Recovering a Stew

Nick likes to eat hearty, beefy, filling things.  Man food.  The kind of food I only consent to making in the winter.  Usually I send his 2 favorites (shepherd's pie and Brunswick stew) to hunting camp with him.  Unfortunately, his new job has made it impossible to make it this year.   As such, I'm consoling him by making it for eating here.

Unfortunately, I found that my recipe card was missing and I hadn't given the recipe out to anyone else.  I got the recipe from an older woman at a church I worked at in Ohio.  I dawdled and dawdled, but finally decided to just call her for the recipe.  Unfortunately, when I googled her, I found she had passed in April 2010.  Ugh.  I had no option left but to try to remember the recipe.

I remembered browning beef cubes (or game meat, its a great use for weird or tough cuts) in a stock pot then simmering it in a tomato base (I wanted to say tomato sauce, but it sounded too thick) with bay leaves.  Then adding mirepoix and potatoes and some sort of "sweet spice"...nutmeg or cloves... and cooking until the potatoes were nice and soft.  That didn't sound like enough seasoning, but at least I had something to go on.

1. Cut meat into stew-sized pieces
2. Brown meat in stew pot
3. Add tomato sauce and water in equal parts and bay leaves
4. Simmer for 30-45 minutes
5. Add Celery, Onions, Carrots, Potatoes, salt, pepper, ground cloves, a slosh of red wine and a slosh of worchestershire sauce
6. Simmer until potatoes (and the rest of the veggies) are cooked through

Enjoy!

Actually, I'm pretty surprised about how close it came