A French Connection

I have a new cooking goal.

I am finally going to make French Onion Soup. And I don't mean onions and beef broth. I mean multiple kinds of wine and brandy and slow cooking and MOUNDS upon MOUNDS of cheese melted on top. The question is whose recipe to choose? Some use beef stock, some chicken. Some white wine, some red. Some use 3 kinds of booze so who cares what kind of broth you start out with (Hello, Barefoot Contessa... you may just win. But I don't know where I'd find veal stock...) Then there's the fail-safe Julia Child option, but when she cooks with Jacques Pepin he does the opposite of what she does, and she goes along with it! HOW TO CHOOOOOOSE?!?!?!?
 If anyone out there reading this has a favorite recipe, by all means pass it along/put in your vote.

I have always loved French Onion Soup growing up, but I hated the onions. (Again, I am weird. But my mom is allergic to garlic, so instead she used onions in everything she cooked. So I think I just developed an aversion early on. And now I compensate by putting garlic in everything I legitimately can. Go figure.) I still hate the onions. Really all I wanted as a kid was the broth and the big slab of melted cheese on top, and that remains what I want. If I order it as delivery from a local French place (complete with wads of melted cheese on slab of bread, so legit), I take a fork and sift out large amounts of the onions so I can better enjoy the broth. It's just SO GOOD!

*Side note: when I make chicken parm, I could care less about the chicken. All I really want is the melted mozzarella in warm tomato sauce. I only eat the chicken so there is some excuse of health/protein in my meal. So there is a pattern to my oddness.

Here's a question: Why are all onion soup crocks that fugly range of brown? Where are the Le Creuset crocks in their new eggplant color, or warm red, apple green, etc? Why does brown soup have to come in a brown crock?
Someone look into this! Or fix it!
It distresses me.

Ideally I would wait for the next snowfall for a perfect backdrop in which to make a steaming pot of onion soup, but I can't count on the weather to oblige me, so I guess I'll put it out there that I shall attempt this by the end of March. I just need the following things:

- Non-fugly soup crocks in which to serve/melt the all-important cheese topping
- Narrow down which recipe to use
- Sexy sexy goggles to wear while I am chopping that many onions

The flaw in my plan is that Mike does not like onion soup. But I cook things to his liking all the time, and it's his loss that he doesn't like onion soup, so, screw it.
More for me.
Yay!

So, dear reader(s), I honestly ask for your two cents. Vote on a non-ugly soup crock if you can find one. And vote for your favorite recipe so I can figure out which to use. (However, if your recipe calls for pumpernickel bread as the crouton, you can just stop now. Blech!)
Maybe if I get enough suggestions I can put one of those swanky polls on my blog with links and people can vote for real!
So sift through your cook books and get back to me.
Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaand... GO!