Sugar cubes (like my knees and hips) are not what they used to be. As a child I remember sugar cubes that were too hard to chew and took forever to dissolve in any hot liquid. If you didn't perch that cube correctly in your teeth you could easily choke on it.

"Rick Chappell" > wrote in message ...
First, let me expound upon the extreme privelege I have of making the
first relevant cross-post between rec.humor.jewish and
rec.food.drink.tea (if I'm wrong please don't tell me - I wouldn't
admit it anyway, as my wife and students could tell you).

"Sucked through a sugar cube"? Have you ever tried it? I did, once.
I obtained my Russian tea. I heated up my samovar. I got my zavarka
and boiling water in proper combination poured into a finjan, not a
yahrtzeit glass since we very fortunately have not been in need of the
latter. I delicately rested the sugar cube between upper and lower
incisors (facilitated by my slight, though not unsightly, prognathism
- surely produced, as my mother warned me, by indiligence in wearing
my retainer as a teen) and then:

Disaster. The cube crumbled faster than a Republican congressional
caucus after an indictment. I was left with a mouthful of granulated
sugar in tea, unable to spit it out because a child was attentively
staring at me across the table; the very child whom I had previously
sternly lectured about keeping his food in his mouth and that, even
though the poodle would appreciatively lick premasticated pizza off
his fingers, this is still considered bad manners.

I have heard that hard candies are permissible. Also, I'm sure that
if I stroll the back alleys of certain Slavic neighborhoods in Chicago
I can find a fellow with a Rasputin beard and shiny dark eyes who'd
sell me a bag of crystal suc. In the interim, I'm doing quite nicely
with a spoonful of cherry jam admixed (and a "bissel schnapps" when
the wind blows fiercely off the lake).

Best,

Rick.


Bob > wrote:
> Remember how your grandmother used to cook? Where is that cooking now?

... Numerous savory but ultra-high cholesterol details deleted ...

> Since we couldn't have milk or any dairy products (milchiks) with our
> meat meals (flayshiks), beverages consisted of cheap pop (seltzer in
> the spritz bottles), or a glezel tay (glass of hot tea) served in a
> yohrtzeit (memorial) glass, and sucked through a sugar cube held
> between the incisors.