Blake Brockington Green Beans & Potatoes

This classic mixture deserves another go around. Simple and plain yet comforting and satisfying. We name it in honor of a young leader lost too soon. Please read the short story of his life after the recipe. Fresh green beans, onions and potatoes: inexpensive comfort meal just the thing for when weather is questionable and you want to serve a meal of love and warmth. Ingredients: 2 lbs fresh green beans 8 oz seasoning ham 1 onion, diced 3-4 large yukon gold potatoes, peeled and diced 4 cups chicken broth 1 tsp pepper * *Hold off adding any salt because sometimes the seasoning ham is very salty. Directions: Wash and trim beans then cut into 2-inch pieces; set aside. Chop the onion. Peel and cut potatoes into large cubes In a skillet, heat and stir in the seasoning ham. Sometimes this has plenty of grease in it so watch and adjust accordingly. Cook until starting to brown, ( about 8 minutes). Add onion and beans then continue to sauté until onion is translucent. (about 3 more minutes) Remove from heat. Dump the potatoes into a Dutch oven. Add chicken broth, pepper and bean mixture (with pan drippings) to the pot then bring to a boil.    Once boiling, cover then reduce heat to medium-low and cook for 30-45 minutes, stirring occasionally. Let rest 10 minutes before serving. Notes: You can make this with canned beans (probably 4-5 cans). Drain the beans and skip sautéing them. Just mix the drained beans with the onion and bacon before adding everything to the potatoes. Canned beans aren't as good but they're still pretty tasty. You can also make this in a crock pot. Follow recipe except use a crock pot instead of the large pot or Dutch oven. Cook on low for 6-8 hours or high for 3-4 or until potatoes are tender. You can also use red potatoes. Don't use russet or baking potatoes. They won't hold up being boiled this long. A simple tasty southern favorite. Serve with an old fashioned side of cottage cheese & peaches. Maybe some warm bread. For our music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OG3PnQ3tgzY&list=RDEhZba-P7R18&index=14

So honored 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 

 

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

Blake Brockington

Life was a constant battle for Blake Brockington, a young teen who became a leader before he was ready for it. He was born in 1996 and assigned as “female” at birth. Yet he always knew this was wrong.

Then in his high school sophomore year he started to do something about it. He said he always felt like a boy and chafed at being forced to wear dresses to church and family affairs.

“I felt like I’ve lived my entire life as a lie,” Blake says in a documentary. “I grew up in Charleston, S.C., in a Southern Baptist home. I’ve always been kind of different. It was always a bad thing in my family, but they never really said anything.

“I remember finding out when I was six that I wasn’t like the other boys. I remember being forced into dresses and under hot combs. ... I remember learning to play the piano, imagining that one day I’d be the piano man. I remember my first orchestra concert when I was eight and I cried because I wanted to wear a tux. ... I remember hating my name and hoping that maybe I could bleed it out of my life. I remember coming to terms with the fact that I’d never be enough. I remember being jealous of my nephew because he’d be tall and man enough for the world like the other beautiful men in our family. I remember hating my body so much that I wanted to burn it alive in the hopes that it would have the effect on me that fires have on forests. I remember when I lost faith in friendship because misunderstanding manifested disgust in my existence. I remember realizing that there was no place for me here. I remember finding myself and finally loving him. I remember it being too late.”

He came out publicly as transgender while attending high school as a tenth grade student. His family was not supportive of his decision to go FTM, so Brockington chose to live with a foster family during his transition.

He chose the name Blake after it came to him in a dream and because he liked how masculine it sounded. He was taking testosterone, which was covered by Medicaid, and had planned to get a mastectomy once he was able to afford it.

In 2014, Brockington received national attention for being the first openly transgender high school homecoming king in North Carolina after collecting the most money for the school's chosen charity. He later indicated the process had been tough on him, saying, "That was single-handedly the hardest part of my trans journey. Really hateful things were said on the Internet. It was hard. I saw how narrow-minded the world really is."

His reaction was to began publicly advocating for transgender and LGBT youth issues.

"I honestly feel like this is something I have to do," Brockington, who mentored several younger trans students, at the time he was named homecoming king. "Nobody should be scared to be themselves, and everybody should have an equal opportunity to have an enjoyable high school experience."

The numbers themselves have been staggering. National surveys show that 41 percent of transgender or gender nonconforming adults have self-reported a suicide attempt, compared with 4.6 percent of the overall U.S. population. Transgender men have the highest rate, with 46 percent reporting suicide attempts.

For many years, the “T” in LGBT was an afterthought, and even some gays and lesbians haven’t always been accepting. However things are changing, thanks to people like Blake speaking out and mentoring others.

“Blake was a real hero to a lot of people,” Keisling said. “He was fairly high-profile for a teenager. ... He really stood up for himself and for all of us. He was just such a good, strong leader and spokesperson. But perhaps it was all a bit too much for our young hero.

“Blake was a figure. People saw Blake as part of a movement,” said O’Neale Atkinson, Time Out Youth’s director of youth programs. “There were a lot of expectations put on him to be a leader at a very young age.”

Prior to his death, Brockington had indicated that he had experienced years of depression and destructive behavior, such as self-harming. He also indicated that he had previously had suicidal thoughts.

Two months before his death, he posted on his Tumblr page "Even if I got better in my head, I would never want to continue on in a world like this." A month prior, he posted "I’m waiting on the moment when me and my darkness split from my body."

Yet no one stepped in. Brockington died on March 23, 2015 after being struck by several vehicles on the outer loop of Interstate 485 in Charlotte. The incident was considered a suicide.

Many have noted that what happened to Brockington fits a dangerous pattern of harmful behavior by transgender youth - who often face disproportionate amounts of bullying, harassment, discrimination, and violence. Josh Burford, assistant director for sexual and gender diversity at UNC Charlotte, who had worked with Brockington on the exhibit at the Levine Museum, told the press "What happened to Blake is part of a systemic problem, especially for trans students of color. He didn’t quit. He didn’t give up. ... He’s a victim of what happens every single day to these kids."

Other memorial services were held in cities such as Minneapolis, Washington, D.C., and an additional service in Charlotte.

If you are a trans or gender-nonconforming person considering suicide, Trans Lifeline can be reached at 877-565-8860. LGBT youth (ages 24 and younger) can reach the Trevor Project Lifeline at 1-866-488-7386. The National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255 can also be reached 24 hours a day by people of all ages and identities.

We can not afford to merely sit and wonder what might have been. We must work together to make things change. Somewhere a young person is watching.

E. Lynn Harris Crab and Havarti Dip

While the super bowl has passed, the parties are starting to pick up. This warm dip is named to honor a literary legend you may never have heard of. For Black History month lets remember this gay African-American. Be sure to read the short article following the recipe. 

 

Thanks to canned crab meat, you can make this rich dip any time of the year. It blends the flavors of the sea food with horseradish and the creamy Havarti cheese. Great for any chip, cracker, or other food you like to serve at your next get together. 

 

Ingredients

1 8 ounce package cream cheese, softened

¼ cups prepared horseradish

1 cup shredded Havarti cheese

1 pkg plain Greek style yogurt

¼ cup mayonnaise

two cans crab meat, drained, flaked, and any cartilage removed

1 cup shredded baby spinach

½ cup chopped onion

Bread sticks, flatbread, toasted baguette slices, and/or bagel chips

Directions

Chop up the onion and the spinach.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

In a large bowl, combine cream cheese, yogurt and mayonnaise.

Spread the Havarti cheese into the bowl and blend well. Slave used a simple potato masher for this. Set aside.

In a skillet, heat oil and onions. Let cook until starting to turn transparent.

Stir in the spinach. Let cook over low heat for about 10 minutes stirring occasionally so it doesn't burn.

Remove from heat and mix into the cheese mixture. Gently stir in crab meat.

Transfer mixture to an ungreased 1-quart souffle dish or shallow baking dish. Bake about 25 minutes or until heated through. 

 

Serve with chips, crackers, raw vegetables, pretzels or any other foods you would have for your guests.

What a great gourmet surprise!

For our music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eDFPUUVB--A

So happy to be able to serve this for my Master.

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

 

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

E. Lynn Harris

 
Harris was an unlikely literary pioneer. He was a former IBM executive who decided to write about his life.

Initially unable to land a book deal with a publishing house for his first work, Invisible Life, he published it himself and sold copies from the trunk of his car to African-American beauty salons and bookstores.

He later was published by Doubleday, and ten of his novels achieved New York Times bestseller status.

Harris' first novel, Invisible Life finished in 1991, was a coming-of-age story dealing with then-taboo topics. Most important was that it openly questioned sexual identity and told the story of main character Raymond Tyler. The hero, torn between his married male lover and girlfriend Nicole, is a New York attorney struggling with identifying as a bisexual black man. He ultimately settles into the gay life.

He eventually became one of the nation's most popular writers with an estimated 4 million of his books in print.
In books like "Invisible Life," "A Love of My Own," and his New York Times best-selling memoir, "What Becomes of the Brokenhearted," Harris virtually invented a new genre: books that depicted black gay men living double lives.
This in a time when the black community was very homophobic! The public had never seen homosexual love in African-American men portrayed. It was playful, loving, and it wasn't hidden.
That very fact gave hope to untold millions. Harris held dinner parties for aspiring writers at his home. He loved meeting and hugging fans at book readings, and never seemed to let his fame change him. Sometimes he would answer up to 200 e-mails from his fans each day.

Harris had his share of personal pain. In his 2003 memoir, he wrote about enduring abuse by his stepfather and an attempted suicide in 1990.

Mr. Harris tapped a rich vein of interest with racy tales of affluent, ambitious, powerful black men who nonetheless struggled with their attraction to both men and women. His books shed light on a segment of society that had received little attention: black men on the down low — that is, men who are publicly heterosexual but secretly have sex with men.

Harris died July 23, 2009, while in Los Angeles for a business meeting. He was found unconscious at the Peninsula Hotel in Beverly Hills, California, and was pronounced dead at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles. An autopsy determined that the cause of death was heart disease. 

 

The author who introduced millions of readers to the "invisible life" of black gay men, was a literary pioneer whose generosity was as huge as his courage. 
 
E. Lynn Harris deserves to be remembered for the wonderful literary contributions he has left us with and the enormous hope he still gives to generations.

Josephine Baker Lemon Chicken

For black history month we would like to dedicate this dish to a provocative bisexual singer of the early 20^th century, Josephine Baker. She rose from a Saint Louis slum to be the toast of Paris. A civil rights leader and war hero who may be largely forgotten today. Please read a quick story about her following the recipe. 

 

Lemon Chicken has long been a favorite in the finest restaurants of the world. Here is a quick and easy way to make this wonderful classic right on your own stove top! 

 

Ingredients:

2 boneless skinless chicken breasts

3 large lemons (1 sliced – 2 zested & squeezed)

1 cup reduced sodium chicken stock

4 cloves garlic (chopped)

½ cup dry white wine

2 Tbs oil + 2 Tbs butter

¼ c. non-fat half & half

1/3 package angel hair pasta

½ tsp oregano

2 pinches red pepper flakes

Directions:

Chop the garlic.

Cut the chicken breasts sideways in half. Slave prefers this to pounding the breasts flat. The idea is to make the pieces less thick so they cook easier. 

  

Slice one lemon. The other two should be “zested” and then cut & squeezed into another bowl. Always squeeze with cut side up so less chance of seeds falling into the bowl. Stir the red pepper flakes into the lemon juice & zest along with the oregano.

Note: the angle hair pasta cooks very quickly! Only about 3 and a half minutes, so get this ready but do not start to cook it yet.

Heat the oil & butter in a large skillet over medium heat. Sprinkle salt & pepper on the chicken and add to the hot grease. Let cook about 7 minutes on each side. This should remove any bacteria and pinkness but leave the natural chicken juices. You can check with a thermometer for a temp of about 155 degrees.

 

 

Remove from skillet and lay a piece of foil over the chicken. It will continue to cook and the temp should rise another 7 to 10 degrees!

Now stir the chopped garlic into the skillet and add the lemon juice mixture. Scrape up all the browned bits from the bottom of the skillet. (This stuff tastes great and makes it easier to clean up afterwards.)

Bring to a boil with the cup of chicken broth. Stir in the wine. Let simmer down for 10 – 15 minutes stirring occasionally. This lets the sauce thicken up nicely.

Now is a good time to cook the pasta and drain it well.

Stir in the half & half, turn off the heat and replace the chicken into the pan of sauce. This will bring the chicken back to temperature and allow the sauce to soak into the chicken. You do not want the mixture to boil.

Serve with a side of green vegetable, slave used plain green peas.

The pasta was served in a large bowl to form a bed in each guest's plate.

Arrange the chicken pieces with lemon slices and drizzle some of the sauce over the top. Serve the sauce on the side so everyone can add as much as they like.

This is such a simple dish to make yet tastes so elegant.

For our music tonight: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pvaAykoPj6Y

So happy to serve my Master.

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

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

Josephine Baker

Born in Saint Louis in 1906 Josephine Baker would become one of the most influential household names on both sides of the Atlantic. This BiSexual African American was indeed a trailblazer. One of the first to star in a major motion picture, one of the first to become a world-famous singer, one of the first black women to integrate an American concert hall, and she was the first American-born woman to receive the Croix de guerre, a high ranking French military honor of prestige. Haled as a great entertainer, she made contributions to the Civil Rights Movement and lent a hand to the French Resistance in the second World War.

Amazing future for this young girl who at times lived in a cardboard box, dancing in the streets of the worst Ghetto areas of Saint Louis.

Her mother, Carrie, was adopted in Little Rock, Arkansas in 1886 by Richard and Elvira McDonald, both of whom were former slaves of African and Native American descent.

The records of the city of St. Louis tell an interesting story. Josephine Baker's mother, Carrie McDonald, was admitted to the (exclusively white) Female Hospital on May 3, 1906, as pregnant. She was discharged six weeks latter along with her baby, Freda J. McDonald having been born two weeks earlier. Obviously, there had been complications with the pregnancy, but Carrie's chart reveals no details. The father was identified on the birth certificate simply as "Edw" ... Her father may have been white—Josephine thought so, so did her family. Reports say that her mother had worked for a German family around the time she became pregnant. He's the one who must have got her into that hospital and paid to keep her there all those weeks. Also, her baby's birth was registered by the head of the hospital at a time when most black births were not.

Josephine lived her early life in the Mill Creek Valley neighborhood of St. Louis, a mostly black low-income neighborhood near Union Station, consisting mainly of rooming houses, brothels and apartments with no indoor plumbing.

She left first husband, Willie Baker, when her vaudeville troupe was booked into a New York City venue and divorced him in 1925. It was during this time she began to see significant career success, and she continued to use his last name professionally for the rest of her life.

Baker was billed at the time as "the highest-paid chorus girl in vaudeville".

These performances landed Baker an opportunity to tour in Paris, which would become the place she called home until her final days.

"One day I realized I was living in a country where I was afraid to be black. It was only a country for white people. Not black. So I left. I had been suffocating in the United States.... A lot of us left, not because we wanted to leave, but because we couldn't stand it anymore.... I felt liberated in Paris."

In Paris, she became an instant success for her erotic dancing, and for appearing practically nude onstage. After a successful tour of Europe, she broke her contract and returned to France to star at the Folies Bergère, setting the standard for her future acts.

In later shows in Paris, she was often accompanied on stage by her pet cheetah, "Chiquita", who was adorned with a diamond collar. The cheetah frequently escaped into the orchestra pit, where it terrorized the musicians, adding another element of excitement to the show.

After a while, Baker was the most successful American entertainer working in France. Ernest Hemingway called her "the most sensational woman anyone ever saw."

In September 1939, when France declared war on Germany in response to the invasion of Poland, Baker was recruited by the Deuxième Bureau, French military intelligence, as an "honorable correspondent". Baker collected what information she could about German troop locations from officials she met at parties. Her café-society fame enabled her to rub shoulders with those in the know, from high-ranking Japanese officials to Italian bureaucrats, and to report back what she heard. Notes were written in invisible ink on Baker's sheet music.

After the war, Baker received the Croix de guerre and the Rosette de la Résistance. She was made a Chevalier of the Légion d'honneur by General Charles de Gaulle.

In 1949, a reinvented Baker returned in triumph to the Folies Bergere. Bolstered by recognition of her wartime heroics, Baker the performer assumed a new gravitas, unafraid to take on serious music or subject matter.

The engagement was a rousing success, and reestablished Baker as one of Paris' preeminent entertainers. In 1951 Baker was invited back to the United States for a nightclub engagement in Miami. After winning a public battle over desegregating the club's audience, Baker followed up her sold-out run at the club with a national tour. Rave reviews and enthusiastic audiences accompanied her everywhere, climaxed by a parade in front of 100,000 people in Harlem in honor of her new title: NAACP's "Woman of the Year". Her future looked bright but was short lived and her visa was canceled in response to her Civil Rights work.

During Baker's work with the Civil Rights Movement, she began adopting children, forming a family she often referred to as "The Rainbow Tribe". Baker wanted to prove that "children of different ethnicities and religions could still be brothers."

As early as 1920, when she was 14, she had already had same-sex relationships with other vaudeville performers. We know of at least six of her female lovers, all of whom she met on the black performing circuit during her early years in the United States, as well as fellow American black expatriate vaudeville performer Ada “Bricktop” Smith and the French novelist Colette. 

 

Josephine Baker was bisexual. However she rejected any sort of LGBT affiliation. Although Baker in her later years was rumored to have enjoyed the company of many young women, she was also rabidly homophobic, and once kicked one of her adopted sons out when she found out he was gay.

However we must remember she was a product of her time. We should not impose conventional wisdom on historical figures. When learning about something in the past we do not understand, we must simply state facts and not judge by today's standards.

So during this black history month, let's take time to learn about a very complex personality of Josephine Baker.

Paresis Hall Chicken

Our meal tonight is a variation on the classic Chicken Cordon Bleu. It is named in honor of the hard working sex worker rentboys of 1890's in NYC. Find out more about these nearly forgotten young men making a living long before World War One!

Chicken thighs with a wonderful center of pastrami and Havarti cheese. Baked in a crispy sweet coating and ready to impress all who come to your table.

Ingredients:

4 boneless skinless chicken thighs

2 cups rice crispies cereal, crushed

1/3 cup honey

Salt and Pepper to taste

1 Tbs sweet paprika

1 Tbs onion powder

 Directions:

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees

Lay out some wax paper on the counter to make clean up easier. Open up the thighs and spread open on the wax paper.

On a cutting board, lay out a piece of the pastrami. Cut a piece of cheese lengthwise and lay on one half edge of the meat. Fold the meat over. Roll up tightly. This “roll” goes into the thigh just where the bone was.

Roll the thigh meat up over and secure with a couple of toothpicks. Continue until all four are done.

Put rice cereal in a plastic bag and crush until like bread crumbs then pour into a bowl. Stir in the salt, pepper, paprika and onion powder. 

 

Put honey in a second bowl and heat in microwave for about 15 – 20 sec. Just to make it flow easily.

With a pastry brush, brush the honey all over the rolled up thigh and press it into the rice crumbs.

Line a baking pan with parchment paper and arrange the thighs on that. 

 

Roast for about 45 minutes or until golden brown and internal temperature reaches 155 degrees.

Remove from oven and let rest for 5 minutes then transfer to a serving platter with a spatula.

Here these thighs are served with a steamed broccoli and a dish of diced pears. Any green vegetable will work.

For our music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h1rH_iaZkv0

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

 

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

The OTHER Bowery Boys

“Paresis Hall”, was located in the Bowery on 5th Street near Cooper Union Run by ‘Biff’ Ellison, a gangster affiliated with the Five Points Gang. No attempt to disguise it as anything other than a ‘fairy resort”. A gay brothel.

Much like gay bars of the 1950’s, 60’s, and 70’s, it functioned as a social center, providing a sense of community and support. Many working class men and youths in the tenement districts met in such places. They held unsupervised gatherings, created informal social clubs, and even sponsored larger dances or balls.

A few men of the Paresis Hall men organized a club called the Cercle Hermaphroditis, which permanently rented a room above the bar. Dressing in women’s attire on the streets dangerous. Paresis Hall gave them a space where they could gather without fear, and even store some of their personal things in a place more private than their living areas.

The existence of Paresis Hall and its pictures offer quite an insight for the historian into gay life nearly 140 years ago.

It contained young hustlers from ages 14 to  21 years old. The boys often would dress up in a feminine manner including makeup and they would take their tricks to the upper floors or to the basement to conduct their business transactions.

During the 1890′s the area around fourteenth street was an early
“Tenderloin” section to the theater district a few blocks away. The area
boasted no fewer than six other “Resorts”. Paresis Hall being the
busiest, Little Bucks, Manilla Hall, The Slide and the Sharon Hotel (Cock Sucker’s Hall) just to name a few. 

 

Photo of the boys masquerading as working boys of another kind.

As was the practice each of the boys applying at the club were subjected to an "Intense Personal Interview" with the owner. If the boy passed his interview he would be hired on and given a copy of the rules, a appointment schedule, and asked/or told to choose the role of the "Man", of the "Lady", or a specialty.

Photographs were required to be taken of the sex worker at several local "Cabinet Studios" - these taken to remind the client of the worker and to urge a return visit. They were given to the man if his spending habits warranted. if not the pictures were made available for purchase.

On the back was this personal information: names, sexual preferences and sizes (I don't mean shoe size.)

An example of such a rare photograph post card, circa 1891. The good looking boy is "Little" Johny Mueller, age 17 years. He was a "Working Boy" at two infamous male brothels, "Paresis Hall" and "Little Bucks".
Johny was one of the most popular boys at both of the clubs, given the fact of some unique "Anotomical Gifts".

One the back of the card is the following information in faded pencil: "Little" Johny Mueller * 13 Inch & Huge Sac * Very Popular Boy * P.H. & L.B. * 1891 Jacob Miller

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About the name:

The official name of the establishment was Columbia Hall.
“Paresis” was a partial or incomplete paralysis.

It was disease of the brain, marked by progressive dementia, tremor, speech disturbances, and increasing muscular weakness.

Young boys were told you would acquire it by associating with fairies or, heaven forbid, having male to male sex!
With a typical sense of queer humor, this brothel became known as “Paresis Hall”.

The building is now the home of the Village Voice newspaper.

How appropriate.

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