The Aroma Of The Food, The Allure Of The Smoke

Everytime I go to the annual Greek Festival I end up eating way too much. Still, I end up going there a time or two over the weekend, and I always bring home a bunch of pastries dripping with honey "for later". By morning they're gone too, nothing left to have with my morning coffee. They're just too tasty to resist.

If you're one of those oddball people that still drives around with open windows in your car you can smell the food on the grills from a block or two away, at least on the down wind side. Wander around between the booths set up in the church yard the temptations are overwhelming. Chicken, lamb, strange pasta that looks like oversized rice grains, salads with pungent dressing, spinach pie, and the pastries of course. Then you get to sit at communal tables set up either outside or under big tents. Nobody stands on ceremony about who sits where or with whom, so you can enjoy the company of old friends and quickly make new ones.

In an era when you can no longer light up and smoke in a restaurant you can still smoke outside, and I guess tents are considered "outside". Plenty of people were smoking. It probably doesn't make all that much difference anyway, surrounded as we were by all the charcoal fires cooking the food. Nobody complained either.