The Johns Committee Slo-Pork

This meal done in the slow cooker is a variation of an old favorite. With the addition of English Roasted Potatoes it is sure to please and expand your skills while you present a beautiful dinner. It is named for a rather shameful incident in our modern history of civil rights. Please read about this witch hunt that was kept out of the public eye for over 50 years.

In this variation, instead of using Worcester sauce, we feature soy sauce & your favorite steak seasonings for just a hint of something different. It still makes the most wonderful gravy, so roast some potatoes the Northern European way and add simple mixed vegetables.

Ingredients:

2 pork steaks (sliced pork butt works just as good with thick pork chops!)

1 can condensed cream of mushroom soup Use low sodium

1 can condensed cream of celery soup Use low sodium

1 Large yellow onion

4 Tbs low salt soy sauce

1 Tbs “grill mates” steak seasonings or your favorite

1 tsp ground garlic

Directions:

This meal will take 7 hours so just count back from when you plan dinner.

Any time you use a mandolin slicer PLEASE use the food holder! It cuts far too quickly and easily.

Lift out the slow cooker, wipe it out well and spray it with cooking spray. I always set it on low with the lid on the empty pot to let it warm while the meal is prepared. (that way silly slave does not forget to turn it on!)

Carefully thin slice the onion and place that as a bed in the slow cooker.

Trim the large layer of fat off the meat.

Heat some oil in a large skillet and brown the edges of the pork. This will only take about 2 – 3 minutes per side. This is to just start caramelizing the exterior proteins on the meat for optimum flavor as well as making it look more appetizing.

While that browns, mix the soups, sauce and seasonings in a large bowl to combine.

Arrange the meat on the bed of onions and cover with the soup mixture over the top

Let this cook on LOW for 7 hours. Much more than that and the meat will start to fall apart!

Use this time do fix your potatoes and side vegetable.

When cooked:

Carefully remove the meat to a platter. Let it rest under a piece of foil. Dip out 2 cups of the cooking liquid and place in a medium saucepan. Over medium heat mix in a slurry (made of 1 tablespoon of flour and ½ cup of half & half.) Stir this for 2 minutes as it cooks to thicken and get rid of the starchy flavor.

Roasted English Potatoes

This is a favorite holiday dish in Northern Europe as well as the U.K. But why save it for the holidays?

Ingredients

6 Medium Starchy Potatoes (Yukon Gold)

1 Tbs butter flavored Crisco shortening stick

2 Tbs lard

½ tsp Salt

3 Garlic Cloves

Instructions

Wash, peel and cut the potatoes in half. Each should be about the size and shape of a golf ball. Fill a large saucepan with cold water and add the potatoes. Boil for 10 minutes until the outside of the potatoes become soft.

Add the shortening and lard to a baking dish and place in a 400 degree oven to melt and heat.

Drain the potatoes in a colander and leave to dry while the oven preheats. They should be well drained. Shake the colander to rough up all edges of the potatoes. This is an important step of the process, shake well.

Carefully add the potatoes to the baking dish with the 400 degree oil and butter. Pour them away from you as it can really splash and burn! Season with salt, add the whole garlic cloves. Use a spoon to coat everything well.

Roast the potatoes in a 400F oven for 1 hour and 10 minutes, tossing the potatoes around half way through the cook time. Remove and sprinkle with kosher salt.

This should produce a hard crusted potato that is soft and fluffy on the inside.

For our music, how about: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LlLsbL2LJKw

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

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The Porkchoppers and the Johns Committee

Johns Committee namesake and chairman Charley Johns (center) discusses plans to screen out homosexuals from employment in state government and colleges, 1963

The Florida Legislative Investigation Committee (commonly known as the Johns Committee) was established by the Florida Legislature in 1956. Having failed to find communist ties to Florida civil rights organizations, to gain continued funding it began to focus on a more vulnerable target: homosexuals.

Charley Johns was leader of the Pork Choppers, rural legislators who dominated the Florida Legislature because of chronic misrepresentation. When the Legislature was finally reapportioned, through the Florida Constitution of 1968, the Pork Choppers came to an end, and with them the political power of Charley Johns.

The Sun-Sentinel reported in 2019 that the Committee "persecuted civil rights leaders, university professors, college students, public school teachers and state employees for imagined offenses against redneck sensibilities.… Niceties like due process or the right to counsel or civil liberties were ignored.… They employed entrapment and blackmail."

It was called the Johns Committee after its first chairman Charley Johns. The origins of the committee was the panic caused by the Supreme Court's unanimous decision that racial segregation in schools, housing, and other public facilities was unconstitutional. Many Floridians viewed Brown v. Board of Education as "a day of catastrophe — a Black Monday — a day something like Pearl Harbor". The Legislature passed a resolution (House Concurrent Resolution 174) declaring the Supreme Court decision "null, void and of no force or effect".

Johns had not succeeded in getting legislative support for a committee to investigate vice crimes, his real target. The hysteria over desegregation led Johns to recast his proposed committee, successfully, as a tool to investigate the NAACP's activities in Florida.

Stymied in their investigation of the NAACP, the Committee turned to the issue of homosexuals, specifically at the University at Florida. In 1961, the Legislature directed the Johns Committee to broaden its investigations to include homosexuals. Having the power to subpoena witnesses, take sworn testimony, and employ secret informants, the committee spread terror among the closeted lesbian and gay population in state colleges, often using uniformed policemen to pull students and professors out of classes for interrogation.

However, the Johns Committee had already begun interrogating suspected homosexuals among students and faculty before the Legislature gave authorization for it. In 1958, committee chairman Johns illegally sent a covert investigator to the University of Florida after his son, Jerome Johns, told his father that "effeminate instructors had perverted the curriculum." Other students identified professors as homosexuals for such flimsy reasons as observing them eating lunch together or wearing Bermuda shorts on campus.

One covert Investigator named Strickland, hired student informants with FLIC funds, used highway patrolmen to remove professors from the classroom, and telephoned some instructors late at night, demanding that they provide testimony in Strickland's motel room at his convenience. He also prohibited the accused from confronting their complainants, seldom informed subjects of their legal or constitutional rights, and rarely offered them sufficient time to secure an attorney or prepare a defense.

The investigations ruined many lives and careers. This was done in semi-secret, with no public announcement, so the students of the university had only a murky notion what was up.

By 1963, the Johns Committee could boast of having caused the firing of 39 professors and deans, as well as the revoking of teaching certificates for 71 public school teachers, all suspected or admitted homosexuals. Scores of students were interrogated and subsequently expelled from public colleges across the state, as well.