[Sca-cooks] mezze

[Stephanie Ross]

Ana wrote:
The old Vikings (but not the warriors but the trademen) founded Kiev
and Novgorov, the called the people for "Rus" and they went further
down and etablished good trade routes with Constantinople, they called
it "Miklag?rd" and many Norwegian warriors worked as elite corps for
the emperors and later for the sultans.
Russia and Scandinavia share a common cultural heritage, the place
where St Petersburg, the old Leningrad, was constructed, was captured
by the Russian emperor Peter from the Swedes.
The Swedish empire at that time covered the whole Baltic region,
Latvia, Lithuanien and Estonia, Finland as well.
Ana

Yep, and maybe the Vikings brought the concept of mezze back with them when
they came home. Or perhaps mezze influenced zakushka, which influenced
smorgasbord? A great many concepts passed from south to north in  Eastern
Europe - embroidery, fashions, food. Russia happened to be a bit unusual in
that much of their cultural influences came from the north as well. Russia
really does have three distinct regions. Muscovite/Scandanavian/Baltic in
the North, Persia/Greco-Roman/Tatar in the south, with the Ukrainian/Poles
in the middle. Do any of the -stan states do mezze? 

~Aislinn~
Et si omnes ego non.

"The care of human life and happiness and not their destruction is the
first and only legitimate object of good government." --Thomas Jefferson to
Maryland Republicans, 1809.