May this post help distract you from the fact that it is a Monday morning.
BosGuy cooks: Tomato sauce
I share this recipe each winter because it is great comfort food. I spend many of my Sunday afternoons in the winter months happily cooking my favorite meals and for many of those dinners a good homemade red sauce is required. While you can use your favorite jarred sauce with this recipe, I do think this tastes best with whole peeled San Marzano tomatoes.
Cooking time can vary and as a general rule cooking longer over lower heat is better than shorter over higher heat but the reality is you can pull together a decent red sauce in about 45 minutes (including prep time). However, this tastes best when cooked, allowed to cool on the stove top and then refrigerated overnight, which is why I often make a red sauce on the weekend with the intention to use it later that week.
As a general rule, I add to my sauce a minced onion, several cloves of roasted garlic (also minced), an Italian sausage (I tend to buy the sausage meat out of the casing) and a carrot and roasted red bell pepper (both of which I puree). For seasonings I use chopped parsley (the more the better), red pepper flakes, salt, pepper, bay leaves and dried Italian seasonings.
Cooking Instructions: Start by adding a bit of olive oil in a pan on medium high heat. Make your sauce a little spicier by adding red pepper flakes with the oil before the pan is hot. Sautée a minced onion until they soften then reduce the heat to medium or medium low to avoid burning the food. Next, add Italian sausage (take it out of the casing or buy it that way) and minced garlic (I prefer to use roasted garlic). After these combine for 2-3 minutes, you can add the tomato sauce, a bit of tomato paste, a couple bay leaves, salt and pepper to taste and Italian seasonings.
Next puree the roasted red pepper and carrot and stir it into the sauce so everything combines. The roasted pepper will bring a lot of flavor to the sauce, while the carrot acts as a natural sweetner cutting the acidity. It can be substituted with a tablespoon of sugar.
Lastly, cover the sauce pan and lower the heat so the sauce will lightly simmer and let it cook for ~30 minutes, stirring occassionally. Add a cup of freshly chopped parsley in the final 4-5 minutes. If you add it too early the taste is muted but if added in the final minutes they soften and pack more flavor.
Cooking Tips: If the sauce becomes too thick add chicken stock / or water. Add a dash of red wine and stir to deepen the coloring then drizzle olive oil and fresh ground black pepper atop the sauce. If you want to go all out add a table spoon or two of ricotta cheese when serving.
Scruffy Sunday
I’ve shared this photo in the past and am likely to do so again in the future.
Ideas for Saturday posts
Thank you to everyone who responded to my poll from last Saturday in this post. As of this past Monday, approximately 1,700 votes were recorded. Overwhelmingly (88%) indicated that they would like to see regular posts that focus on LGBTQ entertainment. I also received several helpful suggestions in the comments section, which I will do my best to incorporate moving forward.
I wanted to acknowledge the poll results and let everyone know that I’ll be working on how to incorporate everyone’s feedback in the weeks that follow. If you have any further thoughts or suggestions, add them a comment to the original post or today’s and I’ll be sure to take them into consideration.
Thank you
Saturday morning coffee
Normally I defer to posting photos of models and the rare photo of a friend or reader who send me a picture of them enjoying a good cup of joe, but in this case I thought I’d mix things up by sharing this photo of Leo looking quite dapper as he enjoys his coffee.
Saturday morning comics
ADAM & ANDY is set in the fictional New England town of Woodfield, CT. You can learn more about Adam and Andy and purchase a copy of “the definitive collection of Adam and Andy” by visiting, adamandandy.com.
Click on this week’s comic strip to enlarge
Click here if you would like to see the previous Adam & Andy
Anxious nights
Yesterday’s activities in D.C. championed by the President and the Republican Party (yes, I find the entire Republican Party complicit) had me tossing and turning last night much like I was last spring when I first wrote this poem.
random thoughts ramble through my head
thinking these thoughts are keeping me from bed-
round-n-round, back-n-forth they go
yet where will this lead? i don’t know-
so i toss-n-turn in my bed
with images run amuck in my head-
a restful sleep i need, i know
but that will have to wait til tomorrow-
Where will you travel in 2021
At last we can talk about 2020 in the past tense! Sadly, more infections, hospitalizations and deaths from COVID-19 are certain, but in the coming months I cannot help but feel that real progress will be made in combatting this virus. With a new administration in the US and broader distribution of the coronavirus vaccine globally, I have a sense of hope and optimism that I haven’t felt in a long time. Which makes me start to think about…
Where will you travel this year?
…how much I am looking forward to returning to life as we knew it pre-COVID. Part of that includes entertaining thoughts about places Sergio and I might be able to go and explore later in 2021. Prior to our lockdown in 2020, work had sent me to Florida and Arizona, and Sergio and I were lucky enough to spend the end of 2019 in South America, but that seems like a lifetime ago now.
Destinations on my radar include potentially returning to Cayman, Puerto Rico, Puerto Vallarta, Punta del Este, or Lisbon. I assume that we will go back to Brazil for the Christmas holiday as well, but we will see. Will you travel once it is safe? If so, where are you planning to visit this year?
Vintage gay
This week’s photo of Bernard Perlin and Edward Newell dates back to 1970. The two were a couple for 54 years until Perlin died in 2014.
For those unfamiliar with Perlin, he was an extraordinary figure in twentieth century American art and gay cultural history, an acclaimed artist and sexual renegade who reveled in pushing social, political, and artistic boundaries. As a government propaganda artist and war artist-correspondent, he produced many iconic images of World War II. He was notorious for his canvasing scenes of underground gay bars and nude studies of street hustlers, among other aspects of gay life that really amazes me if you think about the political climate of the time.
I dedicate this weekly post, featuring vintage gay photographs, to the men and women who lived in a more critical time where being true to yourself and loving who you want wasn’t always an option and came at a great price. Do you have a photo you would like to share? Email me at bosguymail@gmail.com.
This week on Instagram: guimclln
This week I’m featuring the Instagram account of this handsome Brazilian doctor who practices medicine in Sao Paulo. His name is Guilherme Mocellin and account is filled with photos of his handsome partner, Fabrício Ternes, and their lives together.
I don’t know much more about Guilherme, although I’ve featured his partner as a Furry Friday in the past (the link above takes you to the IG photo I’ve used previously). After looking through Guilherme’s Instagram and all his playful photos (like the one below), I’m inclined to also add him to a future Mancandy Monday post. What do you think?
You can follow this week’s featured account on Instagram here, and you can check out previously featured IG accounts here.
I think RFK would not mind that I modified his famous quote. I also think it is appropriate that by and large it has been women who have collectively been the ones to stand up to Donald Trump and the Republican Leadership over the past four nightmarish years far more effectively than the weaker sex.
Caption this photo
Hopefully the caption I’ve shared below inspires you to offer up one or two of your own. Leave a funny caption as a comment for this post, and I’ll approve it for readers to enjoy.
“Distracted”
The Hanky Code: Sexual signaling
This post is a republishing of Hanky Panky: An Abridged History of the Hanky Code, initially published in April 2019 by J. Raúl Cornier on Boston’s History Project website. I thought some might find this nostalgic while others born after the heyday of public cruising might find it interesting. In some ways, the hanky code could be considered a very early precursor to online “dating” apps like Grindr and Scruff which essentially moved people’s sexual predilictions online.
***** ***** *****
The hanky code was a covert sartorial code used predominately by queer men in the 1970s and into the 1980s. Simply put, a bandana is worn in one’s back pocket for the purposes of sexual signaling. The color of the bandana was associated with a specific sexual practice or fetish, and the wearer’s sexual role was indicated by which back pocket the bandana resided in (tops wore bandanas in their left pocket; bottoms wore bandanas in their right pocket). The hanky code initially began with the use of red bandanas to discreetly identify practitioners of fisting. A decoder list was created as other color/fetish associations were added. (In many early hanky codes, red typically appears as the first color.) Queer businesses printed the hanky code decoder lists for distribution. Erotica shops, bookstores, and catalogs provided decoder lists with the purchase of bandanas, while gay bars printed the lists with location information as a form of marketing. The origin of the hanky code exists like myth or urban legend, with two or three main stories surrounded by a variety of altered details, depending on the source.
You can read the full article here.
About The History Project
The History Project is the only organization focused exclusively on documenting and preserving the history of New England’s LGBTQ communities and sharing that history with LGBTQ individuals, organizations, allies, and the public. Visit their website to learn more about The History Project.
