Monday, October 30, 2017

Pantry Reprieve

It's the end of the month and you didn't go to the store. What are you going to fix? How about an all time classic, served in a slightly different way. This handy dandy to the rescue dish has elements of beef vegetable soup, yet served like it was spaghetti! Hearty and hunky this taste sensation has been hiding in plain sight in your pantry.



Hamburger, onion, a can of soup and some linguine will surprise you with a lost cost, on hand meal.




Checking the pantry we find:
1 lbs hamburger
1 onion, chopped
2 Tbs flour
½ box linguine pasts
½ tsp horseradish
Salt + pepper

Directions:
Put the water on to boil for pasta (if only cooking for 2, use ½ box)
Chop the onion.
In a skillet heat 2 tbs oil and add the onion. - Hint: use ½ teaspoon of sugar to hide the cooking onion smell from your future.


Add the hamburger and cook, stirring occasionally for about 10 minutes. Add salt + pepper to you taste.

When pasta is done, drain and set aside.


When meat is completely brown, use a slotted spoon to remove half: this will save for another dish.


Drain liquids from skillet and stir in the flour. Stir for about 2 minutes, then pour in the can of soup. Continue to stir so that will thicken. You want it thick gravy like. When cooked, stir in the ½ tsp of horseradish.
Please taste this before you add any more, you want just a taste to liven up the dish, not to clear out your sinuses!


Serve on a bed of linguine and let this do its magic! That's all you have to do. Easy and quick and totally unexpected.



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 






Sunday, October 29, 2017

Samhain Stew

(Pronouced SOW-een): Samhain is a Gaelic word meaning Summers End.
They used to say the end of summer is a time when the veil between the spirit world and the earthly realm becomes the thinnest. If you sense a presence behind you, it's not your imagination! Folk-lore aside, this is a great meal to fortify you in this season of changing temperatures and late-night parties. 
 

Here is our take on a classic beef stew to be served with a hot bread while cuddled together around the TV for the latest sports event, or creepiest movie!



Ingredients
  • 1 tbs oil
  • 2 lbs beef chuck roast, cut into 1 inch chunks
  • ½ cup flour
  • 1 tsp salt + ½ tsp pepper + ½ tsp onion powder
  • 1 tablespoon paprika
  • 2 medium sweet potatoes cut in 1 inch cubes
  • 1 onion, rough chopped
  • 1 32 ounce container beef broth
  • 1 20 ounce package frozen spinach ravioli
  • 1 can stewed tomatoes
  • 1 can green beans
  • 2Tbs cornstarch


Directions:


Wipe out the slow cooker and spray with cooking spray.
Chop the onions, Peel and cube the sweet potatoes, You should have about 2½ to 3 cups of cubes. 


Place the cubes in the slow cooker.


Cut the meat into cubes.


In an open bowl, combine flour, salt, pepper, onion powder, and paprika. Roll meat pieces until well coated. Save back 4 Tbs of flour mixture.


In a large skillet on medium high heat, add cooking oil and brown the meat on all sides for about 5 minutes. You may have to work in batches so you don't crowd the meat. Remove and set on top of the sweet potatoes in the slow cooker.


Add onions to the cooker along with the stewed tomatoes.
Pour in the beef broth.


Cover and let cook on low for 8 hours.



At that time: Add the spinach ravioli, If you like a thick stew, this time add a slurry made of the held back flour mixture and ½ cup of water.
Add a drained can of green beans.

Re-cover. Turn up to high and cook for a final hour.
During this final hour of cooking you have time to fix a nice crusty brown & serve bread.

What a great Autumn comfort food to share.
 


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





Friday, October 27, 2017

Pantry Panic

There are times, especially toward the end of the month you find yourself in a panic staring into the pantry for answers. What can I make out of this? Well here is a wonderful hearty casserole that will please and not hurt the budget too badly.


Keep this surprise up your sleeve for those pantry panics. The foil sealed dish will cook the macaroni, the sauce packet will add a depth that hides your desperation – never let them see you sweat!


Ingredients:
1lbs ground beef
1 can red beans
1 can stewed tomatoes
1 box mac & cheese
1 cup beef stock
¼ shredded cheese (use what's left over)
salt, pepper, and Italian seasoning to your tastes
Directions:
Pre-heat oven to 350 degrees and spray a 9 x 13 baking dish.
Open the red beans and drain well


Brown the ground beef and drain on paper towel lined bowl.


In a large bowl mix the stewed tomatoes with the packet of cheese sauce from the box of Mac & Cheese. Add the seasonings of your choice.


Stir in the red beans.


Stir the ground beef and the tomato mixture into the casserole. Mix in the uncooked macaroni. Pour in the cup of beef stock. Seal with foil.
Bake for 50 minutes.


Carefully remove the foil and sprinkle with the ¼ cup shredded cheese.
Return to oven for 20 – 30 minutes or until cheese is melted and bubbly.


Serve with a side of green vegetables.



What a fantastic come to the rescue meal from a scavenged pantry.


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 







Wednesday, October 25, 2017

Pig Pickin’ Cake

Pig Pickin' is a funny name for a truly delicious cake! This Southern classic features a mandarin orange cake and a unique, refreshing pineapple frosting. In the Midwest when we roast a whole pig, we refer to it as a pig roast. In North and South Carolina pig roasts are known as Pig Pickin’s! This sweet fruit filled cake is just the perfect ending.


This was chosen for the birthday party of a great friend, Ellen. Most here have never heard of it so it will be a great surprise.



Ingredients:
For the cake:
1 box yellow cake mix
1 stick butter
or margarine (softened)*
1 can(14 oz.) mandarin oranges, drained, ½ cup juice reserved
4 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
For the topping:
1 (4 oz.) box vanilla instant pudding mix
1 can (20 oz. can) crushed pineapple, juice reserved
4 oz. whipped topping (half a regular tub)
extra mandarin orange slices, for garnish

Directions:
Preheat oven to 325 degrees. Note this is using a dark pan! Lighter pans use 350.


Grease and flour a 9 x 13 inch baking pan. Set aside.


NOTE: to soften the butter: On a microwave safe plate, set a bowl with a cup of water in it. Microwave on high for 2 minutes.



Carefully empty the water out of the bowl. Place stick on that plate and invert the bowl on top. Let sit for about 5 minutes. This properly softens any cold stick of butter without melting it.


Open the mandarin oranges and drain juice into a ½ cup measure. Thoroughly drain the rest. Set aside.


For the cake, combine cake mix, butter, ½ cup juice from the mandarin oranges, eggs, and vanilla. Set a timer and beat for four minutes on medium-high.

NOTE always crack eggs into a bowl first before adding to mixer – that way no shells in batter! 
 

Scrape down the sides of bowl and add the drained oranges. Beat again until pieces are broken up and small, about 1 minute, no more. Pour batter into greased and floured 9 x 13 inch baking pan. 
 

Smooth out the batter with a spatula. Bake for 25 to 30 minutes.
Basically you want the cake to be lightly golden brown and set. Remove from oven and cool completely.


As an aside: a good Master will let you lick the beaters. A kind Master will turn off the mixer first! 
 

Once cake is cool, blend juice from drained pineapples with the vanilla pudding mix. 
 

Fold in the whipped topping. Stir in the drained crushed pineapple.
Spread on cooled cake.



For this cake, slave chose to add a fancy decoration. Ellen loves butterflies.


So down-loaded a picture of one. Took out the color and printed as large as would fit on a sheet of paper.
Taped it face side down to a sheet of waxed paper.

Turned it over and cut out the butterfly. This is easier if you cut the template down the middle in half and tape it back after the cut.
Now you have a great stencil. 

 
Lay this carefully wax paper side down on top of the frosting. Sprinkle with colored sugar. Carefully remove the stencil and there you have a beautiful butterfly appearing on your cake. 
 

Refrigerate for at least 2 hours.
Enjoy!



=====

What a great way to celebrate.

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 







Wednesday, October 18, 2017

Cyrils Honey & Horseradish Chicken

Here is a great Autumn recipe that is simple and low cost! Some sweet and some heat with a citrus note, what tasty way to dress the common chicken thigh?


We dedicate this dish to a young man history has forgotten, Cyril Wilcox, a confused Harvard student who believed suicide was the only way to deal with the homophobia around him. Please read about him and the Harvard Secret Court of a hundred years ago.


Ingredients
4-6 chicken bone-in thighs
1 stick butter
1 tsp garlic powder
1 lemon (juice & zest)
½ cup reduced-sodium soy sauce
½ cup honey
1 Tbs horseradish
salt and pepper to taste
½ cup dried cranberries


Instructions
Zest and juice lemon into a small bowl – that way it is easier to remove any seeds that fall in.


In a microwave safe bowl, melt the butter carefully. When melted, stir in the garlic, the lemon juice and zest, the honey, and horseradish.



Place in zipper plastic bags with chicken and let sit in refrigerator at least 4 hours.


Pre-heat oven to 375 degrees. Line a rimed baking sheet with foil and spray a rack lightly.


Remove chicken from marinade and shake off excess. Place chicken pieces skin side up on pan. Sprinkle with dried cranberries.



Roast for 35 – 45 minutes or until thermometer reads 165 degrees in thickest part of thighs.


Note: chicken can be marinaded 1 day ahead.
Serve with a colorful side of mixed vegetables.




For our music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=meDXI63FtA8&t=96s
What a meal!
Happily 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 




 




=============================
A Prayer for Cyril

About 100 years ago:
It was a time of speakeasies and organized crime. American society was changing rapidly. The great war had ended in 1918. Communism, Ku Klux Klan, women voting, evolutionary science, and a great epidemic of Influenza (which killed more than the war had).
Rapid progress had been made in transportation. You can't keep them down on the farm any more!



This was the world of Cyril B. Wilcox and it was collapsing around him.
Wilcox had been a student of Harvard University. He had consulted Professor of Hygiene Robert I. Lee, about a bad attack of hives.
“It is apt particularly to occur in nervous people, and in people who are under a nervous strain,” Lee wrote on April 13. 1920. “Wilcox tells me his mother wants to take him home for a rest. I certainly agree that he should go home and get himself straightened out nervously.”

Today we can only guess at what was going on with him. Away at a university, he had met, for the first time, other men who also liked men. This is a powerful, life changing event in a young gay man's life. He started to spend time socializing with these other outcasts. Dances, parties and other in-dorm get togethers took place, often forsaking studies. His grades slipped. His family had no idea what was going on. Reading about the incident now we can conjecture the young man may have fallen in love with a man he was seeing. He had no one to talk to.

In May Cyril confided in his older brother George. He told about his relationship with Harry Dreyfus, an older man who lived in Boston. We can only assume it did not go well. The next morning Mary Wilcox smelled gas from her son's room. When she opened the door.: Cyril B. Wilcox was dead.


The medical examiner wrote in his report that Wilcox’s death was “most probably accidental, change of pressure in gas pipe extinguishing light, allowing raw gas to fill bed room”. His family and friends, as well as Harvard administrators, knew that his death was self-inflicted.

Cyril’s suicide would have been written down as the tragic result of too much academic pressure at Harvard were it not for that conversation with his older brother. Shortly after, George opened two letters addressed to Cyril. One was a nine-page handwritten letter from classmate Ernest Roberts, that left no doubt that Cyril was part of a group involved in homosexual activities. In parts of the letter he refers to “faggoty parties” in his room and the names of non-Harvard-affiliated Boston men who were involved in the gay scene.

A second letter from Harold W. Saxton, was filled with code and jargon. Saxton referred to Cyril as “Salomé’s Child” and someone else as “Dot.” He refers to raids against clubs, “tricks” and a “souse” party, apparently in reference to a party with alcohol that would have been in illegal in 1920, the first year of Prohibition.

George became enraged and decided to act. He tracked down his brother’s former lover, Harry Dreyfus, in Boston. Dreyfus was beaten by Wilcox, and gave up three names of other men involved: Roberts, Harvard Dental School student, Eugene R. Cummings and Pat Courtney, a non-Harvard man living in Boston.
George went to Harvard President A. Lawrence Lowell, who then asked Lee, Regent Matthew Luce, Assistant Dean of the College Edward R. Gay and Assistant Dean Kenneth B. Murdock to gather evidence on the case to be submitted to the President. They called this five-person body “The Court.

But, at least at first, it was far from clear how this secret Court should proceed. Cyril was already dead, Saxton graduated the year before and the other two men were not connected with the University at all.

This did not stop them for proceeding with a great witch hunt. Using intimidation, grilling, spying, and down right lies, many lives were ruined.

According to newly released documents the court received an unsigned letter from someone who identified himself only as a member of the Class of 1921. The anonymous student claimed to know all the details of Cyril Wilcox’s suicide and told of how Cyril first got involved with the underground gay group. “While in his Freshman year he met in college some boys, mostly members of his own class, who committed upon him and induced him to commit on them ‘Unnatural Acts’ which habit so grew on him that realizing he did not have strength of character enough to brake [sic] away from it concluded suicide the only course open to him,” the anonymous letter read. “The leader of these students guilty of this deplorable practice and the one directly responsible for Cyril Wilcox’s suicide is Ernest Roberts.

“the most disgusting and disgraceful and revolting acts of degeneracy and depravity took place openly in plain veiw [sic] of all present.” “Isn’t it about time an end was put to this sort of thing in college?”

Over the next two weeks, The Court handed down a verdict of “guilty” for a total of 14 men: seven college students; Cummings, the Dental School student; Clark, the Assistant in Philosophy; Saxton, the alumnus; and four men not connected with Harvard.
The were not just asked to leave campus, they were told to get out of Cambridge imediately.
A letter was sent to the Alumni Placement Service: “Before making any statement that would indicate confidence in the following men, please consult some one in the Dean’s office. If they do not know what is meant, tell them to look in the disciplinary file in an envelope marked ‘Roberts, E.W. and others.’”
In June of 1920, Eugene R. Cummings a 23-year-old dental-school student committed suicide at Harvard’s Stillman Infirmary. The medical examiner ruled that the cause of death was “poisoning by corrosive sublimate taken with suicidal intent probably while mentally deranged.”
Then an article came out in the Boston American
“According to friends of the two, Cummings, who was said to have been mentally unbalanced, told a story of an alleged inquisition which he claimed was held in the college office following Wilcox’ [sic] death,” read the article. “He said that he was taken into the office, which was shrouded in gloom, with but one light dimly burning, and there questioned exhaustively. This story, which was denied by the college authorities, was said to have sprung from his disordered mind.”

On Sept. 8, 1930, Keith Smerage became the third member of the circle to commit suicide. The New York Times reported that he was found dead of gas asphyxiation in an apartment he shared with Philip Towne, a government clerk. The police listed the case as a suicide.

By then all records and mention of the Harvard Secret Court were buried. In 2002, a researcher from Harvard’s daily newspaper, The Crimson, came across a box of files labeled “Secret Court” in the University’s archives. After pressure from newspaper staff, the University finally released five hundred documents related to the Court’s work.
Reading these give a new outlook on homophobia and its effects.
This led to the book and play: 'Unnatural Acts'.



The Harvard Secret Court was despicable yet hopefully today we can learn from the tragic life of that young university student Cyril B. Wilcox.