E. Lynn Harris Crab and Havarti Dip

While the super bowl has passed, the parties are starting to pick up. This warm dip is named to honor a literary legend you may never have heard of. For Black History month lets remember this gay African-American. Be sure to read the short article following the recipe. 

 

Thanks to canned crab meat, you can make this rich dip any time of the year. It blends the flavors of the sea food with horseradish and the creamy Havarti cheese. Great for any chip, cracker, or other food you like to serve at your next get together. 

 

Ingredients

1 8 ounce package cream cheese, softened

¼ cups prepared horseradish

1 cup shredded Havarti cheese

1 pkg plain Greek style yogurt

¼ cup mayonnaise

two cans crab meat, drained, flaked, and any cartilage removed

1 cup shredded baby spinach

½ cup chopped onion

Bread sticks, flatbread, toasted baguette slices, and/or bagel chips

Directions

Chop up the onion and the spinach.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

In a large bowl, combine cream cheese, yogurt and mayonnaise.

Spread the Havarti cheese into the bowl and blend well. Slave used a simple potato masher for this. Set aside.

In a skillet, heat oil and onions. Let cook until starting to turn transparent.

Stir in the spinach. Let cook over low heat for about 10 minutes stirring occasionally so it doesn't burn.

Remove from heat and mix into the cheese mixture. Gently stir in crab meat.

Transfer mixture to an ungreased 1-quart souffle dish or shallow baking dish. Bake about 25 minutes or until heated through. 

 

Serve with chips, crackers, raw vegetables, pretzels or any other foods you would have for your guests.

What a great gourmet surprise!

For our music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eDFPUUVB--A

So happy to be able to serve this for my Master.

socialslave

To satisfy and restore.

To nourish, support and maintain.

To gratify, spoil, comfort and please,

to nurture, assist, and sustain

…..I cook!

Please buy slave's cookbook:

The Little Black Book of Indiscreet Recipes by Dan White http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00F315Y4I/ref=cm_sw_r_tw_dp_vAT4sb0934RTM via @amazon

 

===========================

E. Lynn Harris

 
Harris was an unlikely literary pioneer. He was a former IBM executive who decided to write about his life.

Initially unable to land a book deal with a publishing house for his first work, Invisible Life, he published it himself and sold copies from the trunk of his car to African-American beauty salons and bookstores.

He later was published by Doubleday, and ten of his novels achieved New York Times bestseller status.

Harris' first novel, Invisible Life finished in 1991, was a coming-of-age story dealing with then-taboo topics. Most important was that it openly questioned sexual identity and told the story of main character Raymond Tyler. The hero, torn between his married male lover and girlfriend Nicole, is a New York attorney struggling with identifying as a bisexual black man. He ultimately settles into the gay life.

He eventually became one of the nation's most popular writers with an estimated 4 million of his books in print.
In books like "Invisible Life," "A Love of My Own," and his New York Times best-selling memoir, "What Becomes of the Brokenhearted," Harris virtually invented a new genre: books that depicted black gay men living double lives.
This in a time when the black community was very homophobic! The public had never seen homosexual love in African-American men portrayed. It was playful, loving, and it wasn't hidden.
That very fact gave hope to untold millions. Harris held dinner parties for aspiring writers at his home. He loved meeting and hugging fans at book readings, and never seemed to let his fame change him. Sometimes he would answer up to 200 e-mails from his fans each day.

Harris had his share of personal pain. In his 2003 memoir, he wrote about enduring abuse by his stepfather and an attempted suicide in 1990.

Mr. Harris tapped a rich vein of interest with racy tales of affluent, ambitious, powerful black men who nonetheless struggled with their attraction to both men and women. His books shed light on a segment of society that had received little attention: black men on the down low — that is, men who are publicly heterosexual but secretly have sex with men.

Harris died July 23, 2009, while in Los Angeles for a business meeting. He was found unconscious at the Peninsula Hotel in Beverly Hills, California, and was pronounced dead at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles. An autopsy determined that the cause of death was heart disease. 

 

The author who introduced millions of readers to the "invisible life" of black gay men, was a literary pioneer whose generosity was as huge as his courage. 
 
E. Lynn Harris deserves to be remembered for the wonderful literary contributions he has left us with and the enormous hope he still gives to generations.