  But I just couldn't find it.  I really wanted to make the meal so I started doing the prep and thought I'll create my own dish if I have to.  As I prepped, it occurred to me the recipe might be on-line.  Unfortunately, at this point, I didn't even know the name of the magazine other than something with "Home" in it.  Google gave me lots of potentials but none sounded right.  Fortunately, I've been accumulating a list of cooking magazines to eventually list here on Project Foodie (someday soon but not just yet) and I recognized the name Cuisine at Home on that list.  But following the web link my heart sank as I discovered they don't have their recipes on-line.  They did, however, have a scan of a trial issue and my luck prevailed since it was the issue I was looking for.

It may have been interesting to take a set of ingredients, or at least those that I could remember, and create my own meal.  Many people are very skilled at that type of creative cooking - but I'm not sure I am. So I was glad I found the recipe.  This was about two weeks ago and yesterday I also found the original trial issue sitting on my desk under a pile of papers.  Perhaps I'll make another recipe from the issue, perhaps not, but in either case I will try very hard not to loose the issue, or any others, again...