Month: March 2009

Posted on

Graphically Reading

Want a foolproof way to get some good graphic novels to read? Grab any edition of The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror – the ones edited by Terri Windling and Ellen Datlow (at least until a couple of years ago, when Windling stepped down and was succeeded by Kelly Link and Gavin J. Grant), look in the introductory essays for the one on the year’s best graphic novels, and make a reading list from that essay’s recommendations. You won’t go wrong, and you’ll find a lot of amazing stuff across all genres. (And now you’ll have plenty of time to catch up, as the YBFH series has apparently been discontinued, damn it all.)

A case in point is Bookhunter, by Jason Shiga. A rare book is stolen from the Oakland Public Library, and the Library Police are dispatched to investigate the theft. Who are the Library Police? They’re a crack squad of law enforcement professionals who are charged with protecting American access to information via the libraries, and they investigate the theft of the rare book with meticulous attention to detail and good old fashioned gumshoeing.

The story is set in the 1970s, so the overall tone is kind of like CSI meets Kojak. The book is full of fun information about books, and about libraries and library procedures; and of course, the entire conceit is hilarious, right down to the last fight where the villain is able to jump-start his final getaway attempt by using the drawers of the card catalog to his advantage. This is a wildly fun and entertaining book.

Not wildly fun is Shaun Tan’s The Arrival; this book is stunningly beautiful instead, a true work of art that puts the very best of comics on display for anyone who may still be skeptical as to whether comics are a viable medium for deep storytelling. This tale of immigration is told through illustrations only; there isn’t a single word anywhere in the book. But what illustrations they are: evocative, haunting, and all of them beautiful. This book reminds me of the work of David Wiesner in its sophisticated use of nothing but image to tell an involving story. A man comes to a new country, where he’s immediately baffled by the customs he finds and the sprawling cityscape in which he must live. But he manages, through the help of new friends, some of whom aren’t human or any recognizable species at all. The way this book uses the fantastic to make statements about the universal experience of people who voyage to a new homeland is nothing short of amazing. This is a gorgeously wonderful book.

I also note the anthology series Flight, whose fifth installment came out last year. For some reason I’d had the impression that the Flight books present excerpts from long-form works, but that’s incorrect; the pieces in each volume of Flight are complete, and the books are basically collections of short fiction, just in the comics medium. I’m not going to cite specific examples of effective stories here, but each volume thus far contains some absolute gems. Give Flight a look.

Share This Post

Posted on

“I like to think you killed a man. It’s the romantic in me.”

A while back, I watched Casablanca for the first time in several years. Why did I allow so long a time to elapse between viewings of this, a movie that’s been in my personal Top Ten ever since I first saw it? Who knows, really…time was when I wouldn’t go much more than a month without watching it, and in my sophomore year of college, I went through a six or seven week period when I watched it every single Sunday, after the early football game. Why so long this time? I genuinely can’t say. Hopefully I won’t wait until 2011 to watch it again.

A few random thoughts on the movie that occurred to me whilst viewing it:

:: Sam’s role isn’t as big as it seems. He’s all over the first half of the movie, but we only see him once or twice after the Paris flashback.

:: The actors are helped by a screenplay that’s full of some of the best dialog ever written, but they come to the aid of the script a couple of times. It takes great acting and directing to make a line like “Is that cannonfire, or my heart pounding?” come off as anything other than pure sap.

:: If there has ever been a better long closeup than Ingrid Bergman’s when she first listens to Sam singing “As Time Goes By”, I haven’t seen it. It’s an amazing closeup, that lasts for what feels like more than thirty seconds, and in that span, Bergman is able to convey a whole bunch of emotions, without changing her facial expression much at all: she shows resignation at being confronted with her past, fear that she’s going to have to face Rick again, rueful remembrance for the last days she was truly happy, regret for the way she had to hurt the great love of her life, all with no words and just a camera focused tight on her features as she listens to a song.

:: Something hit me about the movie’s timing – the timing of the story, that is. When does it take place? Well, Rick pegs it pretty specifically when he’s getting drunk by himself; he says, “It’s December 1941 in Casablanca. What are they doing in America? I’ll bet they’re asleep.” December 1941. But the rest of the movie seems to imply that the story is taking place before America enters the war, doesn’t it? Nothing is ever said specifically, but if a state of war existed between Germany and the United States, as it would beginning on December 8 of that year, surely Major Strasser’s attitude toward Rick and “blundering Americans” would be different than what he shows. If Germany and America were at war, Strasser would probably treat Rick Blaine as an enemy rather than as a potential annoyance.

That being the case, the question that comes up for me is this: What does Victor Laszlo plan to do once he gets to America, anyway? There’s no resistance effort to lead in America, so is he planning to try to raise money? Lick his wounds for a bit and rally some support before returning to Europe? Work for the Americans? I wonder, especially since, in light of what seems to be the fact that the movie takes place in the first week of December 1941, within a day or two of Victor and Ilsa’s arrival in America, that country will be entering the war.

(No, I don’t want the movie to have answered these questions, nor am I suggesting that the movie’s “failure” to answer them is a “failure” at all.)

:: It interests me that Rick’s Cafe has significantly higher ceilings than just about every other interior in the movie.

:: More love for Ingrid Bergman and Humphrey Bogart: there are times when they make hand gestures while talking in a very real way, the way people actually would while talking, even though the gestures in a couple of cases cause their lines to come out a bit muffled. (Not that you can’t understand them, though.) Bogart’s got an example when he meets Louis in his office after Victor’s arrest; he rubs his cheeks and mouth while saying something. And earlier, when Ilsa is with Rick in his room above the Cafe Americain, she runs her hands through her hair in that way that some women do when they’re talking about heavy stuff after having been awake for a long time. Tiny things, those, but it’s those tiny things that add up to convincing portrayals.

:: I never noticed before how much Ugarte is sweating in his scene with Rick early in the film. Rick’s not sweating at all, but Ugarte’s face glistens all over with sweat. I wonder if that was intentional, depicting Ugarte’s tension at trying to get away with murder, or if Peter Lorre was just a lot hotter than Bogart on the set.

:: I can’t remember where I saw it, but I read within the last year somewhere a suggestion that Louis is gay. Sorry, but I’m just not seeing it.

:: On some level I’m willing to grant the point to people who know more than I do, but I’m sorry, experts: I still hear Peter Lorre as saying “De Gaulle” instead of “Weygand”.

Well, that’s all for now. I’ll return to Casablanca sometime sooner than a few years, though.

Share This Post

Posted on

A modest suggestion

Next time the three men go into their little room so they can privately plan how to screw New York State, why don’t we just bar the doors and set the place afire?

I said this on Facebook the other day, but frankly: forget these nice and pleasant “tea parties”. What’s needed now is, frankly, a storming of the Bastille. Maybe the sight of a working guillotine in front of the Capitol in Albany will jerk these people into taking governance seriously.

Share This Post

Posted on

Sentential Links #163

Clicking our way to happiness and fulfillment:

:: So we’re driving around, bickering, and Sarah says, “Whenever you call me a rule utilitarian it makes my womb clench.”

:: The question of whether we are alone in the Universe, and even if there are other planets capable of sustaining life, is certainly deeply ingrained in our minds. This is one of the biggest remaining unanswered philosophical questions in science!

:: Pics of celebs eating hot dogs. Get going. (And now I want a hot dog.)

:: DOLLHOUSE is disappointing so far; it’s like watching a guy do two seconds of juggling five butcher knives before he puts them down to show you slideshows of his Aunt Ethel visiting the Grand Canyon. (I still have yet to watch anything beyond the pilot episode, which I liked. I’ve got them all saved, but I haven’t watched them yet. I just liked this quote.)

:: I just want to say this: just because you’re a vegetarian doesn’t mean you don’t have to bathe.

:: What a fantastic story ! And what incredible music ! Don’t miss the experience of getting to know Wagner’s Ring. (A very nice classical music blog I’d forgotten I bookmarked.)

:: Full of excitement, danger and thrilling locations, this remains my favorite Bond film of them all. (Which one? Go look!)

:: When is endurance tenacity to be admired and when it is just plain bull headedness that goes against all common sense? What kind of criteria makes sense for determining when to hold on and when to let go?

:: But also, because this seems like a pretty darn good business to get into as long as we’re going to be having a Depression and nobody is going to be willing to pay musicians such as myself. After all, even jobless people will obviously be needing magical amulets: to help them get new jobs, to help them pay their bills, to help them get girlfriends even though their cars have been repossessed… (I want one that will bring me unending supplies of pizza and pie!)

:: DO NOT INSTALL IE8 ON VISTA HOME PREMIUM!!!!! (Aieee! That sounds disastrous. I had IE8 on the other computer, the XP machine, and while it wasn’t disastrous as SDB experienced with Vista, it completely gummed up the program I use to rip DVDs. So I switched back to IE7. Of course, none of this crap happens on a Mac!)

:: Wow it’s Leonard Nimoy’s birthday too! That man rocks, I love his acting, his photography, even his music! Now to celebrate the life of this true renaissance man here are 5 facts you may or may not have known about him! (I had no idea! Happy belated birthday, Mr. Nimoy!)

More next week. Tune in then. And before!

Share This Post

Posted on

Unidentified Earth #61

Time for this week’s puzzler! First, the usual housekeeping. UI 60 broke a streak of as-yet Unidentified entries, as Dave in Rocha pegged it fairly quickly as the giant letter ‘M’ that is maintained on the side of a mountain in Montana, overlooking the University of Montana in Missoula, MT. UIs 58 and 59 are still without guesses, though! Wow. I can imagine why no one would want to visit UI 58, as it is a place where one would find more cheer in a graveyard. UI 59 is rated as one of North America’s most scenic drives — when the road is open, that is.

So here’s the new one:

Where are we? Rot-13 your guesses, folks!

Share This Post

Posted on

“Will you take the longest road?”

Since finishing my re-read of The Fionavar Tapestry a week ago, I’ve been trying to think of something new to say about the trilogy. I re-read this series just three years ago, and many of those observations still hold. This is also the work of GGK’s with which I am most familiar over the years, so it doesn’t hold much for me by way of outright surprise. Still, I found myself throughout rooting for the characters, feeling a bit of the sense of betrayal when it turns out that Metran has turned against the Light, and the deep sorrow when Kevin Laine sacrifices himself in order to break the winter.

What I did notice anew this time was the character of Dave Martyniuk.

At the very end of The Darkest Road, Kim Ford reflects that of all five of the “real world” characters who have gone to Fionavar, Dave has changed the most, and on this re-read I got more, much more, of that sense. Previously I’ve tended to see Dave at first as something of a selfish jerk, but this time, I saw him probably more for what GGK intended: a nervous and tense man, driven to succeed but also very wary of not merely expressing his emotions but actually feeling them in the first place. Dave is reluctant to go to Fionavar at all, and he tries to break away in the transit, ending up alone on the northern plain, where he meets the Dalrei. His trials there lead him to make his own resolution with the internal conflicts he is fighting, most of which spring from his strained relationship with his father, a relationship that is emotionally, and possibly physically, abusive.

I further noticed that Dave Martyniuk, alone of all the major characters, is never really called upon to make a choice of self-sacrifice or self-denial. Instead, he becomes something else: a man who would be willing, if called upon, to make that choice when presented. Dave comes to terms with himself in a powerful way that I’d never noticed as strongly before.

Choice is really what drives this series, an endless series of choices presented to characters who can’t possibly be expected to know what it is they are choosing, and yet the choices are made each time; what’s more, the crisis that forms the spine of the series — the freeing of Rakoth Maugrim — is also depicted as the result of a series of choices made by many people in many places, over many years. The Fionavar Tapestry is not one of those fantasies where it seems as though everything that happens is in accordance with some ancient prophecy; there’s no sense that anything is truly fated to happen. In fact, the one group of characters who are tortured by the fact that they are trapped in a series of sad fates — Arthur, Lancelot, and Guinevere — are finally allowed the choices they’ve never been allowed before. The story of Fionavar derives enormous tension from the way characters make choices that may, or may not, turn out disastrous, and the moments of highest tension come from situations in which the choices the characters have are basically between “dying horribly now” and “dying horribly in a little while”.

So there we have it: Fionavar in 2009. I suppose I’m good for this series until 2013.

Share This Post

Posted on

Sunday Burst of Weirdness

Oddities abound!!!

:: In the “Weird as Totally Cool” Department: Lynn linked this bit about the largest model railroad layout in the world, which is located in Hamburg, Germany. There’s a video there, but you can actually see a better copy of that video at the official site for the Miniatur Wunderland. Amazing!

Here’s a detail shot from one cityscape of this amazing-looking railroad:

That’s some great modelmaking, there.

:: I dropped by BrightWeavings.net to see if there’s any news on the GGK front, and on the message boards, I found, amidst a discussion on literary snobbery, a link to someone’s LiveJournal wherein they reproduced a book with some truly staggeringly bad descriptive writing. Go look. It’s hilarious.

:: You never catch the fundraising pitch folks on Buffalo’s PBS station, WNED, rising to this level in order to part you from your money:

Now there’s a good sport! I hope the pledges came through for her; she should have had something to show for wearing Groucho glasses on the air and then getting hit with a pie.

:: I feel the need to revisit the Burst of Weirdness from three weeks ago, in which I questioned the need for a new version of Dora the Explorer that was described as “sexy”. Since then, I’ve seen the actual new Dora who is coming down the pike, and here she is:

Well, that’s not very offensive at all, is it? That’s about how The Daughter, who is in the “tween” age group, dresses, and so do many of her friends. Plus, it turns out that Tween Dora isn’t replacing Preschool Dora at all, but co-existing alongside. I’m not sure who encouraged the use of the word “sexy” to describe Tween Dora, but she’s not sexy at all. She’s a kid. Nothing to look at here, folks!

(Until, that is, Mattel decides to release Grown-up Dora….)

:: Speaking of Grown-up Dora, I thought I’d linked this a while back, and maybe I did, but a while back I saw a collection of grown-up renditions of Calvin and Hobbes somewhere, and this one really stuck in my mind:

To my way of thinking, that’s just perfect: older-Calvin still exploring those woods of his, but this time with Susie Derkins with him, an equal partner in all the exploration of that magical world we last saw C&H sledding off into. And Hobbes is along for the ride, even if in spirit only.

I grabbed this one from here; DeviantArt hosts a lot of other C&H fan renditions in an archive that’s worth searching through.

Share This Post

Posted on

Answering Anything! (Yet again)

Continuing with my answers to questions asked in Ask Me Anything! 2009, I have a set of queries posed by Dave in Rocha, one of the occasional posters at BfloBlog.com, Buffalo’s premier sports blog.

Do you buy into the concept of Tor-Buf-Chester? Do you think it can ever be a viable, marketable entity due to the fact that it crosses an international border? Are there other cross-border metro regions like this?

A bit of explanation: there’s a pundit out there named Richard Florida who has posited a notion that economic activity in the next, oh, hundred years or so and maybe beyond will be driven less by individual cities than by larger groups of cities — megalopolises, if you will. This isn’t a new concept, certainly; most people are, I assume, aware of the economic activity driven by the Boston-NYC-Philadelphia corridor in the Northeast, or the San Diego-LA-San Francisco corridor in the west. Florida also noted that Buffalo could itself be located in such a corridor, which he dubbed “Tor-Buf-Chester”, linking Toronto, Buffalo, and Rochester together into one larger economic entity.

So, do I buy into the concept? I do, with certain caveats. The biggest caveats are these: the region crosses an international border, and a big chunk of it lies in New York State, which is not a place that is particularly geared toward making economic activity easier. But I can see an era emerging in which Buffalo, and Rochester by extension, reap the benefits of proximity to Canada’s largest city and also its richest economic region, the “Golden Horseshoe” that extends from Niagara Falls all the way around the western end of Lake Ontario to Toronto, including St. Catherines and Hamilton. (In fact, Hamilton is itself a large city, so maybe the region should be named “Tor-Ham-Buff-Chester”. And really, why not include Syracuse as well? “Tor-Ham-Buff-Chester-Cuse” probably doesn’t roll of the tongue, but then, “Tor-Buf-Chester” sounds goofy as well.)

I’ve long believed that all the window-dressing Buffalo tries to do with regard to its image is just that: window dressing. Only the revival of Buffalo as an economic engine is going to really turn things around here, and there are a number of reasons — some local, some located in Albany — why that is currently unlikely to happen. Enacting policies that make a “Tor-Buf-Chester” type of entity a reality can only help, but as it stands right now, I don’t think there’s a whole lot of there there for people who want to talk about Tor-Buf-Chester as it is, right now.

Can you define the equation for the radiant exitance (aka emission) of a blackbody radiator as a function of wavelength? How, other than by taking the derivative, can you calculate the maximum point on that curve?

This question is in two parts, and so is my answer: “Yes”, and “By using math”.

Who is your favorite current Sabre?

Talking about “my favorite current Sabre” isn’t likely to be all that illuminating, because when it comes to hockey, I’m like that girl down at the local bar on game nights. You know, that girl. She’s the one who has never paid one single moment of attention to the sport that’s on the teevee right now until she started dating the guy she’s with right now, who happens to be a big fan of the sport on the teevee right now. She’s the girl newly dating the New York Yankees fan who declares herself a huge A-Rod fan because A-Rod’s kinda cute but can’t actually name the position he plays, cite his current batting average or home run total, or pick him out on the field. She’s the one who will nurse her drink all throughout the game and ask “When does A-Rod hit again?” when he’s already on base after his last at-bat. You know, that girl.

I may sound like I’m making fun, but I’m really not. When it comes to hockey, I’m that girl. Seriously. I don’t know much more about hockey than “Shoot the puck into the net.” I don’t know what “icing” is. I don’t know a forward from a defenseman. When it comes to the Sabres, I know when they’re winning and when they’re losing, and that’s about it. Put it this way: back in the 1990s, when the NHL was actually on teevee on a real network, that network — whichever one it was — thought it would help new hockey viewers to superimpose a blue dot over the puck, wherever it was, and then when the puck was shot, superimpose a red laser streak thing, theoretically to help solve the problem that on teevee, it’s hard to see the puck unless you’re an experienced hockey watcher and can thus infer the puck’s location just by taking in what the players are doing. Well, I was the viewer helped out by the blue dot over the puck.

So yeah, me identifying my favorite Sabre doesn’t mean much. But for the record, it’s Ryan Miller, just because of that funny ad he did last year.

When will then be now?

It already was. You missed it.

There’s only one question left, which will come…soon. Heh!

Share This Post

Posted on

Know Thyself!

UPDATE: Some correct guesses are in, as noted below. Another day or two and I’ll give out the rest of the answers.

What this blog needs to jazz things up is…a quiz! So, here’s a quiz. The following are quotes from fictional characters. Some are from movies, some from comics, some from books. Each quote has the speaker describing himself or herself. Identify the characters. Fun wow!

1. “I’m the best there is at what I do, but what I do best isn’t very nice.”

(Wolverine from The Uncanny X-Men

2. “In this town, I’m the leper with the most fingers.”

3. “You like me because I’m a scoundrel. There aren’t enough scoundrels in your life.”

(Han Solo in TESB)

4. “I’m the only cause I’m interested in.”

5. “I am a servant of the Secret Fire, wielder of the Flame of Anor.”

(Gandalf in Lord of the Rings: FOTR)

6. “I play videogames better than anybody.”

7. “Whacking. I’m hell at whacking.”

(John Book in Witness)

8. “I have an extensive collection of nametags and hairnets.”

(Wayne in Wayne’s World)

9. “I wanna be just like you. I figure all I need is a lobotomy and some tights.”

10. “I washed my face and hands before I come, I did.”

(Eliza Doolittle in My Fair Lady)

Who are these folks?

Share This Post

Posted on

Chicken Wing Soup, version 2.0

FINAL UPDATE: This post has become pretty unwieldy over the years, so please go to this page for the best and most current version of this recipe! Thanks!

UPDATED AGAIN 9-15-2013 with instructions for making a gluten-free version of this soup!!! See below.

EDITED AGAIN on MARCH 27, 2011! See below.

UPDATED BELOW on NOVEMBER 10, 2010.

A couple of weeks back I posted about my inaugural attempt at making Chicken Wing Soup. Yesterday, I gave it a second attempt, using some of the notions that I had already formulated from Batch Number One, and to my taste buds, this batch was significantly better than Batch Number One. So here is the recipe on which I have now settled:

Ingredients:

1.5 lb cooked chicken
1/2 lb potatoes, cooked and diced
1/4 cup Frank’s hot sauce

1 stick unsalted butter
1/2 cup flour

32oz Chicken stock
1 cup skim milk
1 cup lowfat sour cream
More Frank’s hot sauce or other hot sauce, to taste

Seasoned croutons for garnish

1. Cook and shred the chicken and marinade in the 1/4 cup hot sauce, the longer the better. (I marinated mine overnight until afternoon, about 18 hours.)

2. Put marinated chicken and potatoes into a crockpot and turn on “High”. Cover and let “crock” while you make the rest of the soup.

3. Melt the butter in a soup pot or stock pot over medium heat.

4. Add 1/2 of the flour and stir until it is completely mixed with the melted butter; then add the rest of the flour and continue stirring the roux until it is the color of light caramel, about three or four minutes.

5. Add the Chicken stock, milk, sour cream, and hot sauce, all at once. Turn up heat a bit, stirring constantly; taste and add more hot sauce if desired. Turn heat up again, and keep adjusting heat up a bit at a time, stirring all the while, until the soup is just reaching a boil. Allow the soup to boil for a minute or so, constantly stirring. (This allows the roux to thicken the soup.)

6. Pour the soup into the crock pot, over the chicken and the potatoes. Stir a few times, cover, and allow to crock on “High” for an hour or so. After that, to keep warm turn the pot down to “Low” until serving.

7. When serving, sprinkle seasoned croutons on top; best eaten with thick slices of crusty bread with butter. Even better with a cold beer!

Notice that this time I omitted the aromatics, opting not to saute onions and celery in the roux before adding the stock, milk and cream. I may go back to doing this in the future; this probably does make for a more complexly flavorful soup. This time I was mainly interested in getting the consistency and flavor exactly right, and this formula resulted in a really good product. I made this for a potluck dinner at church last night. I went in with a crockpot full of soup. I came home with a nearly empty crockpot. That tells me something.

UPDATE 11-10-10 and 3-27-11: OK, I can’t ever quit tinkering. So I decided to try something a bit different when I made the soup again this weekend past.

I love the flavor of the soup as prepared above, but the one thing that always vexes me is that it doesn’t totally blend together the way I want it to — what I think happens is that the sour cream never really integrates into the soup, but rather breaks apart into a whole bunch of really tiny bits that are suspended in the rest of the liquid. This doesn’t really impact the flavor, but the creamy consistency is never quite what I want it to be.

So when I decided to make the soup again the other day, I thought of a change to make. I left out the sour cream, and instead used half-and-half. So, here is my newest formulation of the soup!

3-27-11: I’ve added details on optional aromatics to add to the soup. It’s in italics in the recipe below.

Ingredients:

1.5 lb chicken, cooked and shredded
1/2 lb potatoes, cooked and diced
1/4 cup Frank’s hot sauce

Optional Aromatics:
1 small onion, diced
2 stalks celery, diced
1 carrot, shredded

1 stick unsalted butter
1/2 cup flour

32oz Chicken stock (I use a “No sodium added” brand. This dish doesn’t really need any additional salt.)
1 cup skim milk
1 cup half-and-half
More Frank’s hot sauce or other hot sauce, to taste

Seasoned croutons for garnish

1. Cook and shred the chicken and marinade in the 1/4 cup hot sauce, the longer the better. (I marinated mine overnight until afternoon, about 18 hours.)

2. Put marinated chicken and potatoes into a crockpot and turn on “High”. Cover and let “crock” while you make the rest of the soup.

3. Melt the butter in a soup pot or stock pot over medium heat.

4. Add 1/2 of the flour and stir until it is completely mixed with the melted butter; then add the rest of the flour and continue stirring the roux until it is the color of light caramel, about three or four minutes.

4a. If you wish to use the Optional aromatics — and I do recommend it — add them to the roux at this point and stir them about for several minutes, until tender, allowing their flavor to sweat out.

5. Add the Chicken stock, milk, sour cream, and hot sauce, all at once. Turn up heat a bit, stirring constantly; taste and add more hot sauce if desired. Turn heat up again, and keep adjusting heat up a bit at a time, stirring all the while, until the soup is just reaching a boil. Allow the soup to boil for a minute or so, constantly stirring. (This allows the roux to thicken the soup.)

6. Pour the soup into the crock pot, over the chicken and the potatoes. Stir a few times, cover, and allow to crock on “High” for an hour or so. After that, to keep warm turn the pot down to “Low” until serving.

7. When serving, sprinkle seasoned croutons on top; best eaten with thick slices of crusty bread with butter. Even better with a cold beer!

Basically, it’s the same recipe except with half-and-half replacing the sour cream. This resulted in a much nicer, creamier, more consistent texture to the soup. I suppose that you could go farther and use 2 cups of half-and-half, or if you really want a rich dish, use heavy cream. But I don’t think the dish needs that much fat.

UPDATE 9-15-2013: If you need a gluten-free version of this soup, fret not! Omit the making of the roux above. Just leave it out. I’d still saute the aromatic veggies in the butter, just for richness, but do not use the flour. Instead, just make the soup without the roux. Then, toward the end of the cooking process (you can do this anytime when you’re about to serve), whisk a bit of cornstarch into a cup of cold milk or heavy cream, and then stir that into the soup to thicken it. And hey, you might not even need to do that, if you like the consistency without the thickeners at all.

Share This Post