- The Daily Sin: The pervasive habit of “poking and returning” produce in Greek markets.
- Sanitary Breaches: Why communal handling is a public health nightmare in a post-pandemic world.
- The “Nose” Myth: If you have to sniff a melon to understand its soul, you’re missing the point.
- The Solution: A plea for visual respect and the lost art of trusting the merchant.
There is a specific sound to a Greek morning at the laiki or the neighborhood grocer: the rustle of plastic, the bartering of prices, and the soft, rhythmic thud of a peach being rejected. It is a sensory symphony until you see them. The “Inspectors.” You know the ones: the shoppers who believe their fingertips possess a divine diagnostic power. They reach into the pile, they squeeze until the skin bruises, and then, with a casual shrug of indifference, they place the wounded fruit back into the stack for the next person to find.
In a land where we pride ourselves on the purity and bounty of our soil and the freshness of our table, there is something deeply dishonest about this habit. To touch a fruit is to claim a part of it. When you leave your fingerprints on twenty different peppers before choosing one, you aren’t being “careful”—คุณ are being disrespectful to the farmer, the vendor, and the neighbor who follows in your wake.
In any other context, touching someone else’s dinner before they buy it would be considered an act of aggression. At the laiki or the supermarket, it’s a rampant epidemic of entitlement. If you aren’t planning to pay for it, your hands have no business being on it. Period.
The Myth of the “Nose”
Then there is the olfactory acrobat. We have all seen the amateur chef who believes that by shoving their nose into the crown of a pineapple or the stem of a tomato, they are unlocking some ancient culinary secret. If your cooking depends on a literal “sniff test” in the middle of a crowded supermarket, you are likely overcompensating for a lack of intuition.
Real quality announces itself through the eyes. It is in the tautness of the skin, the vibrancy of the color, and the weight of the item in your hand—a hand that should only touch what it intends to keep.
Stuffing your nose into a communal product is not “connoisseurship”—it’s gross. It’s a performance of culinary expertise that reveals a total lack of it. If you’re that unsure of your ingredients, perhaps stick to the frozen aisle where the plastic protects us from your curiosity.
A Plea for the “Siga Siga” of the Eyes
We live in a world that is increasingly aware of the invisible threads that connect us—the germs, the dust, the shared air. Why, then, do we treat the community fruit bowl like a tactile playground? There is an unspoken etiquette to the Cretan market that seems to be slipping away: the art of looking.
True “siga siga” philosophy applies to the grocery list, too. It means taking the time to observe the harvest with your eyes first. Trust the vendor. Trust the season. And for the love of the Libyan Sea, trust that if you didn’t buy it, you shouldn’t have pawed it.
The next time you reach for that perfect Cretan tomato, remember: it doesn’t need a hug, it needs a home. Buy what you touch, or don’t touch at all.
