Try It This Weekend Thursday - Blue Cheese Coleslaw

There’s nothing better than icy cold coleslaw to go with anything off the grill.  There’s as many versions of coleslaw as there are families in our great country.  Some like a creamy coleslaw, some like a vinaigrette style coleslaw.  I have to say I fall firmly in the creamy coleslaw camp.  There’s a great little Coney place in this area that has delicious, tangy and sweet slaw that I just can’t seem to replicate.   So one day, when I was craving blue cheese, I came across a recipe for blue cheese coleslaw and just had to try it.  Well, it turned out to be a lot of work, so if I ever wanted to have it again, I had to modify the recipe to make it faster and easier to make.  Here’s the result of my experimentation:

2 one pound bags of coleslaw mix (with the bags of lettuce in the vegetable section)

2 cups mayonnaise (16 oz.)

¼ cup Dijon mustard

2 T. whole grain mustard

2 T. apple cider vinegar

1 t. celery salt

½ t. kosher salt

½ t. black pepper

1 ½ cups crumbled Roquefort blue cheese (6 oz.)

In a large bowl, empty both bags of coleslaw mix.

In a medium bowl, whisk together the mayonnaise, both mustards, vinegar, celery salt, kosher salt and pepper.  Pour the dressing over the coleslaw mix and toss to moisten well.  Add crumbled blue cheese and toss together.  Cover the bowl and refrigerate for several hours to allow the flavors to meld together.  Serve cold or at room temperature.

A few tips about this recipe: 

1)    You can make your own coleslaw mix if you don’t want to buy it by using a food processor or mandolin to slice ½ head of green cabbage, ½ head of red cabbage and 4 large carrots. 

2)    I have trouble finding plain whole grain mustard at my grocery store, so I use a fancy whole grain mustard with garlic.  Really, everything is better with garlic anyhow. 

3)    If you don’t keep kosher salt on-hand, you can use regular table salt, but I would recommend decreasing the amount to slightly less than ½ teaspoon…you might find it too salty otherwise (remember, you can always add more salt to suit your taste, you can’t take it out!). 

4)    Lastly, when you first mix the dressing with the coleslaw mix, it doesn’t look very creamy, in fact, it may look barely moistened, but have patience, by the time you get it out of the refrigerator to serve, it’ll be very creamy.

The Amen Family - How It All Started (Part IV)

Now you know we started dating in the autumn of 1999.  Here’s a very brief recap of the next 7 years:

November 1999 - Mr. Amen travels to MI to meet my family at Thanksgiving.
December 2000 – I travel to Mr. Amen’s home country at Christmas to meet his family.

March 2001 – I buy a house in a northern suburb of Tulsa.

May 2001 – We complete our MBAs and graduate from O.RU together.  I start my new job.

August 2001 – Mr. Amen starts his new job (work visa snafu delayed his start date).

February 2002 – Mr. Amen moves out of his grandma’s house and into his own apartment.

July 2003 – I move to MI to be closer to family.  We continue dating long-distance.

September 2006 – Mr. Amen decides that he is going to move back to his home country in March of 2007, about six months before his work visa was set to expire.

Phew!  That was a fast 7 years.

I had planned a trip to Tulsa for Thanksgiving weekend 2006.  A couple days before leaving, Mr. Amen called me and said that we were invited to attend an engagement party on the Friday of that weekend.

Maybe I should back up for a moment.  Over the years, Mr. Amen and I had talked about getting married.  I had known from very early in our relationship that I wanted to marry him.  He, however, was much slower in reaching the conclusion that he wanted to marry me.  He knew he wanted to get married, he just wasn’t sure about timing, me, etc.  Right when I was beginning to think he never was going to want to marry me, he dropped a bomb on me - in September 2006 he told me he was planning on moving back to his home country.  If he moved back, there was virtually no chance we would ever marry.  It was virtually certain we wouldn’t continue our relationship if that happened.  (I could swing a $275 flight to Tulsa every few months …an $800 flight to Latin America every few months, was not financially feasible.)

Understandably, I was upset at his decision.  I had known for quite some time that I was supposed to marry this man.  If things didn’t work out, I was not willing to start over again in a new relationship.  It was Mr. Amen or the religious life for me.  (I had secretly always wanted to be a nun – those habits, the prayer life, helping people, being married to Christ!)  My decision was to enjoy the time we had left together and leave it in God’s hands.  If God really wanted us together, He would have to speak to Mr. Amen, I wasn’t going to mention my disappointment or frustration and I would not try to change his mind.

In the meantime, his younger cousin was still with her high school boyfriend and in the first semester of her senior year of college.  Her boyfriend was a junior in college.  They were the newly engaged couple.

Back to where I left off…I was so upset I could barely speak.  I told him that I didn’t want to go to the engagement party.  He was free to go, I would stay behind and maybe go out with some other friends that night.  I was thrilled for the happy couple, but I just couldn’t bring myself to go out in public and celebrate with them. 

(It’s very similar to the feeling us IFs have when we hear a pregnancy announcement – complete joy for the new parents, but a sinking, “Why not me?” feeling for ourselves.  We need some time to process our feelings and pain and then we put on our happy face and congratulate them.  But we need that private time to get to the happy place.  It may take minutes to get there, it may take much, much longer to compose ourselves enough that our congratulations are sincere, but for most of us, we do get there eventually.)

Mr. Amen decided he’d rather spend the evening with me.  We planned to go to a movie.  There was a new Br.ad P.itt movie out, Ba.bel, that we wanted to see.  If you haven’t seen that movie, it is worth seeing, but, I warn you, it is very emotionally intense (and not at all suitable for children).  So intense, in fact, that Mr. Amen had to step out of the theatre several times and wanted to leave entirely.  I was really into the movie and refused to leave.

(If you’ve never seen the movie, it’s all about the miscommunications and turmoil that happen around the world because we don’t speak the same language and not just verbally.  In one of the several intertwined storyline, the character played by Br.ad P.itt is a husband whose wife has been accidentally shot in rural Morocco.  He is desperately trying to get proper medical attention for his wife, who is fading fast.  “Desperately” is a total and complete understatement.)

After the movie ended and as we approached the car, Mr. Amen came around the passenger side with me to open my door, like he always did.  I was completely caught off-guard when he enveloped me in a big bear hug and said, “Don’t ever leave me!”

I replied, “I’m not leaving you.  You’re leaving me, remember?”

He said, “No, I’m not.  I can’t be without you.  We have to be together.”

And with that, we were effectively engaged.  Next steps was for Mr. Amen to tell his mother that he was not moving back home and that he was marrying me.  He went on a trip to Vegas at Christmas with his mom and broke the news there. 

The official engagement happened a couple months later.  He planned a trip to Michigan to speak with my parents and ask their permission.  I picked him up at the airport and we went back to my parents’ house.  He asked them out to brunch and I stayed behind.  He very politely told my parents that he loved me and that I loved him and he wanted their permission to marry me.  (Gotta love how he doesn’t beat around the bush!)  My parents approved.  That night we went out to my favorite Italian restaurant.  A few minutes after we sat down, he dropped to one knee and proposed to me with my grandmother’s ring* and a beautiful diamond necklace.  I said yes, the other people at the restaurant cheered, and I cried throughout the rest of the meal.  Mr. Amen said he was surprisingly nervous, even though he knew I’d say yes.

*I had wanted to use my paternal grandmother’s wedding set when I got married.  As her eldest granddaughter, I was to inherit her wedding set and a pearl ring my grandfather had given her.  Unfortunately, my uncle “lost” the wedding set.  My mother offered me my maternal grandmother’s wedding set, and since I am a lover of all the old family heirlooms, I was thrilled to have it and had told Mr. Amen that it was available.

Try It This Weekend Thursday: Curry Chicken Salad

Looks like summer is finally here, or as I like to call it Chicken Salad Season!  Chicken salad is such a go-to meal for me in the summer - easy to throw together and very portable.  It last several days in the refrigerator and you can customize the ingredients based on what you have on hand or what's in season. 

This is one of my favorite chicken salad recipes because it’s a little unexpected, but nonetheless delicious.  Without celery in the recipe, the pecans provide a nice crunch and the grapes add pops of sweetness to each bite.

As your garden starts to really produce cucumbers and you’re struggling to use them up (how many jars of pickles do you really need?!?), try this:  slice the cucumber in half lengthwise, use a spoon to scoop out the seeds, and use the cucumber in place of bread, pita or lawash wrap.  When I was pregnant with Junior, I developed gestational diabetes and I couldn’t eat 2 slices of bread together without having a bad effect on my blood sugar numbers.  I started replacing bread with cucumbers in all my sandwiches. Yummmm…

½ cup mayonnaise

1 T. honey

1 t. curry powder

2 cups cooked chicken (shredded or cubed)

1 cup halved green grapes

½ cup chopped pecans

4 green onions, chopped

4 pita breads, halved

Lettuce (optional)

In a bowl, combine mayonnaise, honey and curry powder.  Stir in the chicken, grapes, pecans and green onions.  Line the pita halves with lettuce (if desired), scoop ½ cup chicken mixture into each pitta half.  Enjoy!

The Amen Family - How It All Started (Part III)

The following Monday evening, I was sitting with Grace again in the front row of the lecture hall for our Graduate Managerial Accounting class, when Mr. Amen walked in and sat directly across the semi-circle from me.  “Ugh, how am I supposed to concentrate in this class with that cute guy sitting right in front of me?”  I whined to Grace.  She just laughed.

The next night, I was sitting in the 4^th row of our Graduate Marketing class when he walked in and sat right in front of me.  Then, our professor asked us to form groups of 4 for that semester’s team project.  I paired up with the girl next to me; Mr. Amen paired up with the guy next to him; they turned around and we formed a group of four.  Finally, a perfect excuse to talk to him!

Our first conversation was a little tense.  We started talking and I asked him where he was from.  He told me his country’s name and asked me if I knew where it was.  I said I did.  He didn’t believe me.  He pulled out his daily planner that had a world map on the inside cover and asked me to point out his country on the map.  I quickly snatched the planner from his hands and pointed to his country.  He seemed surprised I had gotten it right.  Years later, Mr. Amen divulged that he too had noticed me right away, but refused to like me until he knew I was smart.  When I pointed his country out on that map, he allowed himself to like me.

Soon, we began hanging out outside of class with other friends.  One evening in late October, a group of friends had made plans to go to a haunted house for fun ahead of Halloween (what were we thinking?!).  At the last minute everyone backed out of the outing except Mr. Amen and me.  We ended up going together anyhow and had a fun time together.  We picked up dinner on our way back and watched a movie at my apartment.  It was our first unofficial “date”.

He asked me out for the following weekend on a real date.  We were going to the movies.  We planned on seeing a Br.ad Pi.tt movie, Se.ven Yea,rs in Tib.et, but when we got to the theatre it wasn’t showing there.  We had gone to the wrong theatre.  So we decided to see Br.ad Pi.tt in Fig.ht Cl.ub instead.  Not exactly a first date movie, but that’s what we saw.  After the movie we stopped at So.nic for a bite to eat.  Mr. Amen’s car wouldn’t start when we tried to leave.  We had to get some guys to help him push it so I could pop the clutch to start the engine.  After a quick detour to his uncle’s house to pick up a different vehicle, he took me home.  As he dropped me off he asked me out again.  He was surprised I was willing to take the chance on seeing him again after the car trouble.  Really?!?!  I would have gladly jumped in the fiery furnace with Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego for the chance to go out with him again. J

That’s how we began our dating relationship…next I’ll tell you about the proposal.

The Amen Family - How It All Started (Part II)

Around the same time I was getting ready to move to OK, Mr. Amen was finishing up his undergraduate college experience as well.  He is from Latin America originally and had never thought of moving to the US.  His future plans included graduate school at a university in Chile.  His uncle lived in Tulsa and had invited him to come up for a semester to study at the En.glish Lan.guage Ins.titute (ELI) at O.RU.  He could stay with his uncle, use his uncle’s car and improve his English language skills.  Mr. Amen’s mother encouraged him to come to Tulsa, so he did.

He arrived in Tulsa in January 1999 and started attending O.RU’s E.LI.  His English was already light-years ahead of his classmates.  The professors encouraged him to apply to the graduate school of business at O.RU for his MBA.  He thought, why not?  Mr. Amen took the GMAT, applied and was accepted.  He was set to begin classes in the fall semester 1999. 

Good thing he had no intention of staying in the US!

During the spring and summer semesters, I had some catching up to do in business courses.  I took more than a full load to complete the equivalent of an undergraduate major in business.  On the first day of classes in January 1999 I met a wonderful friend, “Grace”. Grace, her husband and her parents would become my surrogate family during my time in Tulsa. 

It was a Thursday, the evening of my first class in August 1999, and I was sitting in the front row of the lecture hall with Grace.  I was watching for another friend to arrive when I turned around and looked over my left shoulder toward the rear of the room.  That’s when I saw Mr. Amen.  He was leaning back in his chair, trying to look nonchalant.  He was wearing dress pants, a button down dress shirt with a sweater vest and a big, ugly grandpa tie.

“Who’s that cute guy over there?” I asked Grace quietly, nodding my head in his direction.

“I don’t know, must be new,” Grace answered.  “Go talk to him.”

“No way!  He’s way too cute to talk to,” my face must’ve turned 50 shades of red as I responded.

Yup, I was smitten.  From the very first moment I saw him.  Love at first sight.  Well, if not love, at least intense like!

7 Quick Takes (1)

1

I actually had to wear my sunglasses when I went out for lunch today.  It’s nice to see our old friend, the sun.  It’s been awhile around these parts.

2

Junior, who has always been a great sleeper, has been getting up during the night for the past month and this momma is tired.  We’ve pretty much eliminated the middle of the night wakings, now we need to work on the early morning wakings.  What do I mean by early morning wakings?  Consistenly at 4:30am Junior gets out of bed, turns on his light and runs into our bedroom whilst shouting, “Whatcha doin’ mamma?”  Ummm…sleeping baby, notice the quiet and darkness.

3

The youth at our parish are holding a bake sale to raise funds for their Wor.ld You.th Day pilgrimage to Spain.  I think my son and I are going to do some baking Saturday morning and then take the treats up to the church to drop off.  I’m thinking S’mores Cookies, 7-Layer Cookies and Strawberry Shortcake Cookies.  We want Junior to be involved in church activities and this is a great way to get a 2-year old involved.

4

I am taking a break from charting.  About 5 weeks ago I met with the NFP teacher that taught Mr. Amen and I to talk about our struggle with secondary infertility.  One of the things she suggested was taking a break from charting to help us re-focus our attention back on each other and our marriage.  Great advice!  It’s been so nice not charting for the past 2 cycles.  That’s right…I said 5 weeks, 2 cycles.  You can begin to see where our difficulties lie.  More on that another day.

5

On our way to daycare this morning, Junior said he wanted to hug “Ms. Taffy and Rosie”.  That would be his teacher and my parents’ dog.  How cute is that?

6

Does anyone pray the Divine Mercy novena frequently?  Mr. Amen and I prayed it together leading up to Divine Mercy Sunday, but I LOVE praying it and am thinking of doing it perpetually all year round.  I’m finding myself drawn more and more to Jesus’ Divine Mercy and I feel like this would be a great way to remind myself to practice mercy in my everyday life.

7

Last Sunday, I took Communion on the tongue for the first time because my hands were occupied holding my very squirmy toddler.  I really liked taking it that way and have no idea why I’ve never done it before.

Check out more Quick Takes at Conversion Diary!

Try It This Weekend Thursday: Waffles

Last summer when my mother-in-law was visiting I made these waffles for breakfast one Saturday morning.  Mr. Amen had asked me to make them for her because he didn't realize that waffle batter was different from pancake batter.  He had gone his entire childhood and adult life believing that to make waffles, one simply made pancake batter and cooked it in a waffle iron.

Well, I'm here to tell the world waffle batter is VERY different from pancake batter.  While one certainly doesn't want heavy pancakes, by their very nature pancake batter is much heavier.  Waffle batter is savory instead of sweet, like pancake batter.  If you've never taken the few extra minutes to make a real waffle batter - try it!  It's delicious, light and totally worth the effort.

1 ¾ c. flour

3 t. baking powder

½ t. salt

2 beaten egg yolks

1 ¾ c. milk

½ c. vegetable oil

2 stiffly beaten egg whites

Sift together dry ingredients. 
Combine yolks, milk and oil; stir into dry ingredients. 
Fold in whites, leaving a few fluffs.
Bake in waffle iron.
Enjoy!