Bottle of Babble or a Bottle of 'Bon...?
In T.J.s as usual, staring up at the wine.
“Jules. Have you tried the Babble yet?”
“Say what?”
Employee yanks a curious-looking bottle from the middle shelf. “Babble. We all love it. It’s like Cocobon but a little different. Some of us like it better than Cocobon.”
Well that’s just blasphemy, I said. So I bought a bottle of Babble to bring home and imbibe.
Say THAT five times fast…
A merry band of grapes make up this red table wine from a Mendocino County wine maker. At $7, it’s the same price as Cocobon, so deciding which one to buy comes down to a matter of taste.
And how does it compare to Cocobon, my love?
Red and juicy. Decently rounded for the price point. Whoever wrote the back label was trying to be clever, playing on the whole “babble” theme, and mentions the flavor of bacon fat in there somewhere…I couldn’t access that myself.
In all, I found it comparable to Cocobon, but somehow less substantial. As if substance were at all an issue in $7 table wines.
Try it yourself and see. Cocobon is still my number one.
Although my mom really didn’t cook, she did have a little recipe box, about six inches long and three inches wide; blue with flowers, I think, and a cover that hinged back and over when it opened. Inside were a number of index cards, some stained with use but many not. It occupied an unloved corner of counter back by the refrigerator, until the day it disappeared into a drawer, never to be seen again.
All the moms had them, so I figured it was just standard kitchen gear, even though I’d never seen ours being consulted. I hadn’t thought of a recipe box at all in years until this afternoon, when Eva pulled hers out.
Eva and I go way back. We met at our first job out of college and bonded over our mutual disorganization. This afternoon she had promised to make an apple cake for her son’s school and was digging through her recipe box, stuffed with every manner of paper, each one with a recipe scribbled on it. Index cards and receipts, scrap paper, paper torn from magazines. No attempt at order or classification. I wasn’t holding my breath.
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