A Hamburger Stew In memorandum: the Loving Men of Jamestown

This simple, hearty stew is dedicated to the long lost loving men of Jamestown Colony. Learn about the men of four hundred years ago in a short article after the recipe.

A simple stew you can quickly throw together. It just tastes like you have been slaving away all day over a steaming cauldron. Perfect for when Old Man Winter is being disagreeable. 

Ingredients

• 1½ lbs ground beef
• 1 medium onion, chopped
• 1 large can (28 ounces) stewed tomatoes, undrained
• 1 cup baby carrots cut in 2 – 3 pieces each
• 2 celery ribs, thinly sliced
• 1 can (14.5 oz) diced potato
• 2 cups beef broth low sodium
• ½ cup uncooked rice
• 2 tsp salt + 1 tsp pepper to taste

Directions

Do your cutting: chop the onion, cut up the carrots and slice the celery, set aside in a bowl.

In a Dutch oven on the cook top, cook beef and onions over medium heat until meat is no longer pink (about 8 minutes); drain well.

Add the tomatoes with their juice, carrots, celery, potatoes, broth, rice, salt and pepper; bring to a boil. 

 

Reduce heat; cover and simmer 30 minutes or until vegetables and rice are tender.

Uncover; simmer 20-30 minutes longer or until thickened to desired consistency.
If you wish a thicker stew: Stir about ¼ cup of beef broth into 2 Tbs of corn starch, then mix this into the stew to thicken.
This is a good time to heat up any crusty bread to go with this hearty meal.

I've found the song for the loving men of Jamestown

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eP5ASsi-5aM

• Freeze option: Freeze cooled stew in freezer containers. Heat through in a saucepan, stirring occasionally and adding a little more broth if necessary.

It also is a dish that is very healthy for diabetics and anyone who is carb conscious.

Nutrition Facts

1 cup: 191 calories, 7g fat (3g saturated fat), 35mg cholesterol, 689mg sodium, 21g carbohydrate (8g sugars, 2g fiber), 12g protein.

This is a gluten-free meal. 
 

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_vAT4sb0934RTMvia @amazon

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In memorandum:

The Loving Men of Jamestown

Does anyone remember what little you were taught about Jamestown Colony? Back even before King James commissioned a new translation of the Bible (King James Version) the English needed a colony on the North American Continent. It was to be a buffer to stop the growth of Spanish rule rising from the south.

In June 1606, King James I of England granted the Virginia Company a charter allowing them to create a settlement in North America. The group of 105 settlers and 39 crew members set sail in December 1606 and settled Jamestown on May 14, 1607. The settlers knew it was to be an all male enterprise. The Company made it clear that it would be a long time before any women would arrive. We can not know all of what motivated these men.

About half of the men of the Virginia Company were wealthy gentlemen and their personal servants. Neither would have known much about farming. There were a few farmers and artisans on the ship, but not nearly enough workers to plant and grow the food that the men would need.

Historians believe that these men intended to survive by hunting, gathering berries and roots, and by trading or taking food from Indians. We know that this enterprise offered the chance that after 7 years, they could buy land! That was not possible in England.

Still we wonder if they realized that the men would naturally group together, forming deep relationships and living together like families. These were men in their prime, of course there was going to be sex! This was only reasonable to assume.

Historian Larry Kramer summed the situation up like this:

“Jamestown was initially an all-male settlement. ...in subsequent years...male colonists outnumbered women by roughly six to one in the 1620’s and four to one in later decades... It is difficult to believe that a group of young and notoriously unbridled men remained celibate for an extended period of time. It seems likely that some male settlers deprived of female companionship would have turned to each other instead.

“Settlers in the seventeenth-century Chesapeake often paired off to form all-male households, living and working together. ...it would be truly remarkable if all the male-only partnerships lacked a sexual ingredient... IT SEEMS REASONABLE TO ASSUME, that much of the sex that took place... was sodomitical.”

In the book: Sexual Revolution in Early America, by Richard Godbeer he states:

“My own research for my book, The American People, has revealed that not only were male-only partnerships quite in evidence, but services were often conducted to join the partners “Under God,” and that, of equal interest, was their adoption of Indian children to raise as their own.

I hope it will not be too much longer before scholars will be able to deal with the fact that Jamestown was in fact not only America’s first colony but its first homosexual community.”

The first two English women did not arrive until late in 1608, and more came in subsequent years.  Men outnumbered women, however, for most of the 17th century.

Friends, lets face it, the first English colony was a hot bed of gay sex!

A book titled A Map of Virginia, describing the early history of that colony through the eyes of its settlers, was published in Oxford, England 1612, under the editorship of John Smith, with contributions by himself and other eyewitnesses.
Chapter two relates that within ten days after June 15, 1607, when the ships which had brought the colonists departed back to England, the remaining settlers were "oppressed" by "extreme weakness and sickness." The "cause" was said to be that while the ships had remained the settlers'

allowance was somewhat bettered, by a daily proportion of biscuit which the sailors would pilfer to sell, give or exchange with us, for money, saxefras, furs, or love. [A printed marginal note identifies this passage as "The sailors' abuses."]

The document suggests that "love," seemingly meaning sexual favors, was one of those items which the first American settlers exchanged, along with money, sassafras, and furs, to keep themselves alive. In that interpretation, the term "love" apparently referred to sexual contacts between men. Since there were no women among the Virginia colonists in 1607, the "gratification" of the "animal instinct" cited above would make this the earliest documented instance of carnal relations between Englishmen in the New World.

Is another interpretation plausible? Did "love" simply refer to "affection"? Was it likely that seventeenth-century English sailors would have traded stolen biscuit for the settlers' affection, or given biscuit away because of their affection for the settlers?

Oh Grow UP!

The existence of what may be a casual reference to a sexual exchange between males, in an account published and publicly distributed in England, at that time, begins to be explained by its historical context.

Colonist John Smith and his close associates wrote their version of events "against the wishes of the Virginia Company," and together had it printed with the help of a group of sympathetic clergymen.

The "discourse," it was said, "is no Judge of men's manners," and was "only a reporter of their actions in Virginia, not [intended] to disgrace any, accuse any, excuse any, nor flatter any."

Does the casualness of the reference to the exchange of "love" for biscuit suggest that such life and death barters were common knowledge among some seventeenth-century Englishmen? You decide.

We do know that things did not go well!

An unfamiliar climate, as well as brackish water supply and lack of food, led to disease and death.

Disease, sickness, and famine quickly set in. Jamestown was located in a very unhealthy part of the Chesapeake. The James River is a tidal river, meaning that the water ebbs and flows in relation to the tide. It is, therefore, a slow moving river and bacteria and germs thrived in the water. Swampy land bred mosquitoes, which carried malaria.

They were dying from swellings, fluxes, fevers, by famine, and sometimes by wars. Food was running low, though then Chief Powhatan starting to send gifts of food to help the English.

At the end of the first year, there were only 34 men still alive. The colony survived, but only barely. Over the next thirteen years, more than 6,000 people would emigrate to Jamestown, but only 1,300 would survive.

That winter of 1609-10 is known as the "Starving Time." During that winter the English were afraid to leave the fort, due to a legitimate fear of being killed by the Powhatan Indians. As a result they ate anything they could: various animals, leather from their shoes and belts, and sometimes fellow settlers who had already died. By early 1610 most of the settlers, 80-90% according to William Strachey, had died due to starvation and disease.

We look back from our modern viewpoint and wonder how they ever made it. Was this truly an Impossible Dream. Here we have an example of how these loving men strived for something better. Yet so many historians today still try to erase much of the character of these souls. Let us remember them, as brave men, clinging together with love as they made history. 

 

These loving men of Jamestown deserve to be remembered as LGBT heroes.