No one said making a meal everyone will love has to be hard. This simple dish proves it.
We dedicate tonight's meal to the legendary singer Johnny Mathis. Read his story after the recipe for table conversation.
Chicken breasts that are smothered in a creamy bacon-cheese sauce topped with tomatoes and more bacon, this is one family-friendly dinner that comes together with ease.
Ingredients:
3 slices bacon, chopped
3 Roma tomatoes cut up
3 boneless skinless chicken breasts (about 20 oz)
2 cups mushrooms, sliced
½ onion chopped
¼ tsp salt + pepper
5 oz cream cheese
1 can bacon soup or chicken soup
½ cup shredded Gruyere cheese
Pasta or noodles
Directions:
Cut up the tomatoes, cover and refrigerate. Chop the onion. Grate the cheese, cut up the cream cheese.
Rinse the fresh mushrooms in water with a bit of vinegar added. Slice if needed. Place in a microwave safe container with the chopped onions. Cook on high for 3 minutes. Drain well.
In your skillet, cook bacon over medium-high heat 3 to 5 minutes, until crisp. Remove bacon with slotted spoon to paper towel-lined plate, leaving drippings in skillet. When cool, chop into ½ inch pieces.
In the meantime. sprinkle chicken breasts with salt & pepper. In same skillet, brown the chicken breasts in bacon drippings over medium-high heat 5 to 6 minutes, turning once, until golden.
In medium bowl, stir soup and cream cheese & shredded cheese. Add the mushrooms and onion. Pour over chicken. Cover with foil.
Bake 30 to 35 minutes or until mixture is bubbly and juice of chicken is clear when center of thickest part is cut (at least 165°F).
Sprinkle with chopped bacon and tomatoes.
Serve this over rice or noodles or pasta with a side of microwave veggies. Remember to let the chicken rest while you do the vegetables!
Here we used a tri color bow tie pasta.
What a pretty dish for my Master Indy! Of course it would have been much prettier if slave had remembered to add the toppings of tomato and bacon, but no one is perfect!
For our music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UrGw_cOgwa8&list=RDEhZba-P7R18&index=3
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
Johnny Mathis
Johnny Mathis was born in Gilmer, Texas, on September 30, 1935, the fourth of seven children. The family moved to San Francisco, California, settling on 32nd Avenue in the Richmond District, where Mathis grew up. His father had worked in vaudeville, and when he saw his son's talent, he bought an old upright piano for $25 and encouraged him. Mathis began learning songs and routines from his father. His first song was "My Blue Heaven". Mathis started singing and dancing for visitors at home, at school, and at church functions.
Mathis was a star athlete at George Washington High School in San Francisco. He was a high jumper and hurdler, and he played on the basketball team. In 1954, he enrolled at San Francisco State College on an athletic scholarship, intending to become an English teacher and a physical education teacher.
While there, Mathis set a high-jump record of 6'-5 1/2". This is still one of the college's top jump heights and was only two inches short of the 1952 Olympic record of the time. He and future NBA star Bill Russell were featured in a 1954 sports section article of the San Francisco Chronicle demonstrating their high-jumping skills. During one meet at the University of Nevada, Mathis beat Russell's highest jump attempt that day. Mathis was often referred to as "the best all-around athlete to come out of the San Francisco Bay Area."
While singing at a Sunday afternoon jam session with a friend's jazz sextet at the Black Hawk Club in San Francisco, Mathis attracted the attention of the club's co-founder, Helen Noga. She became his music manager, and in September 1955. Noga found Mathis a job singing weekends at the 440 Club (the first lesbian bar to open in San Francisco, California in 1936.) It had continued to draw a lesbian clientele into the 1950s. Mona's and the gay bars of that era were an important part of the history of LGBT culture in San Francisco.
Noga learned that George Avakian, head of Popular Music A&R at Columbia Records, was on vacation near San Francisco. Noga persuaded Avakian to come hear Mathis at the 440 Club. After hearing Mathis sing, Avakian sent his record company a telegram stating: "Have found phenomenal 19-year-old boy who could go all the way. Send blank contracts."
In 1956 he was asked to try out for the U.S. Olympic Team that would travel to Melbourne, Australia. Mathis had to decide whether to go to the Olympic trials or to keep his appointment in New York City to make his first recordings. On his father's advice, Mathis opted to embark on a professional singing career. His LP record album was released in late 1956.
Johnny Mathis: A New Sound In Popular Song, was a slow-selling, but Mathis stayed in New York City to sing in nightclubs. His second album was produced by Mitch Miller, who helped to define the Mathis sound. Miller preferred that Mathis sing soft, romantic ballads, pairing him with conductor and music arranger Ray Conniff. In late 1956, Mathis recorded two of his most popular songs: "Wonderful! Wonderful!" and "It's Not for Me to Say". Also that year, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer signed him up to sing the latter song in the movie Lizzie (1957).
Later in 1957, he released "Chances Are", which became his second single to sell a million.
When “Johnny's Greatest Hits” was released. The album spent an unprecedented nine and a half years on the Billboard top 200 album charts, including three weeks at number one. It held the record for the most number of weeks on the top Billboard 200 albums in the US for 15 years, until Pink Floyd's The Dark Side of the Moon in 1973.
Later in 1958, Mathis made his second film appearance, singing the song "A Certain Smile" in the film of that title. The song was also nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Song.
By the end of the year, he was set to earn $1 million a year. Critics called him "the velvet voice".
Mathis was quoted in a 1982 Us Magazine article, stating: "Homosexuality is a way of life that I've grown accustomed to." Mathis later said that that comment was supposed to have been off the record and did not publicly discuss his sexual orientation for many years after that. In 2006, Mathis said that his silence had been because of death threats he received as a result of that 1982 article.
On April 13, 2006, Mathis granted a podcast interview with The Strip in which he talked about the subject once again, and how some of his reluctance to speak on the subject was partially generational. During an interview with CBS News Sunday Morning on May 14, 2017, Mathis discussed the Us Magazine article and confirmed he is gay. "I come from San Francisco. It's not unusual to be gay in San Francisco. I've had some girlfriends, some boyfriends, just like most people. But I never got married, for instance. I knew that I was gay." Since then Mathis has spoken to many news sources, including CBS, about his sexuality and his story about coming out.
Mathis continues to perform live, but from 2000 forward, he limited his concert performances to about fifty to sixty per year. He is one of the last pop singers who travels with his own full orchestra (as opposed to a band).
He has had five of his albums on the Billboard charts simultaneously, an achievement equaled by only two other singers: Frank Sinatra and Barry Manilow. He has released 200 singles and had 71 songs charted around the world.
By any definition, Johnny Mathis has been one of the greatest performers on the twentieth century and as such a true LGBT hero.
and Sybil
(both 1976). 
(which flopped), and a dying man of AIDS in Larry
Kramer’s play The Normal Heart.
That role was very close to home for Davis. 
