IN THE streets surrounding the Sule Paya pagoda in downtown Yangon, Burmese Muslims ply their trade, selling sweetmeats, calligraphy or spectacles.
Aguilar also publishes a guide to convents where you can obtain the best sweetmeats, embroidery or plants.
You will have to put yourself under discipline: to eat by rule, to avoid cakes and sweetmeats; to take exercise at the appointed hour whether you like it or not, in cold and heat; to abstain from cold drinks and from wine at your will; in a word, to give yourself over to the trainer as to a physician.
Men feast on sweetmeats and hot, saffron-infused sheep's milk freely distributed in stalls.
(Many of the nuns' recipes for sweetmeats involving sugar, honey and almonds are in fact of Arab origin.
Temples and household shrines are decorated with leaves and flowers; sweetmeats are first offered to the god and then distributed as prasada (the god's leftovers, which carry his favour) to all the members of the household.
The nut is eaten raw, and the rind from the seeds is made into sweetmeats and molasses.
Similarly, the word "deer" has acquired a more specialized meaning than the meaning "wild animal" that it once bore (compare German Tier); and "meat," which originally meant food in general (hence, "sweetmeats" and the archaic phrase "meat and drink") now denotes the flesh of an animal treated as food.
In India and other Asian countries it was used to preserve fruit and make cakes, sweetmeats, and other foods.
Travellers have long returned from Amsterdam with wide-eyed accounts of a fabulous, indulgent nightspot called Supperclub, where guests recline on beds like pashas, nibbling on divine sweetmeats while beautiful young people entertain them with exotic performance art and cutting-edge cabaret.
Dinner finishes with a theatrical presentation of mint tea and a multi-tiered stand holding fresh, salty pistachio nuts, gooey Turkish delight, honey-sticky pastries and sweetmeats (£4.50).
