#182 - f'n bebes.

what the hell is the deal with all these bebes? they're friggin out of control. these days, every single time i log onto my favorite social networking site, without fail there's at least one new photo of a bebe clogging up my news feed. i used to have no problem with it. a cute bebe pic every now & again warms the soul, but c'mon now. it's like "yeah yeah, high school acquaintance. i get it. you have a bebe. it wears tiny hats & gets held by people & stuff. awesome. isn't that what it was doing yesterday?" if i had a bebe of my own, i'd limit posting photos of said bebe to the special moments, like when it first emerges from the nether regions of my wife or when it's taking its first dump or something.

if you've been following the blog for a while, you know that way back in november of 2008, i waxed poetic on the topic of bebes, pondering if & when i'd get a bebe to call my very own. two plus years later, there's been no movement on that front, as no human female has been willing to let me impregnate her. maybe this year will be my year!...not bloody likely. i assume i'll still have a while to think about the matter so, in preparation, i've hastily assembled a brief list of pros & cons re: bringing another bebe into the world.

pros:

• that new bebe smell
• if you contribute your DNA to the bebe, it's like a little you
• most of the time, bebes are cute
• bebes are babe magnets
• if you take candy from a bebe, it can't chase you
• bebes are "good listeners"
• bebes sustain your blood line
• bebes provide you with more opportunities to use the word "progeny"
• you can buy bebe-sized versions of stuff you have (uggs, chaps, etc)
• bebes don't care if you call them "squeakerhead"

cons:

• that poo bebe smell
• bebes can't do a damn thing for themselves
• bebes are why you can't have anything nice
• unless you get an actor bebe, the financial return on investment sucks
• bebes are lousy conversationalists
• bebes always eat all the sweet potato puree
• bebes occasionally cry & shit themselves at the same time
• you can't just put a bebe on a greyhound bus & hope for the best
• your bebe could grow up to be a serial killer and/or republican
• if you've seen one bebe, you've seen them all

in the end, i'm not sure whether the pros or the cons win out, but i know that when the time comes, the pros will obviously outweigh the cons. that's just the sort of effect bebes have on people. until that day happens though, people of the internet...unless your bebe has learned another yngwie malmsteen song or made the olympic skeet shooting squad or pooped in a CRIMINALLY hilarious place, i'm all set with knowing about your bebe, k? thanks.

snack: mini babybel bonbel semi-soft cheese
drink: pretty things baby tree

if there's one thing that bebes LOVE it's cheese. it's the one thing that i have in common with them, i suppose. as a general rule, bebes love dairy, especially when it comes from a human breast. they especially enjoy cramming cheese that's all cute & tiny (like them) into their pie holes. it's just easier on their pathetic, stubby hands. in my case, my hands are fully grown, so size doesn't matter to me. sometimes i like to go small though, so i picked myself up a mesh bag of mini babybel bonbel semi-soft cheese. it's a cheese made by bel brands, a french company with two main product lines--mini babybel & laughing cow cheese wedges. their website suggests that the best time to eat the mini babybel bonbel is: "snack time, go time, you time." if by that they mean "alone in your apartment at 1am," then i ate it at just the right time.

it starts out awesome, as each mini cheese is covered in a layer of yellow wax that you have to peel off to get to the cheese. that's sort of fun, but once you've got the wax off, it's pretty much down hill from there. after a few years where i've refined my cheese palette by trying out tons of different fancy cheeses, i've got to give the miny babybel bonbel two snarky thumbs down. it's only made with three ingredients--pasteurized cultured milk, salt & enzymes--but it tastes processed. basically, it's a step above string cheese. in short, now that i know that there's a decidedly unfancy cheese within the fancy babybel packaging, i'll never get it again.

if there's one thing my mother's always cautioned me about, it's that "bebes don't grow on trees." of course, she's never come face-to-face with a bottle of pretty things baby tree, a belgian-style beer with a label featuring an ACTUAL BEBE TREE (drawing)! it's brewed by the pretty things beer & ale project, which is a "gypsy brewery," meaning that they don't have a brewery of their own. technically, they're based in cambridge, MA but they brew their beer wherever they damn well please. i'm not sure where this particular bottle was brewed but, according to the label, it was bottled last september as part of their eighth batch of the stuff.

the baby tree's a "quadruple," a term which, according to the pretty things website, "is commonly used as a cover-all for the darkest and strongest beers produced by trappist monks." pretty things brews their version of the quadruple with forty pounds of dried california plums. this gives the beer both a dark amber color & a strong, fruity taste. other than the plums, there doesn't seem to be much going on with it other than the fact that at 9.0% ABV, you can definitely taste the alcohol along with the fruitiness. i didn't find it to be overwhelming but it might be a bit much for your average beer drinker. give it a try though. i mean, even if it's not your style, you're supporting a creative brewery & you can tell people that you "drank from the baby tree," a phrase that, to be honest with you, in the wrong crowd could get you arrested. anyway, good luck with that.

disclaimer: eat!drink!snack! does NOT endorse giving that cheese or that beer to your bebe.