[Sca-cooks] More adventures in the Turkish deli (OP)

[Phil Troy / G. Tacitus Adamantius]

Also sprach lilinah at earthlink.net:
>In high school, my boyfriend was jealous because a shop worker who 
>spoke very little English in a Greek food store in Chicago slipped 
>me some nougat and dried apricots (directly into my mouth - this is 
>traditional)

This appears to be a sort of Brehon Law equivalent for Greek 
hospitality, the feeding of sweets directly into the mouth of an 
arriving guest. Possibly akin to Bram Stoker's "Enter freely, and 
leave behind some of the happiness you bring..." Okay, so it's a 
Balkan thing, perhaps.

But if you look at a Greek cookbook, there's often a section of 
sweets whose generic name can be translated into English as "spoon 
sweets", generally little fruits or fruit bits preserved in a heavy, 
marmalade-like syrup.  This is how they're generally used, as a 
guarantee that the guest will experience sweetness and happiness from 
the instant they arrive in your home.

Adamantius

-- 
  "Why don't they get new jobs if they're unhappy -- or go on Prozac?"
	-- Susan Sheybani, assistant to Bush campaign spokesman Terry 
Holt, 07/29/04