Last night I made French onion soup for the first time using a classic recipe. It was a lot of work but totally worth the sweat.

For two medium crock bowls, I did these:

• Roasted beef shin bones (I saved the bones from an earlier beef recipe) until it browned, which was quite a while.

• Placed the roasted bones and bits in a pot with some carrots, celery, parsley, salt, pepper. Added water until it was covered then simmered the thing until all the goodies came out. One hour? Even two perhaps?

•After the simmering, I strained the bones and bits and collected the stock from it, then reduced the liquid until it became concentrated.

• While reducing the stock, I browned some onions in a skillet filled with raw butter for 30 minutes. Added minced garlic, thyme, bay leaves and a bit of dry white wine.

• Then I combined the stock and the caramelized onion (onions browned this way is indeed sweeter than love) in the two crock bowls. Then  topped  with slices of baguettes, added grated gruyere, then shoved the bowls into a 350 degree broiler until the cheese bubbled.

• Finally, I took the bowls out of the broiler and garnished the soup with chopped parsley.

I started the process at 7:30 PM, and was slurping my soup at 12:34 AM. Five hours and four minutes all in all.

Before my search for real food commenced, I would have driven through my nearest fast food joint, or better yet, called my favorite Chinese take out dive and ordered item number 55 with soda, egg drop soup, and a complimentary fortune cookie. Or even more convenient, I would have opened a can of soup.

But I guess convenience is not really what I am after for this time. I believe convenience does not go well with eating well. Convenient food does not mean quality food. It just means quick and easy.

I think, like our ancestors, we have to work for our food. The amount of work I put in dicing, slicing, roasting, simmering, reducing, broiling and plating the soup does not equal the amount of food I produced, which is considerably less–as I said, two bowls.

However, the quality of the thing was beyond words. It was rich, sweet, succulent, and clean. In fact,  I spent another two hours after my very late soup dinner mentally savoring the final product like I was mentally ill.

The meal was even more special because I  chose the ingredients myself and knew every step of the way from the market to my table. And the meal was not expensive at all. Remember that I used bones that I saved and some loose veggies to make it. If there was a pricey ingredient, it would be the Gruyere, but I did not use all of my Gruyere. I still have a lot left.

Labor wise, yes, it was expensive. Five hours of work. But I felt good doing it.

If I had chosen to take the fast and convenient way, I would have spent those five hours sitting on my couch, stuffing myself with mystery food from God knows where while improving my rankings in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2.

To toil for your food is good. Perhaps that is why most people from other nations are healthier than us. Most of them sweat for their food while we get spoon-fed by the fast food nation. Perhaps that is why they don’t get fat and sickly because they shed more calories in preparing their food than what they get eating it. Plus the privilege of knowing all about the food you eat and even participating in its processing is priceless.

More so, cooking for people you care for makes tremendous  sense.