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.

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socialslave

To satisfy and restore.

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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!