Posts made by fancydude

Not quite me - patience is a virtue - it has not even been up 24 hours but thanks for noticing the poll is here!  Tell your friends to vote! 

Well, readers, it's up to you.  Let me know what you want!  Thanks.

1.  99% of the recipes I post, I have made at least a couple times.  There will be a few that I haven't made but in my considerable cooking experience, I'm sure they will be good.

2. Many of these recipes are my all time favorites, like Whipping Cream Cake from the 1950 Betty Crocker Cookbook - so please do #3 , next…...

3.  Be sure to scroll back and see the rest of the recipes - I've tried really hard to make sure a wide variety of recipes are here.  This is at the bottom of the page, on the left corner - will tell you how to access the other pages.

4. When YOU post recipes- please be specific!  Never put one box or bag of something.  Please put "one" 18oz pkg…. etc.  Many of you have private profiles, so I can't PM you to ask for clarification.   THANK YOU.

5.  Please tell your friends about this forum so we get more traffic and more recipes.  Thanks also!

Wow - lots of imagination in this one!  Thanks

A friend of mine hosts vegan pot-luck dinner parties.  I invited some people, and one friend brought this dip, with assorted fruits cut into pieces.  Everyone really liked it and when she told me the recipe, I couldn't believe how easy it is!

Of course, if you don't want it to be Vegan, just use regular cream cheese.

Mert's Easy Fruit Dip

8 oz. cream cheese, softened in microwave 20 seconds (remove from foil, put on plate)
3/4 cup chopped peanuts - chop medium-fine like you would get on a sundae, not too coarse, not too fine.
3/4 cup brown sugar
2 teapsoons vanilla

Beat well, thin with milk if necessary, adding just a few drops at a time, until it is of dipping consistency.  Put in bowl in the middle of a platter, filled with assorted fruit pieces.

I could only find one reference to this in Gay Republic News (on a Google search) and this site appears to have lots of news articles but no way to contact them.  It is hard to believe something this major would only have one reference. 2006 wasn't that long ago.

This is from the Ocean Spray Website, so I haven't made it personally, but I know it will work.

Grapefruit-Yogurt Salad Dressing

INGREDIENTS
1 whole Ocean Spray Grapefruit, peeled and sectioned
1 8-ounce container non-fat vanilla yogurt
2 teaspoons poppy seeds
1 teaspoon dry mustard

Place in blender, pulse for 2 or 3 seconds or until ingredients are combined well.

only 14 calories per tablespoon AND low sodium!

A friend of mine who scrupulously counts calories adds Ranch dressing POWDER to non fat PLAIN yogurt.  Almost the same taste (without the 'after taste' of many of the lower calorie bottled ranch dressings) and a fraction of the calories.

Experiment - I'm going to try some Good Seasons Italian in yogurt and add some fresh chopped onion….

Enjoy

No problem ApolloPaul - it is a tense time - as they say in economic issues, when America catches a cold, Canada gets the flu.  Well, America has the flu, it must be really tough over there.  Thanks for being man enough to apologize.

Raphjd - That article is hard to read !  Well, I read it for the third time and it says the Bishop of Exeter and three colleagues were paid for 665 slaves - but I didn't see any mention of WHO paid.  But you are a good source of information - so I'll take your word for it that the gov't paid.  64 Billion pounds  (almost 90 billion in USD) seems like an incredibly huge amount of money though.  In US dollars - Many people earn less than 30,000 a year here - and work 30 years - so they have made less than a million for their entire lifetime.  So 665 people earn 665 million and the same slaves are worth 15 times that?  Yeah, I realize slaves worked from sun up to sun down, not 8-5 etc. Still…...

Not only that, 13,000 pounds for that time in history - an incredible amount of money!  Think about this - a friend of mine had a house in an historic district along THE main street in a major city.  In 1910, houses in the first block (prestige was a big factor) were selling for $3,500, second block $2500, and third block 1500.  Of course, the further away you got, there were less features - (leaded glass by the fireplace, built in book cases etc) still these were all 2 story brick homes with at least three bedrooms.  (Henry Ford's model T plant was about 2 miles from there, and he was offering the unheard of wages of $5 a day (which most people didn't know included benefits- that was not cash in your hand)...... So a slave was worth 1/665th of 90 Billion USD?  The math or conversion figures must be wrong somewhere.  A spool of thread in 1885 was 2 cents.  How could a slave (or anyone else's)  productivity be worth that?

NQM - if you're interested in a first person account - read Solomon Northup's "Twelve Years a Slave".  He and his wife had a successful life - I can't recall if she cooked for a hotel and he had his own farm and played the violin for pay.  This was of course in a northern state in the very early 1800s - anyway - a couple white guys wanted him to play for them and he was taken to various locales and eventually kidnapped.  I won't tell the rest because I don't want to ruin it for you but obviously he eventually escaped to return north which enabled him to tell his story.

Raphjd - I was aware Africans were involved in the slave trade since I was trying not to diverge too much from the main story, didn't say it, but since you brought it up - It is absurd to lay all the blame at the feet of the Europeans.  As if they could just walk onto another continent and "grab" someone off their native soil.  Since this is a "debate" part of the forum I will also add however, that those inclined to lay the blame that way sometimes say (again) yes, but slavery was not conducted the same way - it was not permanent in Africa.  So they didn't know what they were doing selling to Europeans.  I very much doubt that for the same reasons I doubt other thing:  so much of human history was not written down.  Surely after the first few shiploads left never to return, seems someone would have figured that out.  The gigantic ship, much larger than any native ship, alone would imply a very very long voyage, would it not?

Lastly no one will ever truly win anything tangible or long term by playing the "who suffered the most game.'  At first glance it appears some races fared better than others, or did they?  Over the entire course of all human history, hasn't every race  or group been on top and bottom but at different times?  Is not suffering ultimately an individual affair?  It is not a good feeling to know that you a black person can't use the same drinking fountain in the south of the 1940s but one cannot bear pain for another can they?  And what of the Hutus vs. the Tutsi's a decade or two ago?  Both of the same race - a black reporter wrote for a US magazine "the dead bodies of the (Tutsi's I think) went down the river several hundred an hour, almost too fast to count."  (murdered by the Hutu's).

PS - I read your link - the church paid the owners compensation after emancipation came in 1833.  It wasn't the government that paid the money.  It is a sad fact that a church did such things in 1833, not exactly the dark ages, but I'd be happy if we could work on abolishing the slavery we have NOW.  Getting the USA out of Iraq, Afghanistan, stopping the sex trade of young boys and girls in Asia…...We spend so much time looking back we often don't help those living NOW.

An elderly priest. Father Joseph,  is hearing a confession and the penitent says he's committed adultery.  The old priest makes an announcement the following Sunday - "it seems everyone in this town is committing adultery.  If I hear one more confession about adultery, I'm going to retire."  With the priest shortage and all, plus the congregation rather liked Fr. Joe, so they devised a scheme.  Instead of saying adultery, they agreed to say "they have fallen."  This seems to have satisfied the old man.  Eventually, he passes away and they get a new priest, Fr. Albert, who shortly thereafter makes an appointment with the Mayor.  "Your honor," say Fr. Albert, " you really must do something about the sidewalks in town, you just wouldn't believe the number of people who come to confession and say they have fallen."  The Mayor laughs and explains the code words.  Fr. Albert says "I don't know why you're laughing, your wife has fallen three times this week."

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

A religious woman travels a lot for her business, mostly she must fly, and it makes her nervous, so she calms herself by reading her Bible.  Her seatmate sees this, and chuckles "you don't really believe all that stuff, for example the guy that was swallowed by the whale?  How did he live in the whales' belly?"  The woman replies, "I don't know, when I get to heaven, I'll ask him."  The man responds with a bit of sarcasm "What if he isn't in heaven?"  Now the woman laughs and says "Then YOU can ask him!"

****  ^^^^^^^^^^  ****

A drunk staggers into a confessional and for a long time says nothing.  The priest takes a deep breath and exhales to let the man know he's ready to hear the confession.  Nothing.  Then the priest coughs.  Still nothing.  Finally the priest knocks on the wall three times.  Finally the drunk says "it's no use knocking buddy, there's no paper in this one either."

I just made this and shared it and was asked for the recipe once so I thought maybe people will like it here.  It is very cold here in Michigan and soup really hits the spot.   If salt is not an issue for you, use regular boullion as you prefer.

Please bear with me - the measurements are only approximate….this makes a lot, you may want to half the recipe.

Beef Barley Soup

3/4 pound roast, cut into small cubes
2 cups whole barley, rinsed
3 Tbsp. Vegit ( a low sodium stock making powder)  otherwise use bouillon cubes or canned veg stock for 1/3 the water
6 Tbsp. Bragg's liquid aminoes (like tamari sauce or you could use some soy sauce, or kitchen bouquet or bouillion cubes - Herb ox and Wylers now make salt free chicken & beef boullion powder)
5 or 6 large carrots, sliced into 1/8 inch pieces
6 ribs large celery, sliced
6 onions, minced
3 or 4 cloves garlic, minced or 2 Tbsp. minced dry garlic
1/4-1/2 tsp pepper freshly ground if possible
2 Tbsp. dried parsley flakes or more fresh
1 can  18 oz (no salt added) chopped tomatoes
6 quarts water

In a small amount of oil, in the bottom of a large kettle, brown the meat well.  Add the minced onions, celery, parsley flakes and garlic.  Add about 1/4 cup water.  Saute 15 minutes, stirring frequently.  Add water, and everything else except carrots (unless you don't mind really mushy carrots).  Cook about 45 minutes, bringing to boil and then simmeringly gently.  Add carrots.  Simmer another 45 minutes or until carrots and barley are tender.  Stir occasionally, of course!

Trenteviso - what I thought you were going to say was "those same people have now moved to another state when I'm in LA!"

** added today 1/25/2011 - I must have been tired when I posted this - Trenteviso did say exactly what I was driving at.  The banner ads are the same people, where ever you happen to be at the moment.  Yeah, Mgr, I know the disclaimer is "not actual members" but what is the point of showing, "Jim, hot guy 28, from _____" if he isn't REALLY available?  Maybe he isn't even Gay in real life. But they want to give the impression these are real people so the disclaimer shouldn't be allowed.

Just like on diet product ads   - they show someone who is really fat, then after he/she loses a ton and the disclaimer is "results not typical" - - well then advertise it to say "there is a snowball's chance in hell that you will lose 100 pounds in two weeks, but Buffy here did and look how beautiful she is now. Might as well give it a try?"

But my favorite is the one for Herpes - I forget the name of the product but they have all these people outside, camping, riding horses, swimming etc.  And they say exacly the following - " I take Wonderpills, they control my herpes with a low risk of sexual side effects."    HUH?  Guy A with brown hair, you are supposed to portraying an actual person, so you should be able to say YES it had side effects or NO it didn't.  He was able to say flatly "Wonderpill controlled my herpes symptoms."  Right?

I'm sure these companies are glad I'm not writing consumer truth in advertising laws, they'd all be out of business!  

Wow, talking about mentally going through the spin cycle!  My first thought was the poll should have had the "no" choice in the middle to be "objective" since the opening post is pretty convincingly leading the reader in that direction.

My second thought was as long as the 'begging' isn't in capitals AND on the post twice, I don't really mind the person asking, since it is still my choice.  Sometimes after scouring the search page and looking at a couple dozen before making a selection, it may slip my mind to give seed bonus.  So the request serves as a reminder.

Then I read the statistics and my mind changed again.  UNBELIEVABLE - someone could get 21,000 FREE seedpoints and only give 921?  Stingy and simultaneously greedy come to mind, how could it not?

But then I wondered - how much are they uploading?  It must be an awful lot to GET that many points, right?  So maybe overall, they are making a lot of titles available to members that we wouldn't otherwise get to see?  I'd like to see some stats on how many titles and GB's the people with that many seedpoints have uploaded.

This is a minor point, but the "Thank you button" was mentioned once (or more?)  Mixed feelings again.  Shall I click it each time even before I see the movie?  I have a very slow connection, so if I wait to see the movie, I will almost certainly forget to go back and thank the person.  Or am I thanking the person simply for uploading?  (for me at least, the overwhelming majority of the time, the torrent I'm uploading is something I have no prior knowledge about, I'm just basing my choice on the description and photos on GT)

Not that this will ever happen, but lets just say everyone who downloads it clicks the thankyou button.  What does saying thank you mean then if everyone does it every time?    Actually, I need to figure out which torrent on Utorrent corresponds to which on listing on  GT, because when I click on General properties, (on utorrent)  the "http://tracker.gaytorrent.ru/2650 etc." is not the address for the torrent.  And the title listed on Utorrent usually isn't enough of the  title to search on GT.  So I would say thank you more for the movies I've seen anyway if I knew how to find the original torrent.  Utorrent will not let you rename it either.  Well, it will but then you can't download because then the tracker doesn't correspond or something like that.  Thank to whomever can answer this.

Salas - if you really do plan to put your photo on bitbucket, put your name "Salas/GT" on a small piece of paper next to your dick so we know it is really YOU. 

I'm sure there is a way you can show your cock without showing any of your face or background, and it will be completely anonymous.

A number of studies have been done (on straight people of course) but I don't know why they wouldn't mostly apply to Gay people.  The argument always comes up that "marriage is just a piece of paper."  This ignores the fact that most people see marriage as a permanent thing and plan accordingly.  They generally intertwine themselves in a joint checking, joint savings, mortgage in both their names, children etc.  Society blesses the union with a religious ceremony.  Part of the attractiveness of living together is that it can be dissolved without a word, if one of the parties is of the mind to be so inconsiderate.  Just move out.  But more on living together….Each party keeps their own money, often spending it in ways which would likely not occur in the married/mortgage/save for the children's colllege fund scenario.  For (stereotyped example) the nonmarried man can gamble on the horses to excess and the nonmarried woman can spend as much as she likes on clothes.  As long as each comes up with their half of the rent, who can chastise the other?  Living together is just a completely different mindset.  In the married model, it forsees the road may be rough, people blow up, lose patience, but marriage gives them cause to 'give it one more shot' since dissolving is much more expensive and painful, emotionally, socially etc.

Of course there are always exceptions; some can live together in a committed state of unmarriedness and vice versa, but in general this makes sense to me.

Interestingly, in the documentary "Saving Marriage" - the married (Gay) couples gave many of the same arguments I've summarized above!

Raphjd - Well, as a person born in the USA of course, our history, TV shows and movies even sitcoms in imaginary situations all conspire to give one the impression America is the first at everything.  I never knew the UK government bought out The Church of England.  When and how did this happen?  Reading a bit of Irish history, the British government seemed pretty harsh in they way they "helped" during the potato famine, (late 1800's?) making people work without coats, gloves, sometimes even shoes.  Seems hard to believe they would be more concerned about slaves than citizens?

I edited my second paragraph which used to say "it is strongly implied here that American slavery was worse than anyplace else….."  I guess I should have left it.  Reading the article for the third time, I see James Baldwin comments "American History is ......more beautiful, more terrible..." but if he was referring only to slavery, "more beautiful" hardly fits? I don't know.

How would a porn star know he got HIV from being a rent boy when almost no one in porn is tested?

Granted, the series I mentioned in the post above, most of them admitted to being rent boys, due to the whole "no royalties" thing and porn doesn't pay enough to live. But I really wonder HOW one would know for sure who passed on the HIV???  If a person has sex with 10 people (seemingly low in the Gay community) and I have sex with him, I've had sex with 11 people; in turn if I've had sex with 10 people, the first person mentioned has had sex with 20 people.  or whatever the exponential math is.  Again, how would you know who is responsible?

It is impossible to think of all the possible interpretations - I immediately went from G-Men = Gay men!  Thinking you were making a joke. (about what G-men might mean - since it is a pretty aniquated term and not used very much except in very old movies.)

Well, I don't know why anyone would assume ALL or most FBI would be Gay because of JEH - Both Gays and Straights (homophobic or not) agree that Gays are a small percentage of total population.

I think the knee jerk part is what I already said Gay = Bad, and we (the FBI)  venerate Hoover for being a really cool guy who made the FBI sophisticated and gee, a Gay guy couldn't possibly have done this AND as a straight person, I really don't want to contemplate that someone this smart and who was a lot of people's boss in the past, could be Gay.

Then again, you could be right or we both could be.  Since people seldom tell the whole truth in polls like this, we may never know.

I see no one has taken the opportunity to comment on this.  Let's start with what I agree with - Slavery was much more than likely brutal for most, but as no statistics were kept, no one can say for sure.  But is definitely untruthful if all or most of the "tourist" places give the impression it was idyllic for most slaves.  And everything I've ever read about it, including Solomon Northup's book (I forget the exact title '16 or 17' years a slave) never once described a canopy bed in a slave's quarters - and he was on several plantations.  I do believe he said one owner out of 7 treated the slaves decently.  He could have been lying, but it seems extremely unlikely.  I don't doubt two white women said to the author that they would have loved to live back in the antebellum period - there are stupid people everywhere of all races who don't stop and consider that TV and Movies are idealized fiction.

What wasn't said here, but is quite often in many other articles/books I've read is that slavery was worse in America than anywhere else.  I don't know how anyone would know though, considering how the majority of human history is not recorded.  And many kinds of slavery still exist today all over the world.  We do know that the lives of poor whites, especially sharecroppers weren't much better than the slaves.  The latter part of the 18th century was the industrial revolution as well, not to mention many many children worked in the factories and were maimed in the machinery and beaten .  Many so-called free men were paid in script during this period - not in cash.  They could only use script at the company store, which was marked up 100% over private stores.  So sharecroppers (who could seldom earn enough to pay their total land rental fees) and factory workers never got out from under the control of the landowner or factory owner.

None of this is to say slavery wasn't worse and an abominable practice.  It is sad that this even has to be discussed 150 some years after slavery was abolished. (and no, I"m not saying discrimination is a thing of the past either)  But to think a few tourists going visiting a plantation might, maybe, possibly bring back slavery someday - well, I can't even think of words to express how incredibly unlikely that is.  For one thing, everyone has access to the courts.  There are too many black elected officials, doctors and lawyers and the like for that to occur.  Hispanics, at present rates, will eclipse blacks as the largest "minority."  The USA also has a sizeable population from the middle east.  Who would even be the slave?  Soon whites may be the minority?  Will it be them?  Further, every time we buy something from China we are almost endorsing something too close to slavery than I care to contemplate.  The working and living conditions there are just about unbearable.   Finally, if the courts, Congress, the educated elites and lawyers cannot stop slavery from reoccuring here in the USA then I guess one has to conclude that an apathetic, undereducated population that would let it happen is an unstoppable occurence.