Thursday, December 19, 2019

For A Gypsy Boy


This a Romany Gypsy recipe for a cheap and filling sausage and potatoes plate. It is sometimes called “Joe Grey” and would be served as a runny stew, with crusty bread. Here we strengthen it up with some spinach and dedicate it to a Gypsy LGBT hero known as Mikey Walsh. Read about him after the recipe.



Sausages, tomatoes, potatoes and onions plus a bit of spinach makes this hearty healthy meal perfect for the weather.





Ingredients:
3 or 4 uncooked bratwurst
3 slices thick cut bacon
1 large onion
1 can diced potatoes
1 can diced tomatoes
32 oz container low sodium beef broth
5-ounce bag baby spinach

Directions:
Do your cutting: chop onion into chunks




In Dutch oven, brown the bratwurst, 8 to 10 minutes. Remove and cut each in thirds.



Add bacon to pot, cook until rendering grease,add onions and cook until soft.




Return meats to pot add drained tomatoes and drained potatoes. Cover with heated beef broth.




Bring to a simmer

Add spinach by the handfuls as they wilt.
Let cook, stirring occasionally, for about 30 to 40 minutes. If you wish thicker dish, make a slurry with 3 Tbs cornstarch and water, stir in in small amounts until it reaches the thickness you wish.
Traditionally served on a plate with a crust bread dunked in to sop up all the liquid.





What an honor to dedicate this to Mikey Walsh!

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



==============================
Mikey Walsh 



Today's LGBT hero is a surprising combination. The very fact that he survives and even thrives should be an inspiration to us all.

Mikey Walsh was brought up to be a bare-knuckle fighter in the Gypsy community, but being gay, he was forced to leave his family and culture in 1996.

Mikey Walsh never wanted to be a fighter. His father was “fiercely determined” to have a son that was a true fighter.

In Romany culture, having a male child was everything — even more so for the Walsh family, which was known for generations of manly men who were good with their fists.

So, going against their heart doctor's advice not to try for a second child, Mikey followed his older sister Frankie. Upon the happy event, Mr. Walsh hung golden boxing gloves around his newborn son’s neck.

Growing up, Mikey loved the dramatic. He and his sister, enjoyed dress-up. They loved watching TV and, largely unsupervised, they played outside with their cousins, who lived on the same compound.

It would have been a wonderful early childhood but at age four, his father decided that it was time to start fight training, and the best way to do it was to beat the boy. His disgust at Mikey’s cries meant more punches.

By age 13, Mikey realized that he was gay, which, he knew, would enrage his father. He also knew that he needed to escape before it cost him his life.

And it wasn’t just the fact that Mikey was gay. “It is hard for everyone who is different and comes from my community,” he says.

If you want to marry a non-gypsy or not follow the path that’s been set out for you, it’s hard. It was always going to be difficult for my father to accept what I am, especially in a community where everyone feels like that.

Even if he could have managed to survive his father’s blows and keep his sexuality hidden in a community with few concealed truths, there was an even darker secret that Mikey had to escape.

His father’s brother Joseph had been sexually abusing him since he was seven years old, but Mikey knew his family would never believe it.

He still can’t dwell on this part of his story.



When he was 15, there was a bounty on his head because he had run away from his gypsy family. As a gay teenager, he knew the next beating he got from his father might kill him.

Mikey’s not his real name. It’s a character from The Goonies, the children’s film he watched over and over as a young boy. But that’s the name he’s been known by for half of his life.

Mikey Walsh is a handsome young man, but for more than a decade he’s known it would be too dangerous for him to have his photograph taken.

More than 15 years ago, he left one of Britain’s most private communities and has since told many of its secrets.

Sometimes Mikey even wonders if he made the right decision to leave. Like some other gay gypsies, he could have taken the decision to stay and live a lie.

When I think of being on the run I think how alive I was. When I was 15 I would sit up all night praying not to be gay. But if I hadn’t been, none of this would have happened.

I went on this journey to find normality. I wanted the most boring, humdrum life.”

And he has found a place in “normal” society, working as a teaching assistant in a school for children with learning disabilities.

I love it,” he says. “And I’m getting the primary school education that I never had – learning about things like the Saxons.”

Mikey pushed through adult education and taught himself to use a laptop. Then he wrote the first chapter of his life story and sent it to all the biggest publishers. One of them offered him a book deal.




The story of his escape from his violent upbringing, Gypsy Boy, became a number one bestseller. His first book ended as Mikey left the camp and it’s now being made into a film. X+Y director Morgan Matthews is set to direct, and Benedict Cumberbatch is going to star, playing Walsh's Father.

I’m hard on myself when I write, that’s my father always in my head, pushing to do better,” he says. “But the books aren’t ghostwritten – they are me.”

His follow-up autobiogrpahy Gypsy Boy on the Run tells the story of what happened next – how Mikey hid for years from gypsy hard men sent by his father.

It is also a story of endless kindness, from the woman who helped him open a bank account to the teacher who taught him to read.

Now, incredibly, after everything that has happened, he is reconciled with his family and there is no longer a bounty on his head. But other people who claim to represent the gypsy community have threatened him.

I’m happy to stay anonymous – I never wanted fame,” he says. So Mikey remains a mass of contradictions. He is famous, but anonymous and for years he had no formal education, but is the author of two books.

Some people actually thought I was a made-up person,” he
I’ve had detractors saying I was the creation of a publisher. People think you can’t not go to school and write a bestseller.”

Mikey says the runaway success of Gypsy Boy has brought ups and downs. He worries that people reading his books might think he isn’t proud to be a gypsy.

I’m very proud of who I am – being a gypsy is in your blood,” he says. “There is this amazing sense of community and respect for each other – a huge extended family. “And it is something I really miss. There were so many colorful characters.”

He doesn’t often visit his gypsy relatives but he is still close to his mother and sister. “Mum just feels it’s easier I’m out of it all. But she wrote me a really lovely letter recently. She drew around her hand and sent it.”

Mikey’s Gypsy Boy series will not have a third book.
That’s the final part of my story told,” he says.
This is me – I’m going to go off and be a grown-up.”














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