Sylvester's Bean And Bacon Stew

Tonight's meal is to honor a black LGBT hero and performer known as Sylvester. He was called the Queen of Disco. Read more about him after the recipe.

Here is a basic hearty meal that does not cost much. The type of meal that sustained many a young performer trying hard for their big break. Caned White beans, some bacon, a little onion and carrots makes a filling and heart warming meal. 

 

Ingredients:

12 oz. bacon, chopped into small pieces

1Tbs olive oil

1Tbs butter

1 yellow onion, diced

2 carrots, diced

2 celery stalks, diced

2 tsp Italian seasoning

Pinch or two sea salt + ½ tsp pepper

6 (15 oz.) cans small white beans or navy beans, drained and rinsed

4 cups Swanson chicken stock, hot

2 Tbs flat-leaf parsley, chopped optional

Instructions:

 

Chop up the vegetables. Here slave tried a batch of already chopped vegetables from the produce section. Cut up the bacon into tiny pieces.

 

Cook the bacon in a Dutch oven, in a drizzle of olive oil, then remove with a slotted spoon, drain on a paper towel, and set aside. Reserve 1 tablespoon of the bacon fat.

In a sauce pan heat up the chicken stock.

Add olive oil and butter into the pot along with the bacon fat, allow them to melt together.

Add in the diced onion, carrots and celery, and allow them to soften and saute for about 5 minutes. Scrape the bottom of the pot as you stir. This uses the bits that would otherwise be lost and can take a chisel to get out of the pot latter.

Add in about 2/3 of the reserved, crisped bacon, as well as the Italian seasoning, the sea salt and the pepper, along with the white beans, and stir to combine.

Pour in the hot chicken stock, stir, and allow the stew to gently simmer for about 45-50 minutes, partially covered.

Now mash the beans a little bit with the back of your spoon, to break them up and release their natural starch to thicken the stew.

After another half hour, turn the heat off and finish the stew by adding the rest of the bacon as a garnish.

Serve with a bread to soak up every tasty drop!

For our music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bDWSemTCV40

So happy to be serving my Master Indy on this Valentine's Day!

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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Sylvester

Sylvester James Jr. (September 6, 1947 – December 16, 1988), who used the stage name of Sylvester, was an American singer-songwriter. Primarily singing disco, rhythm & blues, and soul, he was known for his flamboyant and androgynous appearance, falsetto singing voice, and hit disco singles in the late 1970s and 1980s. Sylvester was responsible for a string of hit singles in the late 1970s and became known in the United States under the moniker of the “Queen of Disco.”

Born in Watts, Los Angeles, to a middle-class African-American family, Sylvester developed a love of singing through the gospel choir of his Pentecostal church. Forced to leave both his church and his family after arguments and disapproval of his homosexuality,

Now homeless in 1962, Sylvester spent much of the next decade staying with friends and relatives, in particular, his grandmother Julia, who expressed no disapproval of his homosexuality, having been a friend of a number of gay men in the 1930s. At age 15, he began frequenting local gay clubs and built up a group of friends from the local gay black community, eventually forming themselves into a group which they called the Disquotays. Sylvester's best friend among the Disquotays was a trans woman named Duchess, who earned her money as a prostitute, a job that Sylvester refused to engage in. The group held lavish house parties, sometimes without permission at the home of their friend, rhythm and blues singer Etta James, in which they dressed up in female clothing and wigs, constantly trying to outdo one another in appearance.

Sylvester's boyfriend during the latter part of the 1960s was a young man named Lonnie Prince; well-built and attractive, many of Sylvester's friends described the pair as being "the It couple". Sylvester often hitchhiked around town while in female dress; such activity carried a risk of arrest and prosecution, for cross-dressing was then illegal in California. Although avoiding imprisonment for this crime, he was arrested for shoplifting on several occasions. He found work in a variety of different professions. In the 1960s, the Civil Rights Movement was at its peak, but Sylvester and his friends did not take an active role within it.

Although he had little interest in formal education and rarely attended classes, Sylvester was enrolled at Jordan High School. He graduated in 1969 at the age of 21; in his graduation photograph, he appeared in drag wearing a blue chiffon prom dress and beehive hairstyle. By the end of the decade, the Disquotays had begun to drift apart. Sylvester always considered himself male and began to tone down the feminine nature of his clothing, aiming for a more androgynous look which combined male and female styles and which was influenced by the fashions of the hippie movement.

Moving to San Francisco in 1970 at the age of 22, Sylvester embraced the counterculture and joined the avant-garde drag troupe The Cockettes, producing solo segments of their shows which were heavily influenced by female blues and jazz singers like Billie Holiday and Josephine Baker. During the Cockettes' critically panned tour of New York City, Sylvester left them to pursue his career elsewhere. He released two commercially unsuccessful albums as Sylvester and his Hot Band on Blue Thumb Records in 1973 before disbanding.

Focusing on a solo career, Sylvester signed a recording contract with Harvey Fuqua of Fantasy Records. His first solo album, Sylvester (1977), was a moderate success.

Sylvester's fame increased following the release of his solo album, and he was employed to perform regularly at The Elephant Walk gay bar in the Castro, an area of San Francisco known as a gay village. He became a friend of Harvey Milk—known locally as the "Mayor of Castro Street"—who was the first openly gay man to be elected to public office in California, and performed at Milk's birthday party that year. In the spring of 1978, Sylvester successfully auditioned for a cameo appearance in the film The Rose starring gay icon Bette Midler. In the film, he plays one of the drag queens singing along to Bob Seger's "Fire Down Below," in a single scene that was filmed in a run-down bar in downtown Los Angeles This was followed with the acclaimed disco album Step II (1978), which spawned the singles "You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real)" and "Dance (Disco Heat)", both of which were hits in the U.S. and Europe. 

 

During the late 1970s, Sylvester gained the moniker of the "Queen of Disco" and during his life he attained particular recognition in San Francisco, where he was awarded the key to the city.

He then signed to Megatone Records, the dance-oriented company founded by friend and collaborator Patrick Cowley, where he recorded four more albums, including the Cowley penned hit Hi-NRG track "Do Ya Wanna Funk."

An activist who campaigned against the spread of HIV/AIDS, Sylvester died from complications arising from the virus in 1988, leaving all future royalties from his work to San Francisco-based HIV/AIDS charities.

In 2005, he was posthumously inducted into the Dance Music Hall of Fame, while his life has been recorded in a biography and made the subject of both a documentary and a musical.

Shortly before his death Sylvester had bequeathed his future royalties of his music to local AIDS groups, but Sylvester died deeply in debt there was no money to distribute until the late 1990’s. Once his advances were repaid, his early-career label Fantasy Records then kept the money in an account until its proper recipient could be legally determined.

In 2010 The AIDS Emergency Fund and Project Open Hand split a check from Sylvester’s estate totaling nearly $140,000.