A
wonderful stew of sausage, spinach, and beans will nourish the
traveler in all of us.
Ingredients:
1
tablespoon olive oil
1
pound Bratwurst, casing removed
1
small onion, chopped
4
garlic cloves, chopped
2
carrots, grated
1
(15-1/2-ounce) can great northern beans, undrained
3 cups cream of chicken soup
1
teaspoon Italian seasoning
¼
teaspoon black pepper
2
cups fresh spinach, washed
½
lbs Large pasta, like Campanelle
Directions:
Do
your cutting: chop the onion and garlic, grate the carrots, pull the
stems off the spinach
Peel
the casings off the bratwurst.
In
a soup pot, heat oil over high heat. Add sausage, onion, and garlic,
and cook 6
to 8 minutes or
until no pink remains, stirring frequently to break up the sausage.
Drain.
Return
to the pot and add the beans, the grated carrot and pour in the soup.
Bring to a high simmer.
Add
spinach buy the handful stirring and wilting it until it is
incorporated.
Let
simmer for 20
minutes.
Then
add the pasta and let cook for another 10
minutes*
Be
sure to stir it into the liquid immediately after adding it so it
does not stick together.
*
Notes about soup with pasta
For
the best-tasting soup, it’s crucial that the pasta stay firm and
doesn’t get mushy. But pasta naturally soaks up water, and it will
continue to soak up whatever broth it’s sitting in, even after the
soup is done. There are a few ways to minimize this.
Before
you add the pasta, make sure the soup is almost done. Everything else
in the soup should finish cooking in about the same short time that
the pasta needs to cook. Since there are beans in the stew, be sure
that they’re almost completely tender before adding the pasta. Here
I am using a semolina-based pasta. It won't absorb too much liquid
during that amount of time, and adding it uncooked will ensure that
the pasta doesn't become too soft and sticky. However if you are
using
pasta
made with other ingredients, such as buckwheat, soy flour, kamut or
quinoa, it is naturally stickier and softer than semolina pasta, so
it's smart to cook it al dente on its own before adding.
For
our music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vYueUekxZNU
So
honored to be serving my Master Indy
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
===========================
Siwa
The
Siwa Oasis
is an oasis in Egypt, 30 mi east of the Libyan border, and
348 mi from Cairo. It is only about 50 mi in length and
12 mi wide.
Siwa
Oasis is one of
Egypt's most isolated settlements with about 33,000 people, mostly
Berbers, who developed a unique and isolated desert culture with a
distinct dialect and language different than all others called Siwi.
The Siwa
Oasis was of special
interest to anthropologists and sociologists because of its
historical acceptance of male homosexuality.
Originally it was just known in
its ancient role as the home to an oracle of Ammon,
the ruins of which are a popular tourist attraction which gave the
oasis its ancient name Oasis
of Amun Ra.
Historically, it was part of Ancient Egypt.
Although the oasis is known to
have been settled since at least the 10th millennium BC, the earliest
evidence of any connection with Ancient Egypt is the 26th Dynasty,
when a necropolis was established. Ancient Greek settlers at Cyrene
made contact with the oasis around the same time, and the oracle
temple of Amun, who, Herodotus was told, took the image here of a
ram. Herodotus knew of a "fountain
of the Sun" that
ran coldest
in the noontime heat.
During
his campaign to conquer the Persian Empire, Alexander
the Great reached the
oasis, supposedly by following birds across the desert. The oracle,
Alexander's court historians alleged, confirmed him as both a divine
personage and the legitimate Pharaoh of Egypt, though Alexander's
motives in making the excursion, following his founding of
Alexandria, remain to some extent contested.
The
Siwans are a Berber people, so they were more closely related to
nearby Libya, which has a large Berber population, than to Egypt.
Consequently, Arab rule from distant Cairo was at first marked by
several revolts. Egypt began to assert firmer control after a 1928
visit to the Oasis by King Fuad I, who berated the locals for "a
certain vice"
and specified punishments to bring Siwan behavior in line with
Egyptian morals.
Even
in the late 1940s, a Siwan merchant told the visiting British
novelist Robin Maugham that the Siwan men "will kill each other
for boy. Never for a woman". He reported the Siwan women were
"badly neglected", although as Maugham noted, marriage to a
boy had become illegal by
then.
Siwa
was the site of some fighting during World War I and World War II.
The British Army's Long Range Desert Group was based here, but
Rommel's Afrika Korps
also took possession three times. German soldiers went skinny dipping
in the lake of the oracle.
Its
historical acceptance of male homosexuality and even rituals
celebrating same-sex marriage are traditions that the Egyptian
authorities have sought to repress, with increasing success, since
the early twentieth century.
The
German Egyptologist Georg Steindorff explored the Oasis in 1900
and reported that homosexual relations were common and often extended
to a form of marriage: "The feast of marrying a boy was
celebrated with great pomp, and the money paid for a boy sometimes
amounted to fifteen pounds, while the money paid for a woman was a
little over one pound."
Mahmud
Mohammad Abd Allah, writing of Siwan customs for the Harvard Peabody
Museum in 1917,
commented that although Siwan men could take up to four wives, "Siwan
customs allow a man but one boy to whom he is bound by a stringent
code of obligations."
In
1937 the
anthropologist Walter Cline wrote the first detailed report of the
Siwans in which he noted: "All normal Siwan men and boys
practice sodomy...among themselves the natives are not ashamed of
this; they talk about it as openly as they talk about love of women,
and many if not most of their fights arise from homosexual
competition....Prominent men lend their sons to each other. All
Siwans know the matings which have taken place among their sheiks and
their sheiks' sons....Most of the boys used in sodomy are between
twelve and eighteen years of age."
The
archaeologist Count Byron de Prorok reported in 1937
that "an enthusiasm could not have been approached even in
Sodom... Homosexuality was not merely rampant, it was raging...Every
dancer had his boyfriend...[and] chiefs had harems of boys.
The
Egyptian archaeologist Ahmed Fakhry, observed in
1973 that "While
the Siwans were still living inside their walled town, none of these
bachelors was allowed to spend the night in the town and had to sleep
outside the gates...It is not surprising that homosexuality was
common...Up to the year 1928,
it was not unusual that some kind of written agreement, which was
sometimes called a marriage contract, was made between two males; but
since the visit of King Fu'ad to this oasis it has been completely
forbidden...
However,
such agreements continued, but in great
secrecy, and without
the actual writing, until the end of World War II. Now the practice
is not followed."
Despite
the many sources for these practices, the Egyptian authorities and
even the Siwan tribal elders have attempted to repress the historical
and anthropological record. When the Siwa-born anthropologist Fathi
Malim included reference to Siwan homosexuality (especially a love
poem from a man to a youth) in his book Oasis Siwa (2001),
the tribal council demanded that he blank out the material in the
current edition of the book and remove it from future editions, or be
expelled from the community. Malim reluctantly agreed and deleted the
passages in the first edition of his book, and excluded them from the
second.
A
newer book, Siwa Past and Present (2005) by A. Dumairy, the Director
of Siwa Antiquities, discreetly omits all mention of the famous
historical practices of the inhabitants.
