@cdh, I haven't tested meat and bones yet, but assuming that they do vastly improve a dish, I would still question whether it matters that much if you add vegetables to the meat stock. No doubt it will improve the stock, but does it affect the end dish at all?
@heidih, despite the discouraging results I got, I find it hard to dismiss stocks because many good cooking references take stocks very seriously. For example, even in the very rational, experiment-driven cookbook Modernist Cuisine, they listed the exact ratios of each of the stock ingredients (weight of onions should be 33% the weight of water etc.). If even Modernist Cuisine think that each ingredient in a stock is important, I can't help but think I'm doing something wrong here.
@DiggingDogFarm, maybe you're right that it depends on the result I'm looking for in a dish. Perhaps the usual onion, carrot, celery combination is more of a general purpose stock and somethimes it does not matter whether you have celery or carrot in it.
