If I were not already resolved to find a new apartment when the lease on this one runs out, the service request form I just submitted would have decided me:

The hinges in my kitchen cabinets have begun exuding a tarry, black substance. When I scrub it away, more appears within a week or so, and it's also appearing at the joint in the wood closest to the hinge, which leads me to suspect it may be a product of the breakdown of some adhesive used in the cabinets' construction.

Whatever it is, it keeps coming back and it has a tendency to grow mold, very rapidly. I think at this point all the cabinet doors probably need replacing, and the facing on the cabinets themselves may also need to go if this stuff has gotten too deeply embedded in the wood.

I just-- HOW? How is this even a thing in my life?

Bread has become a sometimes food at my house. I can't eat a whole loaf before it goes stale, and I'm not very good at using up breadcrumbs and croutons. So when I do splurge on some bread, it needs to be my staple starch for the week.

I had a hankering for tuna melts, so I bought a loaf of a very nice seedless rye last weekend, and I thought ahead when I bought it of what I could do with it when I got tired of sandwiches. I had a block of cheddar on hand, so I considered getting some beer and cream and making Welsh rarebit. And I had a bag of onions and a freezer full of goat stock, so I thought I might make French onion soup, only with rye and cheddar instead of a baguette and gruyere.

And then I realized I could combine them.

And then I thought, is there any way to incorporate bacon into this dish? And my mind immediately went to the Hot Brown sandwich, which is topped in a gratineed cheese sauce.

Hence, the Brown French Rabbit:

Step 1: Make French onion soup**. Use whatever recipe you like, but substitute porter for the wine.
Step 2: Make Welsh Rarebit. I used Alton Brown's recipe.
Step 3: Cook bacon. Toast rye bread. Fill each heatproof individual serving bowl with soup, top with toast, crumbled bacon, and rarebit. Pop into very hot oven, or under broiler, until the top is bubbly and turning brown and crispy in places.
Step 4: Serve, with the rest of the bottle of beer you cracked for the rarebit. FOODGASM OMG.

This is pretty much the definition of sometimes food-- I couldn't imagine making it more than once a year, and my entire dinner was a comically tiny bowl of this stuff-- but dear god is it good.

(The quality of your bread, beer, and cheese will determine the quality of the dish, so use the good stuff. I'm using Flying Dog's Road Dog Porter in the rarebit and the soup, and it's quite tasty.)


**A note on the soup. I took a shortcut and cooked my onions all day in the crockpot with a bay leaf and some thyme and half a bottle of beer. They didn't pick up a lot of color, though there was some browning, but they turned out almost as sweet as if I'd roasted them in the oven.

To get a little Maillard reaction, tonight I took the crock-pot out of its cradle, spooned a third of the onions into a sieve, and set the sieve over the crock-pot to drain. I cooked the bacon in the bottom of a dutch oven, and when it was done I put the drained onions in to brown in the bacon fat (and spooned another third of them into the sieve to drain and added them after a couple of minutes). I cooked two-thirds of the onions over medium heat until they were browning noticeably while I prepared my mise en place for the rarebit (which needs it. Measure everything ahead of time; it comes together fast, but once you start the roux it's all active time.) I deglazed the pot with my stock, added the rest of the onions and their liquid from the crock-pot, and brought the whole thing to a simmer while I heated the broiler and made the rarebit. The result isn't the richest possible onion soup, but it is a very satisfactory onion soup and it came together in the time it took to do everything else.

*Anyone know of a breed of brown French rabbit that doesn't contain the name of another color or foodstuff? I can find the Argente Brun and the Brun Marron de Lorraine, but neither of those sounds quite suitable.