This easy, and fairly healthy, roasted meal lets the oven do the work with one baking tray to clean up afterword. We dedicate it to Robert Ross a true LGBT hero who stood by the side of his friend Oscar Wilde in life and in death. A real BFF! Read a short article about this brave man after the recipe.
Fresh green beans and broccoli roasted in light olive oil and flavored with a bit of bratwurst shows us how we can cut down on the protein and fill up with fresh vegetables! If we make the vegetables taste as good as the meat, where is the downside? Expect lower fat and cholesterol!
Ingredients
- 3 uncooked bratwurst
- ½ to ¾ lbs fresh green beans
- ½ to ¾ lbs fresh broccoli
- Garlic powder
- Ranch Dressing Packet
- ½ cup Grated Parmesan Cheese
- olive oil
Fill a large bowl half way with cold water and ½ cup white vinegar.
Dump the fresh green beans into this and give it a stir.
Preheat oven to 400. Take a rimmed baking sheet, cover with aluminum foil and spray.
Cut the broccoli into florets
Rinse the beans and replace with the broccoli
Set up bowls and snap the ends off the green beans, place in large bowl and drizzle with olive oil.
Next: Rinse the broccoli, Drain well! Then place in large bowl and drizzle with olive oil
Now place the green beans on one end of the tray. Place the broccoli on the other end leaving a space in the middle.
In a small bowl mix 1 Tbs of ranch dressing mix with 1 tsp of garlic powder: sprinkle this over the green beans.
Now sprinkle a very light bit of parmesan cheese on the broccoli.
Place the brats into one of the bowl that still has olive oil in it. Pierce with a tooth pic on the ends and down one side.
Then place the brats in the center
Raise tray to top rack under the broiler for about 3 – 4 minutes. Times may vary with each oven so watch closely.
Remove carefully. Spoon the beans into one serving dish and the broccoli into another. Place the brats on the platter.
Here is a full meal, if you like serve with bread.
So happy to be serving my Master Indy
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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Robert Ross
Robert Baldwin Ross (25 May 1869 – 5 October 1918) was a Canadian journalist, art critic and art dealer, best known for his relationship with Oscar Wilde, to whom he was a devoted friend, lover and literary executor.
A grandson of the Canadian reform leader Robert Baldwin, and son of John Ross and Augusta Elizabeth Baldwin, Ross was a pivotal figure on the London literary and artistic scene from the mid-1890s to his death at 48 years old. He mentored several literary figures, including Siegfried Sassoon. His open homosexuality, in a period when male homosexual acts were illegal, brought him many hardships.
At Cambridge
In 1888 Ross was accepted at King's College, Cambridge, where he became a victim of bullying, probably because he made no secret of his homosexuality. Perhaps also his outspoken journalism in the university paper. Ross caught pneumonia after being half drowned in a fountain by a number of students who had, according to Ross, the full support of a professor, Arthur Tilley. After recovering, he fought for an apology from his fellow students, which he received, but he also sought the dismissal of Tilley. The college refused to punish Tilley and Ross dropped out. Soon after that, he chose to "come out" to his family.
Robbie Ross would soon become one of Britain's most scandalous and controversial figures. He was gay and he didn't hide it, a fact that didn't go over very well in Victorian England, where they were busy passing laws against such things.
The harassment started early and would continue throughout his life: he would be threatened with jail time, dragged into court, demonized in the press and eventually forced to leave the country altogether.
During the First World War, an MP even wrote a pair of articles — one of them called "The Cult of the Clitoris," if you can believe it — accusing Ross of being part of a conspiracy of 47,000 treacherous "perverts" helping the Germans to "exterminat[e] the manhood of Britain" by turning Britons gay.
In 1886 Ross met Oscar Wilde. Maureen Borland, the author of Wilde's Devoted Friend: Life of Robert Ross (1990) claims that it is likely that Alex Ross, Robert's elder brother and a literary critic, made the introduction, possibly at the Savile Club."
Ross seems to have been a perfect fit for Wilde's sexual hunger and refusal to betray his heterosexual bed. (Oscar's wife had just given birth to his second son).
In 1893, Ross had a sexual relationship with a boy of sixteen, the son of friends. The boy confessed to his parents that he had engaged in sexual activity with Ross and also admitted to a sexual encounter with Lord Alfred Douglas while he was a guest at Ross's house.
After meetings with lawyers, the parents were persuaded not to go to the police, since their sons might be seen not as victims but as equally guilty and so could go to prison.
Douglas led Wilde into the seedy Victorian underground of gay prostitutes and brothels. And it was Douglas' messed up relationship with his homophobic bully of a father, which eventually landed Wilde in jail.
When Douglas' father, the Marquess of Queensberry,left Wilde a poorly-spelled calling card denouncing him as a "somdomite," Wilde sued Queensbury for libel. But when it turned out there was plenty of evidence against him, he was forced to drop the case. In the aftermath, Ross begged Wilde to flee, but the author ignored him, was arrested, tried and eventually convicted of sodomy and gross indecency.
Wilde later recalled: "I was a man who stood in symbolic relations to the art and culture of my age.... I amused myself with being a flaneur, a dandy, a man of fashion. I surrounded myself with the smaller natures and the meaner minds. I became the spendthrift of my own genius, and to waste an eternal youth gave me a curious joy. Tired of being on the heights, I deliberately went to the depths in the search for new sensation. What the paradox was to me in the sphere of thought, perversity became to me in the sphere of passion. Desire, at the end, was a malady, or a madness, or both. I grew careless of the lives of others. I took pleasure where it pleased me, and passed on. I forgot that every little action of the common day makes or unmakes character, and that therefore what one has done in the secret chamber one has some day to cry aloud on the housetop. I ceased to be lord over myself. I was no longer the captain of my soul, and did not know it."
Wilde was arrested on 5th April and taken to Holloway Prison. The following day, Alfred Taylor, the owner of a male brothel Wilde had used, was also arrested. Taylor refused to give evidence against Wilde and both men were charged with offences under the Criminal Law Amendment Act.
Douglas was not called to give evidence at trial, but his letters to Wilde were entered into evidence, as was his poem, Two Loves. Called on to explain its concluding line - "I am the love that dares not speak its name" Wilde answered that it meant the "affection of an elder for a younger man".
Both men were found guilty and sentenced to two years' penal servitude with hard labour. Ross was a regular visitor and according to his biographer, he "was his most constant and loyal friend".
When Wilde got out after two long, miserable years in prison, Ross was waiting for him with a house in France.
Though Wilde would forgive Douglas for his role and see him on and off over the next few years, it was Ross who was with him when he died. And it was Ross who took care of his affairs after his death, securing his legacy by buying back the rights to his works — which the author had been forced to sell during his trial — and stamping out the fake porn which was being published under his name.
Before his death in 1900, Wilde appointed Ross his literary executor; but, with Wilde's estate bankrupt, it was not until 1905 that Ross was able to pay Wilde's creditors and annul the bankruptcy. In 1908 Ross published, in fourteen volumes, The Collected Works of Oscar Wilde.
Ross was also director and administrator of the Carfax Gallery, a small avant-garde art gallery in London, which, under his direction, gained a reputation for showing the work of unknown artists. In 1908 he became the art critic of The Morning Post.
In 1911 the publisher Martin Secker commissioned Arthur Ransome to write a book on Oscar Wilde. He was given considerable help by Robert Ross. Ross wanted Ransome's book to help rehabilitate Wilde's reputation. He also wanted to get revenge on Lord Alfred Douglas, who he considered had destroyed Wilde. He did this by letting Ransome see the unabridged copy of a letter where Wilde accused Douglas of vanity, treachery and cowardice.
The book, Wilde: A Critical Study, was published on 12th February 1912. The following month, on 9th March, Lord Douglas filed an action for libel against Ransome and Secker.
Douglas admitted during cross-examination that he had deserted Wilde before his original conviction and had not returned to England, let alone visited his friend in prison.
After a three-day trial, the jury took just over two hours to return its verdict. Arthur Ransome was found not guilty of libel and the publicity the book received meant that it was now going to be a bestseller.
Robert Ross was again drug into court after Lord Douglas circulated letters
accusing him of being a homosexual. Ross had no option but to accuse Lord Douglas of criminal libel.
In November 1914, Douglas appeared in court. Although the case went very much against Ross, the jury was divided. Before the case could be reheard, Ross abandoned the action, and offered to pay Douglas' costs. Douglas, short of money, had to accept. Ross was forced to leave his post as valuer of pictures and drawings for the Board of Inland Revenue and retire from public life.
According to Maureen Borland, the author of Wilde's Devoted Friend: Life of Robert Ross (1990): "During the Great War, in Ross's delightful and witty company, lucky soldiers they could forget the horrors of trench warfare. Although these men were not among his sexual partners, Ross was clearly homosexual and had at least two long-term relationships. He shared a house for fifteen years with More Adey; a shorter partnership, with Frederick Smith, ended in 1917, when Smith took up a diplomatic appointment in Stockholm. Ross discouraged discussion of his sex life, and maintained a lifelong silence about the exact nature of his relationship with Wilde."
In December 1917, Noel Billing published an article in The Imperialist by Arnold Henry White that argued that Germany was under the control of homosexuals (White called them urnings): "Espionage is punished by death at the Tower of London, but there is a form of invasion which is as deadly as espionage: the systematic seduction of young British soldiers by the German urnings and their agents... Failure to intern all Germans is due to the invisible hand that protects urnings of enemy race... When the blond beast is an urning, he commands the urnings in other lands. They are moles. They burrow. They plot. They are hardest at work when they are most silent."
On 16th February, 1918, the front page of The Vigilante had a headline, "The Cult of the Clitoris". This was followed by the paragraph: "To be a member of Maud Allan's private performances in Oscar Wilde's Salome one has to apply to a Miss Valetta, of 9 Duke Street, Adelphi, W.C. If Scotland Yard were to seize the list of those members I have no doubt they would secure the names of several of the first 47,000." This was a reference to the so-called Black Book of those seduced by the German homosexuals.
In this court case, Billing was acquitted of all charges. As James Hayward has pointed out: "Hardly ever had a verdict been received in the Central Criminal Court with such unequivocal public approval. The crowd in the gallery sprang to their feet and cheered, as women waved their handkerchiefs and men their hats."
Basil Thomson, who was head of Special Branch, an in a position to know that Eileen Villiers-Stuart and Harold S. Spencer had lied in court, wrote in his diary, "Every-one concerned appeared to have been either insane or to have behaved as if he were."
Later in 1918 Ross was preparing to travel to Melbourne, to open an exhibition at the National Gallery of Victoria, when he died suddenly in London.
In 1950, on the 50th anniversary of Wilde's death, Ross's ashes were placed into Wilde's tomb in Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris.
Ross Had been responsible for commissioning Jacob Epstein to produce the sculpture now to be seen on Wilde's tomb. He even requested that Epstein design a small compartment for Ross's own ashes. As a result of his faithfulness to Wilde even in death Ross was vindictively pursued by Lord Alfred Douglas, who repeatedly attempted to have him arrested and tried for homosexual conduct.
