BLT Macaroni Salad To honor the “Annual Reminders”

Just in time for the fourth of July picnics take a moment and honor one of the first annual demonstrations for LGBT rights in the country, 1965!

What could be more American than a BLT? How about a BLT salad? Easy and unexpected.

Ingredients:

• 1 pound elbow macaroni
• 1 cup mayonnaise
• 1 teaspoon garlic powder
• 1 teaspoon salt
• ½ teaspoon black pepper
• 8 slices bacon, cooked and crumbled
• 1 cup cherry tomatoes, cut in half
• 1½ cups coarsely chopped baby spinach
  

What To Do:

1. Cook macaroni according to package directions. Drain and let cool.
   
   
   
   
   
    
2. As that cooks fry up the bacon and let drain on paper towels.

3. Cut the tomatoes in half.

4. With a fork, combine mayonnaise, garlic, salt, and pepper with the spinach. Blend until smooth. 
    

  Cut up the crisp bacon into less than 1 inch pieces.

Pour over pasta and stir in the tomatoes; mix well, cover and refrigerate until ready to serve.
 

Note

If it's a bit drier than you like after refrigeration, try mixing in some fat free plain Greek style yogurt!

For our afternoon music:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rt7SPm7N6D8

So lucky 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

The “Annual Reminders”

Craig Rodwell conceived of the event following a picket at the White House on April 17, 1965.

He wanted a picket line to go up on the Fourth of July at Independence Hall. The name of the event was selected to remind the American people that a substantial number of American citizens were denied the rights of "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" enumerated in the United States Declaration of Independence.

He organized members of the New York City and Washington, D.C., chapters of the Mattachine Society, Philadelphia's Janus Society and the New York chapter of the Daughters of Bilitis, under the collective name East Coast Homophile Organizations (ECHO).

With Rodwell spearheading the effort, ECHO put together the first Reminder picket in just over two months. Thirty-nine people attended the first picket, including veteran activists Frank Kameny and Barbara Gittings.

The Reminders were held each year from 1965 until 1969, with the final picket taking place shortly after the June 28 Stonewall riots. While never large crowds, still their impact was making a difference.

Following the 1969 Annual Reminder, the younger and more radical participants, felt the time for silent picketing had passed.

They decided to move the demonstration from July 4 in Philadelphia to the last weekend in June in New York City, as well as proposing to "other organizations throughout the country... suggest(ing) that they hold parallel demonstrations on that day" to commemorate the Stonewall riot. The newly located event in New York City became known as Christopher Street Liberation Day. Today it is simply called PRIDE.

From a leaflet that was handed out at the Annual Reminder:

Because the homosexual American citizen finds himself denied many of the unique and special features of American life that are guaranteed by the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and its Bill of Rights.

….he is being denied many of the liberties and freedoms guaranteed by those documents and enjoyed, without second thought, by his fellow American citizens.

Homosexual American citizens have also petitioned both state and Federal governments to re-examine many of the adverse policies facing them—and those governments have ignored them or "answered only by repeated injury."

It may seem difficult to understand how radical these statement were at the time. We should be honored that these individuals risk everything. Just to be seen in public identified as “homosexual” invited beatings, arrests, loss of employment, loss of housing, loss of family.

They braved being spit on and stared at like animals in a zoo. They did this so that we can enjoy many of the same citizenship rights as our fellow countryman and women. We had to fight for rights that had been set forth in the Declaration of Independence, over 200 years ago.

Blue Ribbon Baked Chicken To honor the Compton's Cafeteria Riots

The first known LGBT riot protesting police brutality nearly disappeared from history. Read about it after the recipe.

This dish is simple to throw together and features all of the great tastes of Chicken Cordon Bleu!!

Ingredients:

3 lg chicken breasts (boneless-skinless)

¼ to ½ lbs deli sliced ham

3 slices bacon

1 can golden mushroom soup

½ pkg cream cheese (softened to room temps)

fresh sliced mushrooms optional

½ pkg pasta (Your choice)

1 pkg green vegetable to microwave

Directions:

preheat oven to 375°F degrees. While waiting, cut the bacon into halves and cook just about half way so still floppy but much of the grease cooked out. Set aside on paper towels.

If using fresh mushrooms, rinse well and slice into thick slices.

Pile the deli sliced ham onto a large cutting board and run a pizza cutter back and forth across until the ham is shredded into small strips.

 

Spray a 9 x 13 baking dish and arrange the pile of ham along with the mushrooms as a bed covering the bottom of dish.

Place the chicken breasts on this far enough apart so they don't touch and have plenty of room.

Lay 2 pieces of bacon on each breasts. If needed you can secure with a toothpick but they should be alright.

Bake this for about 20 minutes.

While that is baking: mix the can of soup with the cream cheese until it is well incorporated. 

When your timer goes off at 20 minutes. Open the oven and pour the soup mix around the chicken pieces, but not on them!

Return to oven for another 20 to 25 minutes. Check with a thermometer, the chicken should be at least 150 degrees to 160 degrees.

To crisp up the bacon, flip the oven over to broiler and broil for about 5 to 6 minutes or until bacon is the way you like.

During this last 25 minutes of baking, cook up the pasta according to package directions.

Once the chicken is ready and bacon crisp, pull from oven and place chicken on a platter, lay a piece of foil over it and let this rest for 7 to 10 minutes. This will allow the chicken to finish cooking and redistributing the juices back to where they should be!

While that rests, use the time to microwave the green vegetables. Serve the pasta with the soup / ham mixture from the baking dish stirred through.

It is easy to plate up the meal and place on the table.

All of the tastes work together because basically this is a deconstructed Chicken Cordon Blue! It does make a beautiful presentation.

For our music:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ca25geqC0W0

Remember to cook happy and smiling and your meal will always taste better!

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

Compton's Cafeteria Riot

The exact date of this riot is unknown because police records of the 1960s no longer exist and the riot was not covered by newspapers. But it was in August of 1966. Most of those people involved are now no longer with us.
This very important event in our history was almost lost from memory! I am often asked: “How did you ever learn of these things – I never heard of them”. For me, in the case of Compton's Cafeteria's Riots, was the mention of a 2005 documentary: “Screaming Queens; The Riot at the Compton’s Cafeteria”. That presentation by Susan Stryker almost never happened. Before it's debut, the riots had been all but erased from the history books.

According to Stryker, Compton’s Cafeteria riot was “the first known incident of collective militant queer resistance to police harassment in U.S. history." Transgender people finally stood up to the abuse and discrimination by police officers.

Her first hint that something called the “Compton’s Cafeteria Riot” happened came in the form of a small notation in somebody’s abandoned effort to create a gay chronology: “At Compton’s Cafeteria, in August of 1966, gays and lesbians fought back against the police,” it read. The note was enough to get her attention.

Eventually, though, Stryker found Amanda St. Jaymes, a woman who ran a Tenderloin hotel in the 60's. She’d been at the diner during the riot, and her story, with no prompting, lined up exactly with what they’d found.
“As soon as a we got that interview,” Stryker says, “we were like, that’s it, we have it.”

The two people they interviewed who saw the queens and hustlers rise up that night — St. Jaymes and an officer named Elliot Blackstone — have since died. “I think, at this point, it’s not a living memory anymore,” Stryker says. “It’s a historical memory.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~

What happened that night?
Other people are coming forward and their 50 year old memories being recorded now. Felicia Elizondo came to the Tenderloin district of San Francisco in 1963. “Everybody hung out at Compton’s,” Elizondo says. “It was the center of information. You could come in, when all the girls were sitting down in Compton’s, and strut your stuff, or show off your husband. It was just utopia. We could be who we were.”

In fact the 24 hour cafeteria was one of the few places where transgender people could congregate publicly in the city, they were unwelcome in gay bars.

Tamara Ching knew Compton's well. "It was good to go and be seen and talk to people about what happened during the night. To make sure everybody's OK, everyone made their coins, everybody's coming down off drugs and didn't overdose, and that you didn't go to jail that night," she said.

The Tenderloin in the 1960s was a red light district and a residential ghetto.

Ching describes that sex work in the Tenderloin empowered her. She had a job with the government but still worked the streets at night.

In the 1960s the staff began to call the police to crack down on transgenders who would frequent the restaurant.

On that August night, the management called the police saying some transgender customers had became raucous. When one of these known officers attempted to manhandle one of the trans women, she threw her coffee in his face. At that point the riot began, dishes and furniture were thrown, and the plate-glass windows were smashed. Police called for reinforcements. The fighting spilled into the street, where all the windows were broken out of a police car and a sidewalk newsstand was burned. 
 

The next night, more transgender people, rentboys, and other members of the LGBT community joined in a picket of the cafeteria. Compton's now would not allow transgender people back in. The demonstration ended with the newly installed plate-glass windows being smashed again.

What this riot stood for and led to was much bigger than just these details. It was the first known example of group protest to police harassment on the part of the LGBT community in US history. It also involved members of the Vanguard, a transgender youth group in the Tenderloin that was the first of its kind in the country.

Chuck Roast to honor the Oscar Wilde Memorial Bookstore

We've written about the impact and importance of gay bars. Tonight, lets focus on the gay book store.

This is a basic chuck roast recipe. The idea is “low and slow” cooked for 2 hours in a 275 degree oven. This will bring back memories you never knew you had of home cooked meals.

Ingredients:

2 lbs chuck roast

1 pkg frozen stew vegetables (thawed)

1 pkg frozen “Seasoning Blend” (onions, celery, red & green peppers)

½ tsp garlic powder + ½ tsp thyme

¼ cup flour for slurry

1 small bottle Italian dressing

5 potatoes peeled & cut into equal sized chunks

4 tbs butter

¼ cup half & half

1 egg yolk

A side green vegetable.

The night before: marinade the roast in the Italian dressing

Directions:

Check and adjust the oven rack so it will hold your dutch oven with lid first.

Then Preheat the oven to 275 degrees.

Cut the onion and mince the garlic.

Make sure the stew vegetables are thawed.

Heat oil in the dutch oven to medium high. Brown roast on both sides, then remove to plate.

In the beef grease, fry the seasoning mix until transparent, about 6 minutes.

Then dump the thawed vegetables in. Stir occasionally for about 8 to 10 minutes until they start to brown or caramelize. (you want the taste this step brings so don't skip it). Remove to a bowl.

Lay the vegetables in a bed on the bottom of pan. Place roast on top and cover.

Put this in the oven for about 1 hour to the pound of beef. Check the meat with a thermometer, it should be at least 160 degrees. Higher is OK as this is a “pot roast” not roast beef!

Since this takes awhile to cook, you have plenty of time to fix the mashed potatoes.

Place cut up potatoes in water and bring to boil for 20 minutes. Drain well. Dump into a large bowl and mash with a hand masher adding the butter and half & half a little at a time so you can control the consistency. When it feels like you want it, stir in the egg yolk. Adjust salt & pepper to your tastes.

If this is done too soon and the roast is not ready yet, just put the potatoes into a covered oven proof dish and slide it in there along side. 

 

When roast is ready, remove with a slotted spoon and place on a platter surrounded by the mushy vegetables. Put the dutch oven on a burner over medium heat. Mix the flour with equal parts of water until a “slurry” is formed. Slowly add to the pan liquids while stirring until a rich gravy is formed. Serve in its own “boat” or bowl.

This gives you plenty of time to fix any frozen green vegetable to go along side.

What a meal!

For our music:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v84dWza5TsQ

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

The Oscar Wilde Memorial Bookstore.

More than a sanctuary, a classroom, and proving ground.

Even as far back as Plato, it had been said that to accomplish anything, first you had to know yourself. Yet for nearly a thousand years Western society has worked overtime to erase my tribe from history. If the subject of “homosexuality” ever came up horrendous lies were told.

For centuries the most awesome moment in our lives were finding that others existed. We were not alone. Most American men were introduced to real living homosexuals by meeting them in the First and Second World War armies. After the war, early groups called themselves “homophile” so that the emphasis would be on who we loved (phile) not just who we had sex with. We were more than sex organs! We were starting to find ourselves.

It was not really until the 1960's that printed material could be sent through the mail that even mentioned homosexuality. It may be hard for those who grew up in the “information” age to understand the limitations we faced.

Then in 1967, a young man named Craig Rodwell had a idea. He wanted to have a place where homosexuals could gather, find out about each other. Who we were, where we were and plot where we could go!

He dreamed of a world where gay men would no longer be restricted to the bars and bathhouses in the city as the only places to get together.

He envisioned a book store of and for gay people. Not “dirty books”, but honest well thought writings. Newsletters.

“I was trying to get the (Mattachine) Society to be out dealing with the people instead of sitting in an office,” Rodwell recalled. “We even looked at a few store-fronts. I wanted the Society to set up a combination bookstore, counseling service, fund-raising headquarters, and office. The main thing was to be out on the street.”

When the organization backed out of such a public effort, Rodwell saved money and started one himself.

In 1967 the Oscar Wilde Memorial Bookshop opened. It was the worlds FIRST gay book store. Despite a limited selection of materials when the bookstore was first established, Rodwell refused to stock pornography and instead favored literature by gay and lesbian authors.

Rodwell’s organization of these scattered books, papers, and pamphlets into a single genre was revolutionary—it was the first time in American history that literature had been organized under the subject heading of “gay culture.”

Every inch of the store celebrated gay people. Even the name that Rodwell chose for the store reflected his vision and political commitment. The name gave the bookstore credibility, evoked the gay literary tradition, and embodied Rodwell’s mission to promote positive images of homosexuality.

When the store opened, it became an instant hit, attracting both gay men and lesbians. Within a short time, crowds began to show up on the weekends. 

They had heard about the Oscar Wilde Memorial Bookshop at parties, from friends, from newspaper articles that Rodwell wrote.
 Yet all of this attention came at a cost. As soon as the Oscar Wilde Memorial Bookshop opened, it became a public target for homophobic attacks.

The bookstore quickly became an incubator for the growing LGBT rights movement. In March 1968 Rodwell began publishing a monthly newsletter from the bookshop, calling it HYMNAL.

From this office he planned the first yearly “remembrance” protests in Philadelphia. He watched the events unfold at the Stonewall in 1969. 

That night he grabbed a megaphone and ran to the streets directing the mob and showing them strategy in dealing with the NYCPD. The very next morning, he produced fliers with a list of specific demands. All night had been spend writing and printing them in that office. The effect was electrifying.

The Oscar Wilde Memorial Bookstore became the planning ground for the first ever Pride Parade in New York City held in 1970.

The effect of Craig Rodwell and his little bookstore can not be overstated.

Today as we see the demise of many gay bars, the book stores have mostly fallen by the wayside.

However the very fact they existed was a necessary step in our struggle to find rights.