You'll roux the day

Alert for any visitors to our apartment:

Please do not confuse the two Mason jars in our refrigerator. They contain similar-looking thick, rich, viscous brown fluids: one of them is home-made chocolate syrup, to satisfy a recent spate of cravings for chocolate egg creams; and the other is two cups of roux, for a several-days-late gumbo in honor of Mardi Gras.

An egg-cream made with roux would probably be terrible. I don’t even think I’ll try it for science.

  * Tasting notes on the egg cream: a quarter-inch of chocolate syrup, a half-inch of milk or your milk-analogue of choice [hemp milk, in my case, and QUIT SNIGGERING] and seltzer the rest of the way up the glass. Stir. Watch out for foam.
  * Cooking notes on the roux: takes a long freakin' time to get it dark enough to have good flavor. Has to be stirred every 15 picoseconds, or it'll taste burnt. Is probably horrible for you, but man: gumbo is awesome.