Stove Top Toad in a Hole

Feeling froggy? Here is a quick stove top version of the English classic “Toad in a Hole”. Normally this is cooked in an oven on high heat. Sometimes in England you will find this served with a fried onion gravy instead of our syrup. Your choice.

Sausages, with a puffy batter encasing them. Serve with syrup, and maybe very cold milk.

Ingredients:

2 precooked smoked sausages ( I like “Beddar than Cheddar”)

½ cup generic pancake batter

2 eggs

2 Tbs milk

cooking spray

Butter & syrup to serve.

Directions:

Place the pancake mix in a bowl and stir in 2 eggs. Thin the batter just a touch by adding 2 Tbs milk, do not over mix. It will be thick and lumpy, that's fine! Let it sit while you warm up the sausages.

Spray a skillet, cut the sausages in thirds and warm them over a medium heat for about 3 minutes.

When sausages are up to temperature, add 1 Tbs of butter and melt. Then pour the batter over the sausages. Tilt skillet until batter is all around. Let it puff up. Lift the edges and allow the mix to flow into the skillet around the pancake. Once the egg mixture starts to look dry, flip one side over the other. This should start to show a light brown. Don't worry if it is not perfect, you are going for taste! 

By now the mixture should be set and puffed. Slide this on a plate, butter and pour syrup over the top.

If you prefer a savory dish. Open a can of condensed french onion soup, mix in 2 tbs of cornstarch. Heat and stir until thick. Pour this over the puffy plateful.

Great Briton on a plate.

Enjoy.

For our music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rjsNNcsUNzE

So happy to fix this for my Master's brunch!

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

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Lou Reed

Lou Reed was an American musician, singer, songwriter and poet. He was the rhythm/lead guitarist, singer and principal songwriter for the rock band The Velvet Underground and had a solo career that spanned five decades. The Velvet Underground became regarded as one of the most influential bands in the history of underground and alternative rock music.

After leaving the band in 1970, Reed released twenty solo studio albums. His second, Transformer (1972), was considered an influential landmark of the glam rock genre, anchored by Reed's most successful single, "Walk on the Wild Side".

Reed has been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame twice; as a member of the Velvet Underground in 1996 and as a solo act in 2015.

Lewis Allan Reed was born on March 2, 1942, in Brooklyn and grew up on Long Island. His family was Jewish; his father had changed his name from Rabinowitz to Reed. Reed said that although he was Jewish, his real god was rock 'n' roll.

His sister Merrill, said that as an adolescent, he suffered panic attacks, became socially awkward and "possessed a fragile temperament". Having learned to play the guitar from the radio, he developed an early interest in rock and roll and rhythm and blues, and during high school played in several bands.

He began experimenting with drugs at the age of 16. His first recording was as a member of a doo-wop band called the Jades. His sister recalled that during his first year in college he was brought home one day, having had a mental breakdown, after which he remained "depressed, anxious, and socially unresponsive" for a time, and that his parents were having difficulty coping. Visiting a psychologist, Reed's parents were made to feel guilty as inadequate parents, and consented to electroconvulsive therapy (ECT). Reed appeared to blame his father for the treatment to which he had been subjected. He wrote about the experience in his 1974 song, "Kill Your Sons". Reed later recalled the experience as having been traumatic and leading to memory loss. He believed that he was treated to dispel his feelings of homosexuality.

Upon recovery from his illness and associated treatment, Reed resumed his education at Syracuse University in 1960, studying journalism, film directing, and creative writing.

In 1961, he began hosting a late-night radio program on WAER called Excursions on a Wobbly Rail. The program typically featured doo wop, rhythm and blues, and jazz, particularly the free jazz developed in the mid-1950s. Reed's sister said that during her brother's time at Syracuse, the university authorities had tried unsuccessfully to expel him because they did not approve of his extracurricular activities.

One of Reed's fellow students at Syracuse in the early 1960s was the musician Garland Jeffreys; they remained close friends until the end of Reed's life.

While at Syracuse, Reed was also introduced to intravenous drug use for the first time, and quickly contracted hepatitis. He later said that his goals as a writer were "to bring the sensitivities of the novel to rock music" or to write the Great American Novel in a record album. Reed graduated from Syracuse University's College of Arts and Sciences with a B.A. cum laude in English in June 1964.

A temporary band, called "the Primitives" included Welsh musician John Cale. Reed and Cale lived together on the Lower East Side, and invited Reed's college acquaintance guitarist Sterling Morrison and Cale's neighbor drummer Angus MacLise to join the band, forming the Velvet Underground. Though it had little commercial success, the band is considered one of the most influential in rock history. Reed was the main singer and songwriter in the band.

The band soon came to the attention of Andy Warhol. Warhol's associates inspired many of Reed's songs as he fell into a thriving, multifaceted artistic scene. Reed rarely gave an interview without paying homage to Warhol as a mentor. 

Rolling Stone listed “The Velvet Underground” as the 13th greatest album of all time. Václav Havel credited the album, which he bought while visiting the US, with inspiring him to become president of Czechoslovakia. Reed left the Velvet Underground in August 1970, moving back into his parents' home on Long Island. He took a job at his father's tax accounting firm as a typist, by his own account earning $40 a week ($263 in todays dollars.)

Reed's commercial breakthrough album, Transformer, was released in November 1972. Transformer was co-produced by David Bowie. The single "Walk on the Wild Side" was a salute to the misfits and hustlers who once surrounded Andy Warhol in the late '60s and appeared in his films.

Each of the song's five verses describes a person who had been a fixture at The Factory during the mid-to-late 1960s: (1) Holly Woodlawn, (2) Candy Darling, (3) "Little Joe" Dallesandro, (4) "Sugar Plum Fairy" Joe Campbell and (5) Jackie Curtis. The song's transgressive lyrics evaded radio censorship. "Walk on the Wild Side" was Reed's only entry in the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart, at number 16.

Bowie and Reed got into a fight during a late-night meeting which led to Reed hitting Bowie. Bowie had told Reed that he would have to "clean up his act" if they were to work together again.

Berlin (July 1973) was a concept album about two junkies in love in the city. The songs variously concern domestic violence ("Caroline Says I", "Caroline Says II"), drug addiction ("How Do You Think It Feels"), adultery and prostitution ("The Kids"), and suicide ("The Bed"). Response to Berlin at the time of its release was negative, with Rolling Stone pronouncing it "a disaster". Since then the album has been critically reevaluated, and in 2003 Rolling Stone included it in their list of the 500 greatest albums of all time. Berlin made number 7 in the UK charts.

Following the commercial disappointment of Berlin, Reed befriended Steve Katz of Blood, Sweat & Tears, who suggested Reed put together a "great live band" and release a live album of Velvet Underground songs. The album Rock 'n' Roll Animal was released February 1974. This gave Reed's songs the live rock sound he was looking for, and the album peaked at #45 on the Top 200 Billboard Chart for 28 weeks and soon became Reed's biggest selling album. It went gold in 1978, with 500,000 certified sales.

Sally Can't Dance which was released later that year (in August 1974), became Reed's highest-charting album in the United States, peaking at number 10 during a 14-week stay on the Billboard 200 album chart in October 1974.

1975's Coney Island Baby was dedicated to Reed's then-partner Rachel, a transgender woman Reed dated and lived with for three years.

In 1998, The New York Times observed that in the 1970s, Reed had a distinctive persona: "Back then he was publicly gay, pretended to shoot heroin onstage, and cultivated a 'Dachau panda' look, with cropped peroxide hair and black circles painted under his eyes."

The 1989 album New York, which commented on crime, AIDS, civil rights activist Jesse Jackson, then-President of Austria Kurt Waldheim and Pope John Paul II, became his second gold-certified work when it passed 500,000 sales in 1997. Reed was nominated for a Grammy Award for best male rock vocal performance for the album.

In May 2000, Reed performed before Pope John Paul II at the Great Jubilee Concert in Rome. The New York Times published a Reed poem called "Laurie Sadly Listening" in which he reflects on the September 11 attacks.

Reed had suffered from hepatitis and diabetes for several years. He was treated with interferon but developed liver cancer. In May 2013, he underwent a liver transplant at the Cleveland Clinic. Afterwards, on his website, he wrote of feeling "bigger and stronger" than ever, but on October 27, 2013, he died from liver disease at his home in East Hampton, New York, at the age of 71.