Sander Roscoe Wolff

Sander’s Savory Winter Chicken Stew

Note: Except for the instant coffee, all the ingredients in this recipe can be purchased at Trader’s Joe.

1 Package (4 pieces) bones skinless chicken thighs
1 package organic carrot nubbies
1 package butternut squash
1 head garlic – cloves skinned
3 shallots – minced
½ cup dried Morello cherries
1 package mushrooms
2 stalks celery – chopped
3 tbs Garlic Oil
1 cup unbleached white flour
1 tbs salt
1 tsp pepper
1 onion – chopped
1 cup Cab wine
1 cup chicken stock (low sodium)

Preheat oven to 300. Heat medium dutch oven over medium flame. Cut chicken into meaty chunks (quartering thighs works well). Add flour, salt, and pepper to bowl and dredge chicken chunks, shaking off any excess. Add garlic oil to dutch oven and brown chicken in batches. Do not overcrowd pan. Remember that you don’t need to cook the chicken all the way, just brown the outside. Remove browned chicken. Drain all but one tablespoon of fat from pan. Briefly brown onions, shallots, garlic, and mushrooms, and remove from pan. Deglaze pan with wine, scraping the bits from the bottom with a wooden spoon. Add all ingredients back to dutch oven, cover, and bake in oven for 2 hours. Remove and let stand, covered, for 30 minutes before serving.

Makes 4-6 ample servings.

Note: To deepen the flaver, add 1 teaspoon of instant coffee, and a ¼ teaspoon of cinnamon, to the liquid immediately after deglazing.

When I can, I love taking pictures of my friends and family. This post will be, from now on, where I post nice shots of Lauren. For example:

Lauren, Shari, and I went for a walk this morning along a reclaimed area that runs beneath some power towers. We love the walk, and the City of Lakewood has done a wonderful job of planting lots of native and drought-resistant species. Prompted by Lauren, I paused for a moment to snap a few pictures.

Lauren’s been taking riding lessons, and I go with her and hang out with the horses. One, in particular, is my bestie. His name is Rodeo. I’ve taken a bunch of pictures of him, and here are some:

As I’m sure you know, when a parent saddles a child with an unusual first name, it is considered good form to provide the child with a fall-back middle name, one that, if the first proves to be too problematic, can be used safely and without controversy.

As you now know, my first name is Sander. Although not entirely unknown (younger people tend to associate it with Xander of Buffy fame), it isn’t exactly standard. Also, because it confuses people, I am often called strange variations, like Sanders, Sandler, Sandlers, Saunder, Saunders and, more meliciously, Slander.

So, keeping all that in mind, care to venture another guess for that ‘R’ middle name?

Ok, so I won’t keep you in suspense any longer… The middle name for the Jewish lad from Manhatten is:

ROSCOE!

There were two especially problematic things with Roscoe. First, when I was very little, my mother called me Sander Rascal Wolff. As a result, I adopted my Father’s sister’s married name: Katz.

So, from the ages of about 3-7 I was Sander Katz Wolff. The other problem was The Dukes of Hazzard. That TV show featured a character by the name of Roscoe P Coltrain. The association was inescapable so, even though I recovered from the Rascal issue, my middle name remained a deep dark secret.

It wasn’t until my late 20s, when I started doing some journalism work, that I decided it was necessary to ressurect my middle name. If you want to know about that, go here. Be prepared, though. It is Twilite Zone freaky.

I love my wife dearly, and am especially grateful when she poses for me, as in this picture:

Our fish are named Spotless and Lucky. Spotless originally was named Spot because he had a spot, but the spot went away. Lucky was won at a carnival.

Our dogs are named Kapu and Django. We’ve had Kapu since he was a puppy. The name comes from a book my daughter really liked when she was younger, Julie Of The Wolves. Django was named by me, after a famous jazz guitar player. The summer before last, Django just showed up at our front door. He’d been on the streets for a while, and was looking for a home. I invited him in, and he got along well with Kapu, and our 3 cats. We put up color posters all over the neighborhood, and at the local animal shelters but, eventually, he became one of the family.

My cat, Barney, had been suffering from some sort of kidney ailment for several years. Although we cared for him in the best way we could, he continued to waste away until he was just skin and bones. Up until the very end he enjoyed his life. When I saw that his health was finally failing, I put him to sleep.

My wife’s cat, Shogot-su (Japanese for New Year) got sick and died just a few days after Barney went. I think this was entirely unrelated, though. The loss was pretty tough.

Our remaining cat is a small tabby named Violet:

Barney (RIP):

Shogi (RIP):

Django:

Kapu:

And last, but not least, our goldfish. Spotless is on the right:

My first and only kitty, Barney, left us recently, as did Shari’s much beloved cat Shogi.

I created wee tribute pages for Barney & Shogi.

Please post comments here.

xoxo

srw

We had four dogs at our house yesterday.

See a picture of them:

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I can admit that I’ve always been a fan of ocarinas and, more specifically, sweet potatos. They have a sweet warm mellow tone, feel wonderful in the hand, and are easily portable. I’ve been preparing for a large scale recording that will use, primarily, acoustic instruments and have been aquiring instruments that have unique or interesting tonalities.

A while back I purchased an old Gretsch plastic sweet potato and, although it has a wonderful nostalgia to it, it doesn’t sound or play very well. While poking around on Ebay, I discovered a fellow by the name of Charlie Hind who hand builds wooden ocarinas and sweet potatos. His work, which can be seen on his web site, is really beautiful. He works, mostly, in walnut, a wood that I’m really fond of. In exploring his site, I noticed that he’d created a few instruments in mahogany, and I remembered that I had a rather large piece left over from my guitar project. I emailed him and asked if he’d be willing to work with my wood, and he said yes.

Charlie has been more than kind. He’s been photographing the process of creating the instrument for me, and has allowed me to post his pix here.

I’ll also include some of his comments.

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