So what is this stuff?
(#1)
Useless hint #1: It’s from Australia.
Useless hint #2: It’s organic.
Useless hint #3: It’s vegetable rather than animal.
I’ll stretch things out a bit more by telling you that the images in this posting came to me via Ned Deily, who’s taking a summer vacation in Oz, and passing on lots of photographic records of the trip.
Answer: It’s a food, a Persian food in fact. Insubstantial and wispy.
From Wikipedia:
Pashmak … is a form of Persian candy floss or cotton candy, made from sesame [oil] and sugar [but a bit of flour to bind it together]. The word Pashmak in Persian is composed of … pashm [wool] + … ak [resemblance suffix] meaning “wool-like”, as the confectionery resembles sheep’s wool.
Pashmak is served on its own or as an accompaniment to fruits, cakes, ice creams, puddings and desserts.
(#2)
It comes in various flavors and colors (Orange Blossom above), which you can explore on the Pariya (Australia) mail-order site, here.
The notable thing linguistically here is the name Persian fairy floss (take a moment to giggle), which falls in with the other fairy Y snowclonelets I looked at in a posting of 11/24/14 — in this case, connoting sometimthing fairy-like by virtue of being small, delicate, or insubstantial.
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