A Rainy Winter Day

Over the solstice season, visitors around here went on a tear through the cupboards in the kitchen while we were away, and pulled out our stockpots. They tried (and failed) to make a turkey soup/stew, but, I'm happy to say, didn't burn anything and did manage to clean the pot up after the'd used it. Such are the small joys of a shared household.
But the stockpots being out made me realize that it had been a while since I'd used them. While visiting Monica in Nelson, I'd used her cookware, and in Victoria, my mother-in-law was/is reasonably well-equipped in the pot department as well. Our current housemate and landlady has a million pots of varying quality from Le Crueset enameled cast iron to Walmart mega-crap. My stockpots are neither: the larger is the standard 1mm stainless steel you can pick up for $20-$30 pretty much anywhere. The other is 2mm stainless with a 5mm heat-diffusion pad bonded to the bottom and is quite the step up, quality-wise.
So New Year's Day I dug through the freezer and found the last of the lamb neck bones and a heart still in storage. There's about three pieces of meat still left from the last lamb I slaughtered before leaving the farm--I've been pretty parsimonious with it, it's true. Getting it back to the Beach house, I tossed it in the smaller of the stockpots--the nice one-- and dug through the fridge, finding some wilted celery and a couple of shallots. Into the pot with it all, and started it boiling.
Stephanie, last solstice, gave me a small spice mill which I have only rarely used. I hauled it out along with all my spices and started sorting thrugh them. Where possible, I used whole over ground, but tossed everything into the mill. The bay leaves went in whole, but the cumin, fenugreek, rosemary and such were ground simultaneously into a fine powder before adding. There were 8 or 10 dried shi-take mushrooms kicking around and in they went, along with some dried tamarind I'm learning how to use.
the next day I strained everything through a colander, picked out the meat and most of the fat and returned it to the pot while getting everything else out--tendon, bone, seeds and bay leaves. In went white acorn squash, white sweet potato, purple-top rutabaga, carrots, potatoes-- man I must have chopped for an hour. Stew, for me, is the culmination of winter storage vegetables like thick-skin squashes and root vegetables. I also added two cups of previously frozen pumpkin from hallowe'en, figuring it's time to get that stuff used up as well.
I also poured in some organic blackstrap molasses, pomegranate molasses and some balsamic vinegar. Lamb is very sweet, and I'm always looking for darker, bottom-end flavours when I cook with it. Something savoury to offset the sweet. I strained off a few cups of stock, added it to some rice flour in the blender, and made a gravy that thickened the stew nicely. Well, with some help from a couple of cups of brown rice (not having any barley in the house this time).
Everything worked beautifully. I have about six or seven litres of lovely rich stew that are perfect for eating on these rainy winter days. (In fact, it rained so much yesterday that I couldn't get to my door; the sidewalk was under 50 to 100 millimetres of water. When I walked up to the house, there were ducks paddling in the pool that used to be a front lawn. What a day...) So Louise, if you don't want to cook tonight, stop by and I'll give you a feed of stew--I've certainly got enough!