Strachey Casserole

Working on a recipe to use up some left over pork, this casserole fell into place. We honor a LGBT Hero, former actor Chad Allen – who is now a clinical psychologist! A personal favorite are his movies portraying Donald Strachey private eye. 

Cooked pork, is enlivened by addition of shrimp cocktail sauce in this casserole. Easy to assemble and a quick clean-up!

Ingredients:

1 lbs of cooked pork cubes

½ cup chopped onion

½ cup chopped celery

1 can mushroom soup

2 carrots, grated

12oz. Bottle of shrimp cocktail sauce

½ package wide noodles

Directions:

Spray a 9 x 13 baking dish and pre heat oven to 350

 

Put the water on to boil for the pasta. Chop the onion and celery. Peel and grate the carrots. Crush the cup of potato chips.

Heat 1 Tbs oil in a large skillet and add the onions and celery. Stir and let that cook for about 4 minutes before adding the pork. Mix that in well.

Cover and let heat for another 4 minutes. Pour in the 12 oz of shrimp cocktail sauce and mix well.

Let heat up then add the carrots, ¼ cup of mayonnaise and the can of condensed mushroom soup. Stir well.

Cover and let that cook for 8 minutes.

Drain the noodles and stir in the pork mixture.

Spoon into the baking dish.

Sprinkle the crushed potato chips over the top and cover with foil

Bake for 40 minutes.

Serve this with a green vegetable for best presentation.

For our music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OuUpOerfT2I

Proud and happy to be Master Indy's slave.

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

Chad Allen 

Chad Allen, born in 1974, is a former American actor, now a clinical psychologist. Beginning his career at the age of seven, Allen is a three-time Young Artist Award winner and GLAAD Media Award honoree.

Allen was a teen idol during the late 1980s as David Witherspoon on Our House and as Zach Nichols on My Two Dads before transitioning to an adult career as Matthew Cooper on Dr. Quinn: Medicine Woman.

He’s the youngest of four boys, and his parents were hoping for a girl. They got one, in the shape of Chad’s twin sister, Charity. Chad was the “extra change”, as he puts it. Chad got his start in show business when his mother started entering him and his twin sister Charity in “twin contests” at fairs. People kept telling his mother that she should try to get the them into acting.

Charity didn’t much like show business at all, but Chad was bitten by the acting bug.

It was decided that Chad Lazzari sounded like a name for a dark-haired Italian, not a blond, blue-eyed boy, and he started out on his acting career as Chad Allen instead. His first job was in a McDonalds television commercial, at age four.

His first dramatic work came at age six, in a pilot for a television series that never went into production, Cutter to Houston.

TV offers followed and gave him jobs on successful TV shows like: Webster (1985-1986), Our House (1986-1988) and My Two Dads (1989-1990).

During these years, he became one of the biggest and most popular teen idols of the day, thanks to, as he later said, “a mega publicist, who put out an image of me that seemed ideal.” He couldn’t go anywhere in public without being pursued by his numerous fans.

By the time My Two Dads ended in 1990, Chad was unsure about whether he wanted to go on with acting. He was 16 years old, and even though he had gone to a normal primary school, he hadn’t been to a regular school since age 12, instead being taught by private tutors on the set.

“I left the business, went back to high school, joined the swim team, became vice-president of my class, did everything. I tried to be a normal teenager.”

He now describes it as “probably one of the best decisions I ever made”, even though his fame initially made life difficult for him in school. “In high school I was sneered at a lot. I was the teen magazine guy, half the kids followed me around like disciples and the other half were going to kick my ass”.

After high school, Chad was accepted as a student at New York University, however he decided to put off college when he was offered the part of Matthew Cooper on Dr. Quinn: Medicine Woman. With this new role he became one of the few former child stars to successfully make the transition to a career as an adult.

Courageously, in an issue of The Advocate, Chad came out as a gay man. He also acknowledged past problems with drugs and alcohol.

He also has spoken to a number of groups and at events about gay rights issues including taking part in a forum on Larry King Live on the issue of gay marriage.

He has also lent his support to a large number of charities over the years, including The American Diabetes Association, The March of Dimes, Project Angel Food, the Autistic Children’s Foundation, the American Cancer Society, the Gay & Lesbian Victory Fund, AIDS Project Arizona, and AIDS Project Los Angeles.

In 2001, the same year as he came out in the Advocate issue, Chad proved to all the critics were wrong that said he would have a hard time finding work as actor. Three movies followed that year –A Mother’s Testimony (co-starring with Kate Jackson) the horror movie Do You Wanna Know a Secret and the critical acclaimed independent movie What Matters Most. The latter one earning him several nominations in the best actor category.

2004/2005 Chad continued to focus on acting, and landed a most important role as Donald Strachey, in Third Man Out. Here TV a gay and lesbian television network approached Chad with the detective story written by Richard Stevenson, and Chad signed on to do 6 movies in the Donald Strachey Mystery Series.

“My life experience has become so great, and I think that really fuels the acting,” says Allen. “You know, I’ve been working on my craft since I was five years-old, and now that I’m another 10 years into it, I have the experience of being open, and I can truly put all my experience into a character without any hesitation or supplementation – ˜Third Man’ is perhaps one of the most honest portrayals I’ve ever been able to give as an actor. Stage experience has been right up there, but creating Donald Strachey was just oozing out of me.”

The sequel, Shock to the System (2006), was followed by On the Other Hand, Death (2008) and Ice Blues (2008). Allen noted that Strachey is the first gay character he had ever played outside of theater and that, though his career is "different" since coming out, he finds it "more interesting and fun for me than it has ever been."

The Los Angeles Daily News wrote in passing that Allen's partner, Jeremy Glazer, was also in the film Save Me. In May 2009, Allen was the recipient of a GLAAD Media Award. In his acceptance speech he said he had met Glazer, his partner, exactly four years earlier. They broke up in 2015.

In April 2015, Allen announced in a video his retirement from acting, saying that he plans to become a clinical psychologist. "It's been an exciting journey...working on the shows that I got to work on over the years. I am incredibly grateful today, I have been and always will be," adding "My life has taken me on a very different trajectory and after 30-plus years as an actor, I made a decision a couple of years ago to begin letting that side of my life go and I've been focusing on my education." 

He is now a clinical psychologist and continues to help those struggling with LGBT issues. Surely a hero by any definition.