When I have problems with my sewing I like to divert my attention to something physical, like walking, but, my feet aren't co-operating at the moment so I turned to cooking.
I made a big pot of pumpkin soup. Too much for me, so my second son Guy, (the other kids don't like pumpkin) and the neighbours got some of that, I froze the rest.

Then I thought about my great-grandmother's Mutton Broth. This great-grandmother was from Northern Ireland and her grandmother came from Scotland. (All the stories about the soup and the family came from my grandmother who told me all about it when she taught me how to cook it when I was 10 years old and she was training me to take on the care of a household as my Mother had developed terminal breast cancer.)

Now, the problem with making this soup is getting the meat to put into it. Forget the supermarket butchers, you won't find any there, although I did get one lot there a number of years ago, but not now. So I found a butcher and with baited breath asked the question, "do you have any lamb neck chops?"

He said, "not at the moment we sell out of them as soon as they come in."
Lots of people who have retired live down on the bay and it seems they like Mutton Broth as well.
But, he looked in the freezer room and came out with a cut of meat and it weighed about 1 kilo. (I would have liked 2 kilo but 'beggers can't be choosers'. ) Now this sheep must have been very old because I got a different product than I normally receive after the cooking.
When preparing the meat I remove all the visable fat and put it into a saucepan with chopped onions, water and any other herbs I might have in the garden at that time, and then cook it on a very low heat for most of the day. I turn it off to sit overnight by which time all the fat has risen to the surface and set and can be easily removed along with the bones. But this time although the fat rose to the surface it wasn't a solid sheet, rather it was suspended in a jelly. Only old sheep have lots of cartilage and this had dissolved in the cooking process trapping the fat. It took some time to remove it and I couldn't get it all but I wasn't too concerned because the flavour of meat is carried in the fat and a little fat wouldn't hurt. (famous last words!!)

Next problem was getting the vegetables. We had a vegetable garden and you just walked out and picked what you wanted now you have the supermarket who only have soup vegetables in packets at certain times of year. Off to find a green grocer, which I did, and they had onions, turnips, pasnips, carrots, garlic, celery and that was it. I thought longingly about my Grandfather's vegetable garden and how I had taken it for granted.

Still, this wasn't a bad start. By this stage I wasn't about to make my own stock and resorted to the dried stuff in a packet along with a good swig of Wosthershire sauce. But, there was something missing. Barley. You can sometimes find packets of this in the supermarket on the bottom shelf at the back and I knew I had bought some some years ago and stored it in a airtight container at the back of a cupboard where it was cool and dark and 'low and behold' I found it in just that place. ( I also found the beer mugs I brought back from the Beer Fest in Munich in 1972 in that cupboard.)
By this stage I had been slow cooking the soup for a few hours and I wasn't sure if that barley was edible, it looked ok. I soaked it in water for half a day and didn't have any reaction when I ate some so added it to the soup, returned it to a low heat and let it simmer.
The next day I seasoned it with salt and pepper and threw in some tomato paste for good measure. Delicious.
The neighbours could smell the soup cooking and had been waiting for me to bring them some. One told me he had added some chilli sauce to his to give it a bit of 'zing'.
There was a lot of chopping of vegetables involved in preparing this soup which made lots of scraps. My neighbour's (Hayley) guinea pigs got the lions share, but the chooks and ducks didn't miss out. Unfortunately Lollipop the donkey is on a diet. I felt a bit guilty about that.

Postscript: There is still too much fat in this and I have had my gall bladder removed. This means my liver sends chemicals into my system to get rid of it fast. And I found some more chops in the supermarket labeled "bones". I have added the extra meat and flavourings and distributed it to people who live on their own around the island. They all enjoyed it but I will never be able to eat it again. I will just have to settle for a vegetable broth.)