Stew - session #3

Continuing my series on cooking stew (last session)...

These are my notes:

• Pre-cooking:
• I forgot to buy eggplant as I planned to. 
• These are the amounts of stuff that I decided to change from the recipe:
• Carrots - none
• Mushrooms - 12 oz instead of 5 oz
• Potatoes - 1 lb instead of 2 lbs
• Celery - 3 stalks instead of 0
• Garlic (sliced) - 6 cloves instead of 0
• flour - none
• Allspice (~2 tsp) - added as part of the rub for the meat.
• Wine (1 cup) - to add before adding beef broth
• Method changes:
• remove bacon, leaving some grease for cooking garlic
• re-add bacon + grease with veggies
• cook garlic with some of the bacon grease
• add wine to deglaze before adding beef broth
• Post-cooking:
• all the method changes were fine. everything cooked as expected.
• i can't tell a difference in the bacon or the overall product due to the difference in recipe re bacon
• the flavor of the soup wasn't as good as last time
• i realize that i need to "calibrate" my measuring tool and document that stuff when taste testing
• like if i'm hungry vs not hungry. that would have an affect on the taste.