Sunday, March 31, 2019

Carl Wittman Garden Pot Pie


This easy meal features a wonderful array of vegetables with a flaky crust that turns a golden color for your table. It is named for an LGBT hero, leader and writer. Learn more about him in a short article after the recipe.


Raid the pantry and freezer for this comfort food. Not expensive and healthy to boot! Great for an emergency when you don't want another trip the store.


Ingredients

  • 1 tube crescent rolls
  • 1 (10.75-oz.) condensed cream of bacon soup (or mushroom)
  • 1 (16-oz.) bag frozen mixed vegetables thawed
  • ½ cup mushrooms, rinsed and dried
  • ½ C. fat free milk
  • ½ tsp. dried thyme
  • ½ tsp. pepper
  • 1 egg, lightly beaten

Directions

Preheat oven to 375 degrees.
Spray a 9 x 9 casserole dish. Rinse and cut the mushrooms.



In a large bowl mix the vegetables and mushrooms.



In a medium bowl, combine soup, milk, thyme, and pepper. 
 


Stir this into the vegetable mix until well incorporated. Spoon filling into casserole dish.



On a piece of wax paper unroll the crescent dough. Trim with a table knife to fit the same size as the dish. 
 



Carefully invert over the casserole dish.
Brush with beaten egg. Cover with foil. 
 


Bake for 20 minutes. Remove foil and then bake for 15 - 17 more minutes. You want the crust well golden brown. 
 













BTW: those strips you trimmed off can go in the oven on a piece of foil and cook right along.


What a wonderful aroma fills the kitchen! So happy to be serving this to my Master Indy.



For our music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ubjBU62aWbo
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

----------------------------------------------
Carl Wittman



 Carl Wittman was 17 when he entered Swarthmore College in 1960. He became a student activist. Wittman spent summers doing civil rights work in the South, and joined the national council of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS). 
 
The blond-haired son of communist parents was jailed while participating in anti-segregation sit-ins at the Dorset Theater in Cambridge on Maryland's Eastern Shore in 1963.

He quickly became disillusioned about the anti-gay bigotry in the '60s radical “New Left.” Former SDS national secretary, bisexual Greg Calvert recalled, “I was defamed and discredited by my opponents . . . including a vicious and disgusting gay-baiting campaign . . . People talk about sexism—they should talk about homophobia in the movement.”

Wittman, while self-identified as gay since the age of 14, remained closeted until coming out in the article, "Waves of Resistance," published in the November, 1968 issue of the antiwar magazine, Liberation.


Then just a few months short of the Stonewall event, Wittman wrote Refugees from Amerika: A Gay Manifesto.
It is considered one of the most influential gay liberation writings of the 1970s.
The article became a guide to gay activism and gay life, and was used in particular by the Gay Liberation Front. The manifesto was re-printed in Joseph A. McCaffrey, (1972), "The Homosexual Dialectic":

Like refugees,” he writes, we homosexuals have fled “blackmailing cops” who beat us, families who “disowned or 'tolerated' us,” and “small towns where to be ourselves would endanger our jobs and any hope of a decent life.” The time is now to “free ourselves.” “We are children of straight society,” but we must “stop mimicking straights.” Rather than “oppressive” “traditional marriage,” for example, he urges us to “define for ourselves a new pluralistic, rolefree social structure . . . instead of measuring our relationship in comparison to straight ones, with straight values.”
On coalition building he contends, “But we know we are radical in that we know the system that we're under now is a direct source of oppression, and it's not a question of getting our share of the pie. The pie is rotten.”
We've been playing an act for a long time, so we're consummate actors” he concludes, “Now we can begin to be, and it'll be a good show!”


While living in the West, Wittman became involved in RFD, a "magazine for rural gays," first published in 1974. About the journal, Don Engstrom, one of the men who began the publication, stated that "original RFD'ers thought it was really important to build culture," it was "never about isolationism." Carl, he remarked, "was the first of us to start talking about how politics was truly about creating culture versus subverting culture."

In the early 1980s, Wittman continued his social activism and moved to the southeast. In North Carolina he co-founded the Durham Lesbian and Gay Health Project. Recognizing that people must be "confident that they have some control over the decisions which affect their lives.” 
 
Instrumental figure in country dance
Carl Wittman, led the development of"gender-free" dance in which there were no gendered dance roles"
He started a local community dance in his barn in Golden, Oregon, where he pulled in people from several intentional communities, as well as families and friends from around the area. His dancing community ended up being a mixture of gay men, lesbians and friends. 
 
Carl taught English and Scottish country dancing. He allowed anyone to dance with whomever they wished and in any role they chose. Not satisified with this, Carl changed his role identification system to "Reds" and "Greens" (Reds identifying the traditional gent's position and Greens to identify the lady's position). He went on to further develop this to a method defined as "Left File" and "Right File" dancers (the left file identifying the traditional gent's role and the right file identifying the traditional ladies position). 

 
Carl traveled around Oregon, starting other dance communities, and teaching this style of English and Scottish Country Dancing. Carl developed another tradition during this time, that being of how to line up for each dance. He advocated that everyone come to the set individually and fill in the next available space. This method ensures that everyone will have someone to dance with and addressed the sometimes-awkward practice of asking someone to dance, particularly with folks new to the dance.
In his manual on that dance style, he stated: “We will dance as an ever changing stream of faces, and groups will come together as a community rather than breaking up into cliques. No wall-flowers, no most-populars, no competition.” “And it worked,” a friend remembered about it, “mixing up dykes and fags, hets and straights, men and women in constantly shifting patterns, and it didn't really matter who was what.” 
 
As Carl did “final work on the dance book” and said “the most essential goodbyes,” he recalled that same friend in a poignant newsletter article of farewell. 

Carl Wittman had suffered from AIDS complications. When it became too painful in 1986 he called his friends together at his home and orchestrated his own death.





Friday, March 29, 2019

Efland Philly Steak Casserole

As we approach the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall Uprising, we'll be looking back on some of the events leading up to that event. We dedicate this dish to a nearly forgotten victim in our fight for equality, Howard Efland. Be sure to read the quick article following the recipe.
The wonderful tastes of a Phlly Cheese Steak sandwich makes this casserole a winner on any night. By using low fat cheese, you drop the calories. By using tough stew meat, you drop the cost. We know how to make stew meat tender, just cook it low and slow.

Ingredients

8 oz uncooked large elbow macaroni (about 2 cups)
1 lbs stew meat
2 cups thinly sliced yellow onions
½ cup sliced mushrooms
1 medium green bell pepper, cut in thin strips
1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce
1 package (8 oz) 1/3-less-fat cream cheese (Neufchâtel), cubed
½ cup beef flavored broth, no salt added
¼ lbs provolone cheese slices

Directions:

Heat oven to 225°F. Spray 13x9-inch (3-quart) baking dish with cooking spray.
Carefully slice up 2 med onions with a slicer. Toss 1Tbs oil & onions with stew meat into the dish and season with salt & pepper.


Cut up the green pepper into thin short strips and mix in. Stir in 2 Tbs oil until all is blended in.


Slow roast this in the 225 degree oven for two hours!

Cook the macaroni.
Cut up the softened cream cheese into dice shapes. When pasta is “al dente” drain and stir in the cream cheese to melt. Add the Worcestershire sauce and beef broth, stir well.

With 15 minutes to go on the meat, toss in the mushrooms and stir through.


Carefully take the meat dish out of oven. Turn the oven to broil.

Stir the macaroni into the meat mixture until well mixed. Then top with a layer of provolone slices.


Slide back in under the broiler until cheese is melted and showing touches of brown.




Serve with a crusty bread!

Nutrition Facts
Serving Size: 1 Serving 1/8 casserole
Calories 390 Calories from Fat 160 Total Fat 18g Saturated Fat 9g Trans Fat ½g Cholesterol 80mg Sodium 730mg



What an honor 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 




=============================================== Howard Efland




Just 4 months before the Stonewall Event in New York City.


The Dover Hotel was a five-story brick building in downtown Los Angeles. The hotel operated as a bathhouse.  Gay men checked in, removed their clothing, and laid on their beds with the doors ajar waiting for others to walk by in the hopes of meeting someone.


Writer Dan Savage describes a bathhouse as a whore house run by volunteers.


The Dover hotel not surprisingly, was the scene of a number of raids by the LAPD’s Vice Squad and was known to them as an easy bust for “faggots”.


On March 9th, 1969, just 4 months shy of the Stonewall riots in NYC, Howard Efland, a male nurse who checked into the hotel under the pseudonym of J. McCann.


Then all hell broke lose!
LA vice officers Lemuel Chauncey and Richard Halligan claimed that Efland groped them so they arrested him, dragged him naked, bleeding and screaming down a flight of stairs by his feet and into the street.

In front of several witnesses the two police officers who were well over 6’2 inches started beating the slightly built, unarmed and and non-resisting gay man to death while he screamed “Help me! My God, someone help me!” The two police officers kicked him repeatedly, did knee drops onto his stomach, and savagely beat him.


While several witnesses claimed that Howard Efland died at the scene. Chauncy and Halligan stated that Elfland was alive as they “threw” the body into the back of the police wagon.

The Admissions Officer who was on duty at County General Hospital testified at the Coroner’s inquest that when they received Efland, they tied him down to the bed and he was in bad shape. The Nurse testified that she went into the other room with the cop because the guy had bitten his finger. Forty minutes later while she’s still working on the cop another nurse came and said ‘hey, the guy in the other room died.’


The LAPD later claimed that Efland had momentarily escaped from a police van as it was speeding down the freeway after his arrest — and that his putative fall from the van had caused the fatal injuries.


The District Attorney refused to bring charges, and the City of Los Angeles rejected calls to discipline the officers.


The L.A.P.D. first informed Efland’s parents that their son had died of a heart attack. Later the L.A. County Coroner ruled Elfland’s death an “excusable homicide” and the story was withheld from the mainstream media. However the gay newspaper, the Advocate, picked up the story and responded strongly by calling the L.A.P.D. “psychotics” 


Activist Morris Kight recalled, "We were horrified and we did the first real organized protest about that in that we asked that a coroner's jury of civilians was put together and they had two days of testimony of police brutality (us mostly), with the police saying he was a dirty faggot and so on.
The homicide was called justified.
We didn't think it was justifiable." The Rev. Troy Perry, founder of the Metropolitan Community Church.


The  Rev. Perry, would lead 120 marchers in a rally to the the site of Dover to commemorate Efland’s fatal beating and murder.


The five-story brick building that housed the Dover Hotel no longer exists. In its place today stands a parking structure with a street-level retail space that is currently vacant.









The incident has been memorialized by the Back2Stonewall website.


No one was ever held accountable for the murder of Howard Efland.
After publishing his story in 2014 the nephew of  Howard Eflland contacted Back2Stonewall.com  Being  very young when it happened he was never told the true nature of his Uncle’s death.


On March 2, 2016, Back2Stonewall’s Will Kohler talked with LAPD’s  Gay, Bisexual & Transgender Community Liaison in the Community Relations Department who promised to look into the Efland case after 46 years.


There has never been an official response. Let us remember Howard Efland who was beaten to death for being gay.




Saturday, March 23, 2019

Danny Garvin Bitchin' Broccoli Soup

This meal is named in honor of a LGBT Hero, Danny Garvin. Read more about him in a short article after the recipe. 
 

This healthy soup gets most of its creaminess from potato not cream. A few cans from the pantry and some frozen vegetables come together in a wonderful bowl of comfort. 


 Ingredients
2 tablespoons butter
½ cup non fat half-n-half
1 onion, chopped
1 can diced potato
Nutmeg, to taste
4 cups chicken stock, warmed
Salt + Pepper
1 bag chopped broccoli florets and stems (3 cups) thawed

Directions:
Cut up the onion.


In a large pot, melt butter and cook onion until tender over medium high heat. Add potato and toss to coat with butter.



Add hot stock and bring to a simmer. Let cook for about 40 minutes.



Stir in ¾ths of the broccoli and return to a simmer for 20 minutes.


Make sure blender is completely submerged. 

When potato and broccoli are tender, carefully puree with an immersion blender or food processor. Return to heat along with last of the broccoli and the half & half. 
 

Let simmer for 5 – 10 minutes, Season to taste and serve warm. 

Note if you wish a mild cheesy flavor, mix in ½ cup of cream cheese when you are blending.




What a wonderful bowl of hugs!

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 

========================
Danny Garvin 
 


One of the few remaining verified Stonewall riot participants, Danny Garvin sadly passed away at the age of 65 in December four years ago. 

Danny and Tommy Lanigan-Schmidt have been noted as “the two most knowledgeable sources” on the historic riots by fellow LGBT historian David Carter.

Danny was there the night the bar opened (on his birthday in 1967) and became a regular customer of the Stonewall Inn,” David Carter said. “He met his first love there by dancing with him, dated the main doorman (Blonde Frankie), and was roommates with one of the men who worked in the coat check. Danny’s knowledge of the club has contributed a lot to a better understanding of the Stonewall Inn.

Fortunately, Danny also happened to walk up the street soon after the June 1969 raid began, and his detailed memories of that night significantly add to our knowledge about the Uprising,” Carter added.

“Danny’s life story is all the more remarkable and historically relevant because his experiences mirrored those of his generation,” Carter said. 
 
Danny was in the Navy and 17 years old when he realized his homosexuality. At that time, that was a dishonorable discharge. You could never find a job afterwards. He saw his world and everything he worked for crumbling away. Danny attempted suicide by cutting his wrists.

Even during the mid to late Sixties, there were no role models for being a gay man. At least no positive ones. Garvin knew he wasn't one of those super effeminate men. He wasn't a child molester or an old man who hung out in the balcony of the porn theaters.

Some of the most homophobic news reports: like CBS “Homosexuals” in 1967, “Perversion for Profit”, or “The Homosexual” WTVJ Miami 1966 were designed to paint a repulsive picture of these monsters.


“Danny was in a gay hippie commune before Stonewall and he was roommates with gay activist Morty Manford after Stonewall. Morty Manford’s introduction of Danny Garvin and another gay friend to Manford’s parents precipitated Manford’s coming out to his parents. Morty’s mother Jeanne Manford later founded what became Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays, now PFLAG. He hung out with Andy Warhol’s crowd, and he founded the recovery contingent of LGBT marchers in the LGBT Pride March each June.”

Gay men like Danny Garvin are our true heroes of the riots. They have received little or no recognition while others have been given the glory. 


 Without gay men like Danny Garvin we would not be where we are today.


You can see Danny tell in his own words what happened that night 50 years ago on June 28, 1969 at the Stonewall Inn.
A great resource is “Stonewall Uprising” PBS
https://www.amazon.com/American-Experience-Stonewall-Uprising/dp/B004AR4W4O/ref=sr_1_1?crid=177BP2E1V4PDB&keywords=stonewall+uprising+dvd&qid=1553359135&s=gateway&sprefix=stonewall+uprising%2Cdigital-text%2C150&sr=8-1https://www.amazon.com/American-Experience-Stonewall-Uprising/dp/B004AR4W4O/ref=sr_1_1?crid=177BP2E1V4PDB&keywords=stonewall+uprising+dvd&qid=1553359135&s=gateway&sprefix=stonewall+uprising%2Cdigital-text%2C150&sr=8-1


At the time, Danny was a homeless youth. Many of the warriors who ignited our movement that night were homeless LGBT youths, who then, as now, made the West Village their home.

Danny once said, “Maybe I would sell myself for 8 dollars to have a bed to sleep to in and a place to shower. Just some place to be hidden from the world until the next day when it would all start all over again. I know I would have robbed less food from stores just to get something to eat”.

Fifty years ago, like today, to be open about being LGBT put youths at terrible risk of homelessness. Then, as now, LGBT kids were suffering on the streets. Then, as now, many had to turn, like Danny, to hustling in order to survive.

As we approach the 50th anniversary of that event we must reflect in awe and wonder of the street kids who put their bodies on the line that night. Consider Danny, or his good friend and co-rioter Martin Boyce, or Miss New Orleans, the homeless trans girl who uprooted a parking meter and used it as a battering ram to destroy the door of the Stonewall Inn, behind which the police had retreated in fear. Remember both Marsha Jonson and Sylvia Rivera.

The homeless LGBT youths of the Village had lost almost everything; many had been driven from their homes and left destitute in the streets. Because they were far and away the most visible LGBT people to be found at that time, they were targets for abuse; beating up on them was a city sport.

That night LGBT's became a “people”, a “tribe”, a cohesiveness that was slow to develop but DID!
Danny said “ When we got kicked out of a bar before, we never came together. That night we did!”

The Stonewall uprising was the birth of our LGBT movement. That night the street kids and hustlers and drag queens helped create the space for the rest of us to be out, to be proud. We owe them our lives.
According to a statement from David Carter, author of Stonewall: The Riots That Sparked the Gay Revolution:
"In addition to sharing his life story so generously with me, Danny became a friend. He was always a selfless person. Like most authentic Stonewall witnesses, he did not seek the limelight or recognition. Of all the persons I met working on the book, he was the sweetest. I will always miss him and consider myself blessed and honored to have been his friend."
 











Tuesday, March 19, 2019

Sir Ian McKellen: Serena's Stew

Stews are perfect for changeable weather like we are having. This meal is to honor a true LGBT hero who has fought for decades! Please read a quick article about this brave and talented man after the recipe.


A stew based on a minestrone. With just enough stew beef to flavor this hearty, healthy meal. While I gather Sir Ian McKellen prefers a fish cuisine, I hope he will still recognize the spirit this is offered in. 
 


Ingredients:
½ lbs stew meat
2 Tbs oil
1 onion, chopped
2 stalks celery diced
3 carrots peeled and sliced
28oz can diced tomatoes (no slat added)
1 15oz can stewed tomatoes
3 cups low sodium vegetable broth
15 oz can Navy Beans, drained and rinsed
Fresh parsley, chopped

Directions: 
 

Do Your cutting: chop the onion, dice the celery, slice the carrots.



In a large pot, heat olive oil over medium-high heat. Add the onion and cook until soft and translucent, about four minutes.


  
Stir in the stew meat and brown on all sides, about 7 minutes.


Add carrots and celery and cook for about five minutes.
Add the vegetable broth, bring to boil then lower to a simmer for about an hour.



Next the cans of tomatoes. Taste test for seasonings. Add any salt & pepper, or Italian seasonings if you wish. Let continue to simmer for 40 minutes and add the navy beans.


 
 
Cook for approximately ten minutes or they are tender.

Serve with parsley & Parmesan, maybe a hot bread.



So honored 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 @amazonhttp://www.amazon.com/dp/B00F315Y4I/ref=cm_sw_r_tw_dp_vAT4sb0934RTM via @amazon



--------
Ian McKellen



Our hero honored here is known world wide as one of the finest actors of our time. McKellen's career spans doing Shakespeare and modern theater to popular fantasy and science fiction. The BBC states that his "performances have guaranteed him a place in the canon of English stage and film actors". A recipient of every major theatrical award in the UK, McKellen is regarded as a British cultural icon. What's more he is a hero because he has continually used his success to champion LGBT rights.

Born in 1939, his father was a civil engineer and lay preacher. Both of McKellen's grandfathers were preachers, and his great-great-grandfather, James McKellen, was a "strict, evangelical Protestant minister" His home environment was strongly Christian, but non-orthodox. When he was 12, his mother died of breast cancer; his father died when he was 24. 
After his coming out as gay to his stepmother, Gladys McKellen, who was a member of the Religious Society of Friends, Ian said, "Not only was she not fazed, but as a member of a society which declared its indifference to people's sexuality years back, I think she was just glad for my sake that I wasn't lying anymore."

In 1958, McKellen, at the age of 18, won a scholarship to St Catharine's College, Cambridge, where he studied English literature. He appeared in 23 plays over the course of 3 years. He was already giving performances that have since become legendary at the school.

McKellen had taken film roles throughout his career—beginning in 1969 with his role of George Matthews in A Touch of Love, and his first leading role was in 1980 as D. H. Lawrence in Priest of Love, but it was not until the 1990s that he became more widely recognized in the industry.

In 1993, he appeared in minor roles in the television miniseries Tales of the City, based on the novel by his friend Armistead Maupin. Latter that year, McKellen appeared in the television film And the Band Played On about the discovery of the AIDS virus for which McKellen won a CableACE Award for Supporting Actor, and was nominated for the Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Miniseries.

McKellen was awarded an honorary Doctorate of Letters by Cambridge University in 2014. He was made a Freeman of the city of London also that year. The ceremony took place at Guildhall in London. McKellen was nominated by London's Lord Mayor Fiona Woolf, who said he was chosen as he was an "exceptional actor" and "tireless campaigner for equality". He is also a Fellow of St Catherine's College, Oxford.

While McKellen had made his sexual orientation known to fellow actors early on in his stage career, it was not until 1988 that he came out to the general public, in a program on BBC Radio.


McKellen has continued to be very active in LGBT rights efforts. In a statement on his website regarding his activism, the actor commented that:
I have been reluctant to lobby on other issues I most care about – nuclear weapons (against), religion (atheist), capital punishment (anti), AIDS (fund-raiser) because I never want to be forever spouting, diluting the impact of addressing my most urgent concern; legal and social equality for gay people worldwide.” 
 
McKellen is a co-founder of Stonewall, an LGBT rights lobby group in the United Kingdom, named after the Stonewall riots. McKellen is also patron of LGBT History Month, Pride London, Oxford Pride, GAY-GLOS, The Lesbian & Gay Foundation, and FFLAG where he appears in their video "Parents Talking".

In 1994, at the closing ceremony of the Gay Games, he briefly took the stage to address the crowd, saying, "I'm Sir Ian McKellen, but you can call me Serena": This nickname, given to him by Stephen Fry, had been circulating within the gay community since McKellen's knighthood was conferred.

So tonight we honor him with “Serena Stew”. Generations continue to be in your debt!