The food culture of the Basin

Xeria

I've always wondered about the food culture the basin. What would the denizens cook, what ingredients would they use? what kind of spices? the how and why or things. Are they influenced by seasonal food. The availability of ingredients?

As players we get to design what we want, with whatever we wish. Without much thought to limitations. if lusternia was a real place with real people, how would the denizens eat. what would they cook?

For the serenwilde I've always thought it's medieval fantasty peasant fare - soups, stews, breads and salads spiced with common herbs. the Serenwilde has centaurs and Elves as well ...so I think we'll also find western vegetarian fare and Tolkien-esque elven stuff like lembas, soups. fantasy medieval. cooked with limited types of food. not much of a variety.

hallifax - with it's emphasis on ordered perfection and it's food supplied from talthos and clarramore. i imagine it would be like japanese high cuisine. kaiseki. fresh ingredients, according to the season and arranged to please the eye and the palate. not much meat there.

new celest -  18th century french? rich filling but simple food. living so close to the sea, i bet they eat alot of sea food. kelp must form a staple of some of the poorer folk's diet. it was a built on the remains of an old powerful empire, so there's got to be rich food history and culture that's survived. perhaps going by delport it's french inspired?

magnagora - they'll eat anything that can be physically over powered and dragged to the table and thiey have no problems with cannibalism as well. perhaps a mix of british  and american food traditions in the 18th century? (around the time of the industrial age.)

glomdoring - they live in the wyrden forest, food culture much like the serenwilde, only with a greater willingness to experiment with things that are deemed poisonous by the serenwilders

gaudiguch - spicy food. they live near the desert so perhaps it's middle eastern, Bedouin. waste not want not. they'll eat lizards and snakes. under ground pits for cooking, the tandoori oven, maybe the tanjine cook pot. moroccan? with a slight influence from india.

what do you think? i'll update this post as the discussion progresses

Xeria

where I got most of my information -

google - the supersizers eat/go - bbc food history through the ages.

Cyndarin

Little known Glomdoring secret: the babies we kill for the nai'dorin go into Rowena's cauldron for the communal Boiled Baby Stew. It's all we eat. 

Shaddus

Celina said:

Little known Glomdoring secret: the babies we kill for the nai'dorin go into Rowena's cauldron for the communal Boiled Baby Stew. It's all we eat. 

Says you. My glomdoring characters eat the tempura-fried heads of people they decapitate and drink the tears of Serens.

Cyndarin

That's not on the approved diet.

Shaddus

The wyrd doesn't need your approval.

Xenthos

I take the easy way out. Just sprinkle whatever is in the nearest bottle on some food. Voila, instant anything (from burgers to lasagna to curry).

Shuyin

Where do I get to eat some fried tentacles dipped in peanut butter.

Xeria

Shuyin said:

Where do I get to eat some fried tentacles dipped in peanut butter.

the keph and the illithoid would have eaten that. they would likely have hunted kraken in parties and then roasted it over a fire or more likely boiled it in a hot spring in a package. fuel must have been hard to get!

Cyndarin

Shaddus said:

The wyrd doesn't need your approval.

WHAT. Someone hold my weave.

Enyalida

You're kidding RE: Serenwilde food, right? The Prime forest's gimmick is that it's all forests, with temperate plants sharing space with tropical plants, and the largest, most varied population of woodland animals. As a general rule, Centaurs, and Elfen (..and Tolkein elves) are not vegetarian either, especially not with a member of the founding pantheon being the god of the hunt. The central theme is diversity, and promoting the diversity of life - characteristically Serenwilde food would follow along. 

EDIT: So like, the opposite of 'not much variety'. 

Rancoura

I can't say I've ever really paid attention to any kind of Glomdorian culinary trends, and while my character doesn't partake in food/beverage consumption for pleasure anymore I've always imagined Glomdoring food to be a mix of gruesome and take-what-you-can-get-from-the-forest type.

Lots of roasted organs and venison meats, blood pies, cooked root side dishes, nuts. Lots of mushroom things because of our subterranean tunnels. Probably some grilled snake and salamanders too, which would account for the poisonous category.

The more pleasant things like desserts would have roses baked in and black frosting, I've also seen dark green leafy salads kicking around.

Xenthos

Don't forget the eyeballs.

Salome

Rancoura said:

I can't say I've ever really paid attention to any kind of Glomdorian culinary trends, and while my character doesn't partake in food/beverage consumption for pleasure anymore I've always imagined Glomdoring food to be a mix of gruesome and take-what-you-can-get-from-the-forest type.

Lots of roasted organs and venison meats, blood pies, cooked root side dishes, nuts. Lots of mushroom things because of our subterranean tunnels. Probably some grilled snake and salamanders too, which would account for the poisonous category.

The more pleasant things like desserts would have roses baked in and black frosting, I've also seen dark green leafy salads kicking around.

I would also confirm cannibalism as one of our primary sources of meat as we are composed of scavenging peoples.

Moi

Honestly, its probably not divided up by city. There would be different "schools" of cooking which are historically based in places that people came to the Basin from, or in Celestine Empire era cultures. So we'd have:

High Golothic/"Krokani": The cuisine of the Goloth Empire under Crazen. Commonly thought of as being "Krokani style" in the Basin today, given that the only group that particularly favours it is the Krokani living in and around Castle Djarrakh. Focuses on large amounts of mixed meats, breads and root vegetables.

Low Golothic/"Aslaran": The opposite of High Golothic. The food of the aslaran slaves in and around Djarrakh, mixed with the hunting culture of the free aslaran. Includes berries, flatbreads, oatmeals, freshly caught game and fish. Commonly thought of as "Aslaran" despite the fact that cooking in Mornhai doesn't really look anything like that.

Urlachian/"Orcish": Food based on military cooking in the legions of Urlach and Klangratch, as spread across the world by the Catacombs of the Dead. Based primarily on foods which are easily grown and prepared in bulk: Wheatbread, mixed vegetables, poultry. Tends toward the salty. Citrus fruit features for desserts. Despite being popular in the Dwarven Kingdoms and even the Chancel, its mostly thought of as "Orcish" as the major practitioners are in Acknor and Shllach.

Climantian: Food from Climanti. Once a highly cosmopolitan style, now mostly dead/debased due to all of the finest chefs dying to Zenos. Practiced in name only by the Ice Angels, who don't really have the manpower or infrastructure to prepare old-style dishes, and by the Forsaken, who are similarly limited in resources but have a good deal of the skills required.

Kiakodian: A mixture of fae and furrikini cooking, once popular in Ackleberry, Estelbar and former areas under the protection of the Goddess of the Green. Cultivated berries, orchard-fruit, nuts, fruiting vegetables ala pumpkins, tomatoes and squahes with honey and honey glaze as the major sweeteners. Does not feature bread except as a side dish, but Estelbar variants often subvert this tradition due to practical concerns.

Skarch/"Dracnari": Traditional foods from Alindor and Hadaran (sp?); the vernal-era Dracnari settlements in the Skarch prior to Kethuru's invasion of the region. Largely based in herding/ranching cultures given that the area does not lend itself to farming. Also included a surprising amount of fish for a desert, as prior to Kethuru there was a river in the western Skarch. Spicy!

Kephera: Undervault food! Involves fish, insects and most importantly fungus grown on silt draining down from the Surface Seas.

Ellindelian: The cuisine of the elfen communes. Features rather more meat and less sugar than Kiakodian, and involves much less cultivation. Fruit, deer and birds feature, as do herbs, root vegetables and eggs. Tends toward smokey or gamey. Glomdoring variants include significantly more spider meat and reishi, while Serenwilde food tends to have more fish and (in modern times) more grains due to the Centaur influence. Also popular in Taurian and even Loboshigaru communities.

Mesa/"Trillish": The traditional foods of the Skarch lucidian/trill tribes. Less spicy than Dracnari (more bell peppers than chili peppers!), and includes less fish, more moose and more fruit. Lots of food is sourced from the Southern Mountains rather than from the late Skarch River. Unlike Dracnari cooking, there is actual farming going on in mountain terraces.

Collectivist: Hallifax's efforts to modernize culinary theory during the Imperial to Modern era. Includes everything from scientifically improved versions of traditional terrace farming (Cloud Farming! The New Collectivist Future!) to downright innovative ideas like cube melons. Prefers mild and subtle tastes, often fruity, or dishes with a single unifying theme. Also involves edible crystals of salts and sugars as garnish.

Imperial/"Arysian": The culinary traditions of the Crystal Sea. Natively involves lots of kombu/sargassum dishes with seafood mixed in. Squid and shrimp are particularly popular, often eaten fresh-caught either raw or fresh-cooked. "Pearl Style" dishes are a major component of haute imperial cuisine, featuring a single  "exotic" element like rice or chicken or grapes on a more traditional seaweed bedding and surrounded by small fish or shrimp. Popular in New Celest and Bondero Bay in its unmodified form, and in Mangagora in a variation that does not involve seaweed. Think lamb fillet over asperagus and sliced eel.

Caroo/"Merian": The less formal form of merian cooking, developed by those merians that live IN the ocean rather than on islands. Meatier, involving whale and shark, and with mashed seaweed rather than stalks due to transportation/growing issues. Most common and beloved dish is fish with spiced seaweed stuffing. Surface adaptations often involve onions and peppers in the stuffing, or, if you're being particularly unauthentic, fish stuffed with chillied mashed potatoes.

Plaxiosian: The foods enjoyed by the traditional elfen inhabitants of the Plaxios Lowlands. Involves similar types of fruits and vegetables to the Ellindelian style, but with less game and more livestock. Goat, mutton, cheeses and a perplexing amount of vegetable sausages.

Human: Food brought over from another world! Resembles French (Delport), English (Stewartsville) or German (Duum) but has been reworked to use Lusternian ingredients instead of whatever Achaea has. Probably used to be regarded as weird (What, you pile food on top of bread, why?) but has become normal through human cultural osmosis over 400 years of exposure.

Prison/"Illithoid": Is frankly horrifying on several levels. Its food cooked by cannibalistic murderers who are being starved to death by very angry bugmen. Common fare includes "Illwater Stew" which involves net-fishing in the Illwater and the River of Darkness and wallmeat. Yes, wallmeat. The prison is covered in tumorous meat (presumably from Illith), and the prisoners eat it. Kephera meat is very prestigious, but not at all a staple.

Kethaera

Working on this thing myself. Actually, from what I remember, Serenwilde has a lot more animals(and thus, more likely to eat meat/larger varieties of it) than Glomdoring does. Sure, there's carrion, but my knowledge of how to prepare it is... limited... even if there are some real cultures that eat it.

Xeria

@Iytha that's really detailed! where did you get all these from?

Ellindel/elfen fae cuisine must rely heavily on nut flour. there are these great stands of oak, hazel, beech and pine all over the forest. if they don't practice farming at all, and are hunter gatherers for the most part then only the priviledged and the wealthy could afford to eat foods made with purely cereal grains and dairy products. eggs? maybe, but foraged from the wild or traded.

i bet pre-basin the poor folk, subsisted on hedgerow food. berries, nuts wild greens and herbs, starchy roots such as waterlily roots and cattails. seed breads and nut cake. no onions or garlic, no cultivated root vegetables as we know it.

at best they would have practice forest gardening as opposed to traditional monoculture farming. this tradition would have been carried on into the modern era.

@Enyalida i stand corrected!

Kethaera

The nature of a commune tends to preclude the idea of a privileged or wealthy class. In practice some people might be given higher esteem, and thus, first choice of rare or exotic foods, but if something is a staple, then it's going to be shared equally among everyone, in whatever quantities it's found. Dairy products are rare in most hunter-gatherer cultures, as they require extensive care and maintenance of kept animals, and many cultures don't drink dairy products at all due to lactose intolerance. Eggs are actually very easy to come by, though not from foraging- chickens can be 'kept' and eggs harvested from them for almost no work from those 'raising' them. Especially in a natural environment, but we already know chickens are found all over the Basin anyway. Eggs also keep well without cooling storage.

Root vegetables don't need to be cultivated in most climates that support them. Potatoes and other starches have been staples across many regions for most of history- and anywhere you have them, you could make flour out of the roots or leaves, depending on the plant.

Actually, if they aren't available, then the staple food would be fish. You can't live on nuts and berries.

Cyndarin

Kethaera said:

The nature of a commune tends to preclude the idea of a privileged or wealthy class. In practice some people might be given higher esteem, and thus, first choice of rare or exotic foods, but if something is a staple, then it's going to be shared equally among everyone, in whatever quantities it's found. Dairy products are rare in most hunter-gatherer cultures, as they require extensive care and maintenance of kept animals, and many cultures don't drink dairy products at all due to lactose intolerance. Eggs are actually very easy to come by, though not from foraging- chickens can be 'kept' and eggs harvested from them for almost no work from those 'raising' them. Especially in a natural environment, but we already know chickens are found all over the Basin anyway. Eggs also keep well without cooling storage.

Root vegetables don't need to be cultivated in most climates that support them. Potatoes and other starches have been staples across many regions for most of history- and anywhere you have them, you could make flour out of the roots or leaves, depending on the plant.

Actually, if they aren't available, then the staple food would be fish. You can't live on nuts and berries.

I take offense to this.

Daraius

Speaking of class, Hallifax would certainly have various strata of cuisine. The stuff described above really would only be available to the higher castes. Meanwhile Laborers would get mass-produced subsistence bricks, nutritionally tailored to optimize their effectiveness but having the consistency and flavor of unseasoned firm tofu. Warriors would get combat rations even in peacetime, regardless of whether or not they're deployed (to encourage a state of constant readiness). Bureaucrats thrive on paperwork so they just pulp surplus documents and red tape into a slurry to ingest between meetings. Merchants would have the most exposure to foreign cuisine, so they'd develop odd and varied tastes that would be seen as deviant by the rest of the population.

Xeria

@Kethaera i disagree. yes fish and game meat would have been a large part of their diet, when they could get it but i believe nuts processed into meal could have been their fall back food. the native americans depended on acorn meal as a staple food. it's available mostly all year round. yes as for starchy roots, i don't think potatoes entered into the equation. not the potato as we know it. in a woodland forest, it's likely they had another type of starchy root they ate and depended upon as a fall back staple. e.g. burdock/lotus root/cattails/some kind of wild yam. although nuts (hazel, pine, acorn, and beech)  would have provided much of their fats and protein when meat was not plentiful. there are stands of maple found in the present day forest. maple syrup is a possibility as well as wild honey and other types of sweet wild greens.

a typical meal in times of plenty might have been leaf wrapped nut cakes or bread made from nut flour baked in the ashes of the fire. the main would probably be pit roasted game seasoned with wild herbs such as thyme and fill with wild greens such as nettle and thickened with starch processed from roots or nut meal. then there would be berries for dessert.

Kethaera

Xeria said:

@Kethaera i disagree. yes fish and game meat would have been a large part of their diet, when they could get it but i believe nuts processed into meal could have been their fall back food. the native americans depended on acorn meal as a staple food. it's available mostly all year round. yes as for starchy roots, i don't think potatoes entered into the equation. not the potato as we know it. in a woodland forest, it's likely they had another type of starchy root they ate and depended upon as a fall back staple. e.g. burdock/lotus root/cattails/some kind of wild yam. although nuts (hazel, pine, acorn, and beech)  would have provided much of their fats and protein when meat was not plentiful. there are stands of maple found in the present day forest. maple syrup is a possibility as well as wild honey and other types of sweet wild greens.

a typical meal in times of plenty might have been leaf wrapped nut cakes or bread made from nut flour baked in the ashes of the fire. the main would probably be pit roasted game seasoned with wild herbs such as thyme and fill with wild greens such as nettle and thickened with starch processed from roots or nut meal. then there would be berries for dessert.

@Xeria, there is no generic Native American cuisine- it's thousands of tribes who lived in vastly different terrains with different foods available. Acorns were not a common staple food in most areas outside California. The primary staples, depending on region, were corn, squash, beans, and fish. If you lived in a forest were they were plentiful, then -maybe- you would use them as a staple, but if the quantity of other available fruits, vegetables, grains, and meat is as plentiful as @Enyalida suggests, it's not necessarily going to be an ideal primary food source, because you can't live on nuts and berries.

Potatoes were isolated to a few regions before globalization, but root vegetables/starchy tubers are not just potatoes. There's an incredible diversity around the world, which is why many places used them as staples, and still do. Also, hunter-gather societies always ate meat, even if it wasn't always a staple or common. If you have a river literally running through the area where you live... you eat fish. In the real world, the further north you live(colder regions, nothing to do with Lusternia geography), the more meat you eat. Tropical areas(more akin to Serenwilde), you have a more diverse diet due to more options of fruits and vegetables, but less meat. 

So... I see no reason to assume that Serenwilde wouldn't have a diverse diet. Various fruits, vegetables, starches, and fish that would be paired with bread made from, sure, nuts, or starchy roots or grains. Berries or cakes or maple candy are all possibilities for desserts, among other things. What you describe would not be a sustainable diet, and certainly not in times of plenty.

Sylandra

You guys think so much more about recipe designs than I do, damn. I am just here like, "Wonder if you could order a pizza pi in Hallifax, lol."

Enyalida

I don't think most of this translates to IG food designs, honestly. In a perfect world, it would though! 

@Kethaera is right about the diet things though. One thing that is probably true about Serenwilde food in general is that it'd consist of simple, direct dishes. This wouldn't be the result of lacking skill, but as a conscious choice to showcase the qualities of each ingredient. Complex mixed flavors or strong spices take potentially take away from the unique flavors of each dish. I imagine that fine Serenwilde/Elfen dining is a matter either of multiple short courses, or something like this, where different parts of the same meal are served in a series of little bowls. 

Kethaera

Enyalida said:

I don't think most of this translates to IG food designs, honestly. In a perfect world, it would though! 

@Kethaera is right about the diet things though. One thing that is probably true about Serenwilde food in general is that it'd consist of simple, direct dishes. This wouldn't be the result of lacking skill, but as a conscious choice to showcase the qualities of each ingredient. Complex mixed flavors or strong spices take potentially take away from the unique flavors of each dish. I imagine that fine Serenwilde/Elfen dining is a matter either of multiple short courses, or something like this, where different parts of the same meal are served in a series of little bowls. 

I like that idea, it makes sense, what with the nature-worship and all, and the fact that they'd be eating much of what they found/caught immediately, with less need to preserve food with cooking or heavy spice. 

Enyalida

I imagine on the other hand that Glomdoring cuisine is very... Lousiana. In other words, strong creole style spicy dishes (a lot of crawfish etc. from the swamps), very sweet sweets, salty salty things. In other words, everything turned up to 11 and very rich. Almost everything, at least - a few things would be conspicuously subtle - notably the drinks, tea and so on. 

EDIT: A long time ago, I hashed out theorycrafting on the distinctive dance styles of each org, planning to eventually write a book of 'reviews' laying out the essential natures of each style. I might still write the book, but would be interesting to start a catchall "XYZ of the basin" thread for talking about stuff like this? Dances of the basin, clothes of the basin, food of the basin, there are so many topics that I don't think are really explored. I thik it might be cool to see how every perceives the different orgs and what their styles would be.

Kethaera

In other words, you think Glomdoring has less diverse food, but is more delicious than Serenwilde's. I can accept that. Edit: I mean that only in the sense that Louisianan cuisine is better than anything else in the world, which, given my location and family lineage, I am honor-bound to say. Nothing against the type of food you mentioned. 

I would suspect that if any area is vegetarian, it's Hallifax, and I did agree with the idea of Gaudiguch having spicy desert-foods. 

Sylandra

Kethaera said:

if any area is vegetarian, it's Hallifax

Explains the horrifying nature of phruit.

Enyalida

It's more that I think Glomdoring food is stronk and intense, in whatever it's doing. That tends to be Glomdoring's thing after all. 

Portius

On vegetarianism, because it is of particular interest to me:

Probably absent from the forests, since both of them are pretty heavy on the hunt imagery and their economics probably discourage it, as discussed above.

Celest may very well have religious vegetarians who do it as a form of penance, in the manner of many real world religions. I doubt Mag's religion would support that, but it probably has some economic vegetarians among its various urchins and paupers.

Hallifax and Gaudiguch are definitely the centers of vegetarianism. Gaudiguch probably has ascetics who renounce meat as part of their quest for enlightenment, but I doubt it'd be common among the more secular people. As a Halli person, I can comment a lot more on vegetarianism there. Poor people probably don't eat much meat because Hallifax has to important a ton of food and importing meat without good preservation technology is expensive, in addition to the cost of producing it in the first place. They might eat our pigeons, of course, but those little buggers would be a pain for most people to catch. So, meat as status symbol for the upper class, I think.

That having been said, I bet Hallifax also has rich vegetarians. Hallifax can easily justify its own brand of asceticism, with artists and scientists renouncing worldly things to focus exclusively on their work. Probably also have some true believers in Collectivism who decry the wasteful frivolity of the the ballroom culture that the artists have going, and could decry meat as a wasteful luxury as part of that. Look at all of the real philosophical traditions that embraced deliberate poverty and whatnot and you'll notice that a lot of them fit in pretty well with Hallifax (and also Gaudiguch, because the orgs are pretty similar in a lot of ways) and many of them endorse vegetarianism. Hallifax could embrace it for the same reasons.

Exception: Hallifax probably recycles poor peoples' corpses into nutrient bricks. It's a flying city. What else are they gonna do with the bodies?

Kalnid

Portius said:

What else are they gonna do with the bodies?

Same thing they do with the sewage.