The occasion also determines the amount of sugar added to Arabic coffee. Generally, the sweeter the coffee, the more joyous the occasion. A section of menus has been included in this book to illustrate how various dishes are combined on the table. The Lebanese kave some hard and fast rules about food. They will never serve their variant of yoghurt, laban, at the same meal with fish, nor will they mix laban and the taheeni sauce they prepare from sesame seed oil.
Arabic cooking can be very economical.
Very little food is wasted and ingenious uses are found for ingredients which might be discarded by less thrifty and less imaginative cooks. Western cooks who must coax interesting meals from mundane ingredients will hnd inspiration in Arab cooking for many variations of familiar themes. The wide selection of food evailable in Lebanon makes their diet the most varied of all Middle Eastern countries. The semitropical Mediterranean littoral produces excellent citrus fruits and bananas. The market gardens of the lower hillsides and valleys and the fields of the Bekaa' Valley yield a variety of cereals and vegetables all year around.