French Onion Soup

Hello all,
its been a bit chilly here and I got to make my one fire day in Florida! lol....maybe we'll have another, but I really could not get warm even with the heaters going, so I made a nice fire and decided to make something good and warming that day too. You can barely see it but my Galileo Thermometer is in the picture and when the balls are all up at the top, it is cold! And I have a basket of dried pine cuttings ready to go in to the fire too.


But for some reason I was online very early and saw one blogger I'm following who said she would be making French Onion Soup that day.....it is a beautiful post with lots of pictures, the kind that make you drool....and this was first thing in the morning for me, so guess what I HAD to have that day!? It was a good suggestion though because I had alot of onions and cheese that needed to be used and so what do you do with onions and cheese? Make French Onion Soup. Her recipe was very nice and though I'd made it before and loved it then, I don't remember what I did....lol.....I do that alot.....make things but don't write them down. I have something against following recipes, I expect my own mind and imagination to keep it there for me when I need it. It doesn't always work this way, so I didn't remember how I made it then, so I followed the recipe she had because I was basically drooling on the spot. I did of course change a bit of her recipe, but next time I make it, and I will soon, I will also change what I did. For example, I used organic chicken broth because I don't eat beef, but I think the flavour I'm going for is to be found in the beef so I'll use it next time. Also, I used wine and sherry as in her recipe, and I'd leave out the wine and use less sherry than I did. I'd also use less sugar which I did to help the carmelzation for the onions, and cook the onions for even longer than the 45 minutes I did. Also I'd use a good swiss cheese, because the mozzerella and cheddar I had was nice especially browned and broiled, but it did not have the flavour I remember from when I was little and had the real thing often in New York. I'm not sure about Gruyere which I hear has an odor, so I'll use a good Swiss.
That said, it was still a delicious and beautiful soup! and I was glad I came across it when I did to both use up what I needed to use in the fridge and to give me a warming and hearty soup for the day which was needed as it was a bit chilly here in Florida finally.