You can really take any recipe and modify it to your liking!!
Here is an example of what my wonderful husband makes us for dinner. He used what we had in the house and added spices as he see fit.
Alterations were; no bacon, no tomato paste (although if you had tomatoes you could put in a fresh one), no brussel sprouts, and no red wine (we like to drink it instead;), no allspice and no parsley as we did not have these ingidients. He added celery, used normal potatoes and carrots and used veggie broth instead of beef (because that is what we had), he also added thyme. For me, I could have added more carrots and celery.
http://www.foodnetwork.ca/recipe/nancy-fullers-slow-cooker-beef-stew/17425/