Day late, several dollars short

I didn't get a chance to post last week.  I'm running late on this week.

Sorry.  Some day I will catch up, I swear.

Last friday I made beef and lamb stew.  For the first time ever, I managed to have a beef stew that turned out and didn't suck.

The last many recipes I tried always tasted seriously OFF.  The kind of off where you "accidentally" pour the stew down the disposal and "accidentally" fall on the phone and it "accidentally" calls the pizza place and you TOTALLY BY ACCIDENT order a pizza instead.

This one is amazing.  I wish I knew why this one was so much better than all the rest.  I don't think i really changed anything.  But whatever I did, this one was amazing.  It has that rich, mouth coating of fat and flavor.  The meat is all done to a turn and falls apart in your mouth, but doesn't taste horribly dry.  The broth is rich and has just enough fat to be lip-smacking, but not so much that you feel like you just took a bath in shortening.  The veggies are still in chunks and there is a tiny slight resistance when you bite into them.

I had some for lunch today and I will have more for lunch tomorrow.

I will definitely be keeping this recipe for future stews.  I definitely think one secret is to make sure that you have at least one bone in the stew.  This time my lamb was the bone pieces.  The bones add flavor to the stew, and because there is all the connective tissue in pieces with bones, you also get all the collagen from that as the dish cooks all day.

I want to get oxtails next time, since lamb shoulder chunks sometimes have very tiny bone chips which are not nice.  And oxtails make good soup on their own.  :)

but I still like adding lamb to my stew.  Or rabbit.

I have not had enough time to do much else, crafting-wise.  I was given a couple skeins of yarn as a birthday present.  And the rest of the time has been busy outside the house.  Next weekend, I'm also busy, but busy at home, so hopefully I will find a little more time for crafting.

I am test knitting a pair of socks.  And I have a custom order for a pair of earrings that I need to work on.  I have a couple of ideas for the earrings, so I want to make a couple of pairs or so and see what the orderer thinks.