Energetic, outgoing and amusing, Audrey O’Neill is a teacher at Oakcrest School, a Catholic all-girls independent school in Northern Virginia. Thanks to her mother, Audrey is also an active member of Opus Dei, receiving ongoing Catholic formation, attending meetings and interacting with other local Catholics.

Born in Houston, Texas, Audrey said her parents divorced and her Guatemalan mother moved her children to her home country where there were ample family connections and support.

“It was a really good decision,” Audrey said. “We used to go to Guatemala every summer to be with cousins and grandparents. … Spanish became our second language. … When we moved there, Mom enrolled us in a Guatemalan all-girls school run by Maryknoll nuns. … It was academically much more difficult than in Houston.”

During those years there, her mother became acquainted with Opus Dei, founded by St. Josemaría Escrivá. As Audrey noted, her mother’s friend encouraged her mother to enroll her family in Opus Dei’s classes of formation.

“We would go on Tuesdays after school and we would receive doctrine classes,” she said. “We had such little formation before, though raised Catholic. We really learned our faith and the reasons to believe and that’s when I was exposed to praying the Rosary. … We learned about giving to society and helping the poor. With the Work (an Opus Dei term) we learned all the doctrines and sacraments, and that was the first time I had seen adoration, benediction, and praying and singing in Latin — the beauty of the liturgy.”

Audrey has been a teacher for many years.

“My teaching started when I was in high school with the Maryknolls and one of the things I had to do in high school was to participate in a charity of our choice, to give back,” she said. “Our choices were to work with the blind, the elderly, the handicapped, the young orphaned or to give catechism classes to the poor inner-city school children. I loved the whole doctrinal point of the faith, and I loved teaching it. I chose catechism. This was the beginning of a journey that has carried me through life.” She added that she has been teaching at Oakcrest for the past five years.

But there is one part of Audrey’s life that is very important: cooking. Why cooking?

“My mom was very particular about her kitchen, the pots and pans, and she loved to cook,” she remembers. “We could not even boil water and were not allowed to tinker in the kitchen. … When I got married, I did not know how to cook. I was good at making salads and dressings but not with baking and other cooking.”

To learn the cooking skills, she remembers watching such cooking shows as The Galloping Gourmet and Julia Child’s The French Chef. When she and her husband were living in Puerto Rico early on in their marriage, she started to watch afternoon cooking shows.

“By then, I could cook some basic things,” she noted. “The pressure cooker was an important gadget back then, but I was afraid to use it. But I discovered the novelty of crockpot cooking, so I was learning by following along. I started experimenting and came up with different things, thanks also to a book I picked up along the way. The more I practiced, the better I got and I became enthusiastic about cooking varied meals for the family. And I enjoyed the cooking shows.”

She said some of her favorite dishes were recipes she learned from Puerto Rico and Guatemala, such as rice and beans, and assorted chicken dishes.

“But I would say that the recipes I found most fascinating were from One Dish Wonders: In the Kitchen with Mary and Martha,” she said. “I came across a recipe for stuffed manicotti, an ‘emergency food,’ one-dish wonder dinner favorite for when a crowd shows up. As a mom with six kids, I needed to find easier recipes, and make them a little my own.”

Here it is:

Stuffed Manicotti (Adapted)

Ingredients:

• One 8-ounce box of manicotti shells — uncooked
• About 2 1/2 pounds skinned and boneless chicken breasts or tenderloins (If they are semi-thawed, they are easier to cut in strips)
• Salt, pepper, oregano/Italian seasonings, garlic powder, onion powder to taste
• One 24-ounce jar of marinara sauce or more as needed
• Shredded mozzarella cheese
• One 9x13-inch Pyrex baking dish 

 

Directions:

Heat the oven to 350 degrees F. Spray the Pyrex dish with non-stick spray.

Cut the chicken into strips, place them in a bowl and season with salt, pepper, oregano/Italian seasonings, garlic powder and onion powder. Eyeball it according to your taste.

Take the uncooked shells and stuff them front/back with the seasoned raw chicken. Use your fingers or a fork to feed the shells. Place them in the dish with some marinara sauce on the bottom of the dish. Keep on stuffing and lining them up in the dish all in a row. Once you have filled the dish, cover the manicotti shells with the sauce, and if you have to add more liquid, add a little water to the jar, swoosh it around, and pour over the shells. Make sure the shells are covered in liquid. You might need another jar of sauce depending on how many you are making.

Cover the shells with shredded mozzarella cheese — some like it smothered in cheese. Cover the dish with aluminum foil.

Place in the oven and cook for 60 minutes. Uncover the dish and let it brown on top. Remove the dish and let stand for 10 minutes or so. Serve with a green vegetable or tossed green salad and a baguette.

(This can be made ahead of time, stored in the fridge or freezer, reheated in the microwave.)

Bon Appétit!