Sunday, March 1, 2020

Alecks Bake

Here is an interesting twist on the old Shepherds Pie meal featuring a BBQed chicken and Mac & Cheese! It is to honor one of the greatest LGBT writers of the early 20th century Alexander Wollcott. Read about him after the recipe. 



Here is also a lesson on how to carve a rotisserie chicken! Also the best way to harvest the pulled meat for any and all recipes. Remember that 3 oz of rotisserie chicken breast meat contains 279 mg of sodium or 19% of daily recommendations. Thigh meat is 318 mg of sodium!
About one-third of the fresh chicken found in supermarket meat cases has been synthetically saturated with a mix of water, salt, and other additives via needle injections and high-pressure vacuum tumbling.
READ the fine print on the package!



Ingredients:
1 rotisserie chicken (directions on how to harvest the meat follows)
1 can Sloppy Joe mix
1 small can peas & carrots
1 onion chopped
1 cup shredded Cheddar Cheese

Directions:
Here is how to carve a rotisserie chicken and harvest the pulled meat for recipes. It can be messy but not difficult. Forgive the internet pictures but slave just can't take pictures on his phone with hands covered with chicken! Wear gloves!


Place a cutting board in a sheet pan to catch any drippings and Use a good sharp knife.
A well cooked chicken may be tender enough to just pull apart with your fingers, wearing gloves of course! First remove the string.


Cut or pry between the breast and the leg & thigh, pry it open and the joint will pop, then cut on right through.

Hold the leg by the “foot” and run the knife right down cutting the drumstick free from the thigh. You will find a thin line of fat to show you where to cut.
Peel off the skin, watch out for gristle and the tiny bone that runs down the side of the leg. There is a short piece of gristle on each leg, pull or cut that off.
REMEMBER you want NO BONE or Bone fragments, gristle or any thing your guest could bite down on!

Roll your fingers around the thigh bone and again the meat will just pull away.
Repeat on other side
Pull the wings away from the bird and cut through the joint, repeat for other side.



Turn the cavity toward you.
Peel off the skin to show the breast meat. You will see the breast bone. Pull out the “wish bones” over the cavity opening.


Sometimes the meat is so tender you can run your fingers right down the side as you pull the meat away. OR

Cut right down one side of the breast bone, pulling the meat away as you cut. Cut as close to the bone as possible, your knife will ride the ribs down. Cut down to one side of the back bone and cut right through.

On the other side of the breastbone just cut down through to the other side of the back bone.
Again you can just pull the meat apart in about ½ to 1 inch pieces. OR you can pull it apart with two forks!



ON the back, where the thigh was connected, you will find a small piece, about the size of the end of your thumb. It is called the “oyster”. The best piece on the whole chicken. (cut this out and eat it yourself! This is your reward for dissecting the bird)!
Once again check through the pile of chicken pieces for any bone or gristle.

Chop the onion and any pieces of chicken that are too large.
Bag and freeze any meat you don't need for later use.

Clean up the mess and wash your hands!

Pre-heat the oven to 350 degrees and spray an 8 x 8 baking dish and set aside.
Start the water for pasta and fix the box of Mac & Cheese according to package directions. 



Once that is done. Heat some oil in the skillet. Add the chopped onion and stir occasionally until it starts to turn transparent. Add 2 cups of pulled chicken and stir in the drained ½ can of peas and carrots.



Pour in the sloppy joe mix stirring from time to time to heat and blend flavors.


Spoon the chicken into a layer on the bottom of the 8 x 8 baking dish.

Now stir the cup of shredded Cheddar Cheese into the prepared mac & cheese. You want it to be thick with cheese, otherwise the pasta will just soak up the sauce.



Spoon this on top making a thick layer over the chicken. Place in oven for 35 – 45 minutes. Everything is already cooked, this just “sets” the dish and melts the cheese.

When finished, remove from oven and let rest while you microwave a green vegetable side.



What an unexpected twist on the ole “Shepherds Pie”! 




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 @amazon


===========================



Alexander Woollcott












Alexander Woollcott (January 19, 1887 – January 23, 1943) was an American critic and commentator for The New Yorker magazine, a member of the Algonquin Round Table, an occasional actor and playwright, and a prominent radio personality. Woollcott was one of the most quoted men of his generation.


Reportedly, in his early twenties he contracted the mumps that left him sterile, but not impotent; in any case, his sexual confusion began much earlier. During his teens, he regularly cross­-dressed, signed his letters “Alicia,” and was nicknamed “Cream Puff.” In college, Cream Puff became “Putt”, the jocks beat him up regularly, and he contemplated suicide. He got through it all by reading Krafft­-Ebing, Havelock Ellis, and Oscar Wilde on “inversion,” and decided to accept himself.

With the help of a family friend, he made his way through college, graduating from Hamilton College, in 1909.


Woollcott joined the staff of The New York Times as a cub reporter in 1909. In April 1917, the day after war was declared, Woollcott volunteered as a private in the medical corps. He soon became a sergeant when the intelligence section of the American Expeditionary Forces selected him and a half-dozen other newspaper men to create the Stars and Stripes, an official newspaper to bolster troop morale. As chief reporter, Woollcott was a member of the team that formed its editorial board. Using humor, he reported the horrors of the Great War from the point of view of the common soldier. 



After the war he returned to The New York Times.
From 1929 to 1934, he wrote a column called "Shouts and Murmurs" for The New Yorker. His book, While Rome Burns, published by Grosset & Dunlap in 1934, was named twenty years later as one of the 52 "Best Loved Books of the Twentieth Century." 


Among Woollcott's classic one liners is his description of the Los Angeles area as "Seven suburbs in search of a city". Describing The New Yorker editor Harold Ross, he said: "He looks like a dishonest Abe Lincoln."
Woollcott was renowned for his savage tongue. He dismissed Oscar Levant, the notable wit and pianist, by observing, "There is absolutely nothing wrong with Oscar Levant that a miracle can't fix."

Dorothy Parker once said: "I remember hearing Woollcott say reading Proust is like lying in someone else's dirty bath water.”
He long claimed the Brandy Alexander cocktail was named for him.

Some of his best known quotes:
  • "All the things I really like to do are either immoral, illegal, or fattening."
  • "Many of us spend half of our time wishing for things we could have if we didn't spend half our time wishing."
  • "There is no such thing in anyone's life as an unimportant day."
  • "His huff arrived and he departed in it."
  • "A hick town is one where there is no place to go where you shouldn't go."
  • "The English have an extraordinary ability for flying into a great calm."
  • "At 83, George Bernard Shaw's mind was perhaps not quite as good as it used to be, but it was still better than anyone else's."
  • "I have no need of your God-damned sympathy. I only wish to be entertained by some of your grosser reminiscences."


Alexander Woollcott fell in love with Harpo Marx the first time he saw him. The Marx Brothers were making their Broadway debut in the musical comedy I’ll Say She Is. Woollcott was there, reluctantly, to review it for the Sun.
It was an evening of chaos, double entendres, and gender confusion, especially during the show’s centerpiece—a takeoff on the Napoleon and Josephine story in which Napoleon (Groucho) is forced back to Paris again and again to thwart the not unwelcome advances Josephine receives from his three ministers, Gaston (Harpo), François (Chico), and Alphonse (Zeppo). Everyone ends up groping everyone else. Woollcott loved it all, but was especially transported by Harpo, as the title of his review the next day testifies: “Harpo Marx and Some Brothers ­ Hilarious Antics Spread Good Cheer at the Casino.” We should be grateful, he said, for these four “talented cutups,” but especially for the “silent brother, that sly, unexpected, magnificent comic among the Marxes.”


                                                    Harpo


The review was more than a rave, it was a mash note, for Woollcott was gay and suddenly smitten. Like a nervous stagedoor Johnny, he called Harpo the next day and wrangled an invitation backstage, using his review as a calling card.

Their meeting was rocky at first. But Harpo liked the way Woollcott laughed and decided to accept an invitation to a poker game at the Algonquin.

Here already was the tug­-of­-war, the teasing and the battle of wits that would characterize their relationship for the next two decades. From that first night until his death in 1943, Woollcott focused most of his considerable desire on Harpo.

Harpo’s own characterization of their friendship was tender: “I could never figure Aleck out completely, nor he me. He was too complicated and I was too simple. Our friendship was a lifelong game of ‘Who Am I?’ It was frustrating, exasperating, and sometimes downright silly, but it was a good, rewarding game…. He was a true friend.” Harpo was not, however, so simple, and the game they played was as much “Do You Want Me?” as “Who Am I?”

The two men formed an odd couple in the constellation of oddballs that was the Algonquin Round Table. Woollcott was pudgy, fastidious, and bookish, a dandy with an acidic, modern wit. James Thurber called him “Old Vitriol and Violets.” Harpo, on the other hand, was Harpo, a real-­life version of his goofy, horn-­honking self. He was all libido, always “on,” seemingly up for anything. The affection the two men shared was real. They were the “Odd Couple,” Felix and Oscar, locked in a long flirtation. Woollcott scolded, Harpo teased.
For years they vacationed together and exchanged notes on the anniversary of their meeting.


                                            Alexander and Harpo

One day, while on a trip to France, Woollcott took him to meet Somerset Maugham at Maugham’s villa, lecturing him all the way about good behavior. When they arrived, Harpo was surprised to find Maugham younger looking and less swishy and stuffy than he’d expected. He greeted them, Harpo recalled, looking “lean and brown” in “only shorts and sandals,” and “sizzling with energy and good cheer.”

Maugham showed them the master bedroom, positioned so he could dive from its window straight into his pool. While Woollcott and Maugham were turned away discussing a painting, Harpo stripped and made the dive. Woollcott acted appalled, but the Englishman quickly shed his shorts and sandals, and followed Harpo through the window!

Another afternoon, Woollcott invited Mr. and Mrs. George Bernard Shaw for lunch. He fussed over arrangements all morning (“jittery as a girl on her first date,” said Harpo) Harpo said “to hell with the whole affair” and went for a nude swim. As he dozed in the sun, the Shaws pulled up.
They missed Woollcott in town and hired their own driver out to the villa. Harpo just managed to get a towel around himself as the guests came up the walk, Shaw yelling “Where the devil’s Woollcott? Who the devil are you?” As Harpo introduced himself, Shaw reached down and yanked the towel away, laughed, and nonchalantly introduced himself. By the time Woollcott arrived, Harpo and the Shaws were fast friends. The three of them spent the next month palling around —much to Woollcott’s apparent chagrin. “Harpo Marx and Bernard Shaw!” he sniffed. “Corned beef and roses!”


Harpo knew it was an act, noting that Woollcott “loved playing the game of Strange Bedfellows.” Harpo didn’t mind that game, but he “didn’t exactly care for the type of dog Aleck put on, on the Riviera” and his escapades were designed to bring Woollcott back down to earth. According to Harpo (in Harpo Speaks!), Woollcott admitted that “every man as pretentious as old Alexander” needs such friends “to remind him of what really makes the world go round, and that everything else is just pretending.”

Thurber in The Years With Ross also reports Woollcott describing himself as "the best writer in America," but with nothing in particular to say; Woollcott was primarily a storyteller, a retailer of anecdotes and superior gossip, as many of his personal letters reveal. His letters also reveal a warm and generous heart and a self-effacing manner distinct from his waspish public persona, and his many lasting and close friendships with the theatrical and literary elite of his day. 



Woollcott appeared on his last radio broadcast in 1943, as a participant on the CBS Radio program The People's Platform. Marking the tenth anniversary of Adolf Hitler's rise to power, the topic was "Is Germany Incurable?"
"The German people are just as responsible for Hitler as the people of Chicago are for the Chicago Tribune," Woollcott stated emphatically, and the panelists noted Woollcott's physical distress. Ten minutes into the broadcast, Woollcott commented that he was feeling ill, but continued his remarks. "It's a fallacy to think that Hitler was the cause of the world's present woes," he said. Woollcott continued, adding "Germany was the cause of Hitler." He said nothing further, but reportedly took a notepad and wrote the words, "I am sick." The radio audience was unaware that Woollcott had suffered a heart attack. He died at New York's Roosevelt Hospital a few hours later, aged 56, of a cerebral hemorrhage.

Woollcott is remembered almost exclusively as “The Man Who Came to Dinner.” His friends George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart patterned their play’s central character, Sheridan Whiteside, an annoying New York critic and radio celebrity, after him. Forgotten now is the fact that Woollcott was one of America’s most popular writers during the 1920s and 1930s. He published screenplays, biographies, and collections of essays, wrote numerous profiles and the “Shouts and Murmurs” page for The New Yorker, and hosted a popular CBS radio show, “The Town Crier.” If he is remembered more today as a personality than as a writer, it is because his great talent. “Nothing Woollcott did or thought escaped notice,” said E.B. White. “He saw to that.” The persona that Woollcott created and promoted was the quintessential version of a certain modern gay style, a style that fends off sadness with wit and uses double entendres to hint at the double life. It is the mix of sentiment and bitterness, of nostalgia and high camp, that one finds in the lyrics of Cole Porter and Noel Coward.

He was buried in Clinton, New York, at his alma mater, Hamilton College, but not without some confusion. By mistake, his ashes were sent to Colgate University in Hamilton, New York. When the error was corrected and the ashes were forwarded to Hamilton College, they arrived with 67¢ postage due.



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