WoW Meta: Snacky-snacky, Stormwind-style.
Jan. 5th, 2013 11:13 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
yukie1013Why is it that whenever I set out to meta about things my mind wanders to food first of all.
OH WELL!
Suffice it to say this is all about AU Stormwind because canon is boring and stuff and nobody talks about this in-game and I like food. Food is a Major Thing in my family and a MAJOR major thing in my girlfriend's. So yeah, when I think about differing cultures the thing I think of first is often cooking. Food = home.
BASICS: Stormwind cuisine is some kind of joyous WTF hybrid of different aspects of Provençal, Canadian Maritime, Irish, British, Welsh, and Norwegian cuisine, to compare it to our world foodwise. In-universe, it's influenced by High Elven and Dwarven cooking primarily, with Night Elven and Draenei running a close second.
Stormwind has a tea culture similar to that of many places in the UK. If you ask a Stormwinder what meals he or she eats throughout the day, you'll hear 'breakfast, dinner, (high) tea and supper'. They do 'full breakfasts' much of the time (eggs, bacon, toast, baked beans, and so on). If you hear a Stormwinder mention 'low tea', that's an afternoon snack.
Also, King Varian Wrynn is really fond of fish and chips.
FISH: There's a lot of fish--smoked, grilled, in soup, baked, grilled, etc.--because the fishing industry is a very strong one and fresh fish are easy to get. So it's a staple of the Stormwinder diet on all levels of the financial ladder.
Common noms include a fish soup like bouillabaisse, various seafood chowders (tomato and cream based--the former is more common in summer and the latter in winter), smoked fish, pickled herring type things, gravlax--the list goes on.
Stormwind has a friendly rivalry with Theramore over who makes the better ale-battered fish and chips. With Moira Thaurissan Bronzebeard's faction of non-douchey Dark iron dwarves now allied with Stormwind, the pubs around Stormwind have begun offering Dark Iron Ale as a batter option.
SHELLFISH: Goes without saying. Scallops, mussels, oysters, and various clams. The Wetlands is now even more a haven for things in shells than ever before, and the folks of Menethil Harbour have set up a plan to begin financing city repairs through oyster farming. Shrimp, crab and lobster are also common--so much so that they're really not considered luxury foods, though certain kinds are more fancied than others.
Shellfish go in soups and chowders, or get sauteed, or steamed, or they go in clam bakes on special occasions (or clam boils if the weather is rotten).
OTHER SEAFOOD: Octopus and squid are not something Stormwind chefs shy away from. Calamari is a popular pub thing. Whether it's best fried or grilled is a matter of opinion.
SEAWEED: Stormwinders aren't skittish about nomming kelp. It's good for you! Most of what's eaten is similar to dulse and nori and laver.
Seaweed goes into soups or gets made into salads or gets roasted to eat for a snack food or gets made into something like hashbrowns etc. etc. Some human chefs have started taking hints form their Kaldorei friends and making seaweed-wrapped rice balls. These are becoming popular.
GRAINS AND LEGUMES: Stormwinders like rice. They have since Kul Tiras introduced them to all the fun stuff you can do with it. Now that the Kaldorei are part of the Alliance and even MORE recipes are in the books, they love it more. Corn is a staple, whether for nomming off the cob or making into something like polenta or making into cornbread. Wheat and oats round out the grain categories, and there are multiple varieties of each.
The Draenei introduced Stormwind to curries with rice, and Stormwind is joyful about this.
Stormwinders also love their baked beans. Everybody has their own opinion of what ought to go in the sauce. They've also taken to the steamed green beans that the Kaldorei like as a snack like a duck to water.
DAIRY: Stormwind's FAMOUS for cheese, particularly brie. Elling Trias is the most famous cheesemaker there as a result of said brie, but essentially any variety you pick up from his shop is going to be good. Shops also stock Darnassian bleu cheese, Dwarven mild and Dalaran sharp cheddar, Alterac-style holey cheese, and so on. Goat cheese and fresh cheese is also available, in various forms. Yeah, Stormwind likes their cracker garnishes.
After cheese, the most popular uses for milk are related to tea--the meal and the beverage. Stormwind's black breakfast tea blend is commonly drunk with a lot of milk in, and the most common accompaniment for said tea is a scone with jam and clotted cream.
Tigule and Foror's ice cream is a close third in the running; the most popular flavours in Stormwind are Strawberry, Moonberry, Chocolate chip, and peanut butter cup.
Needless to say, Stormwind produces a heck of a lot of milk. The fertile valley lands around the city are ideal for raising cows.
VEGGIES AND FRUIT: Stormwind's almost as famous for apples as Dalaran. The most common variety grown are Goldenbark. They make good cider--hard or fresh. (Varian incidentally prefers the latter.)
While Elwynn's pumpkins are nowhere near as huge as their Tirisfal cousins they're no less popular. Autumn sees them made into pies, or simply baked whole with butter--either with ginger and sugar or garlic and herbs flavouring the butter.
The lands around Stormwind are ideal for farming almost anything. With the aid if the Cenarion Circle and Earthen Ring, Westfall's farmlands are recovering as well.
BEER, WINE, ETC.: Readily available in various types. Beers, ales and stouts are the most popular alcohols, though Stormwind likes robust fruity red and white wines too. Dark Iron Ale, intorduced to Stormwind by Moira Thaurissan Bronzebeard when she and the non-jackassy Dark Irons joined up with the Alliance, is growing in popularity.
...And that is all I can think of for now XD
OH WELL!
Suffice it to say this is all about AU Stormwind because canon is boring and stuff and nobody talks about this in-game and I like food. Food is a Major Thing in my family and a MAJOR major thing in my girlfriend's. So yeah, when I think about differing cultures the thing I think of first is often cooking. Food = home.
BASICS: Stormwind cuisine is some kind of joyous WTF hybrid of different aspects of Provençal, Canadian Maritime, Irish, British, Welsh, and Norwegian cuisine, to compare it to our world foodwise. In-universe, it's influenced by High Elven and Dwarven cooking primarily, with Night Elven and Draenei running a close second.
Stormwind has a tea culture similar to that of many places in the UK. If you ask a Stormwinder what meals he or she eats throughout the day, you'll hear 'breakfast, dinner, (high) tea and supper'. They do 'full breakfasts' much of the time (eggs, bacon, toast, baked beans, and so on). If you hear a Stormwinder mention 'low tea', that's an afternoon snack.
Also, King Varian Wrynn is really fond of fish and chips.
FISH: There's a lot of fish--smoked, grilled, in soup, baked, grilled, etc.--because the fishing industry is a very strong one and fresh fish are easy to get. So it's a staple of the Stormwinder diet on all levels of the financial ladder.
Common noms include a fish soup like bouillabaisse, various seafood chowders (tomato and cream based--the former is more common in summer and the latter in winter), smoked fish, pickled herring type things, gravlax--the list goes on.
Stormwind has a friendly rivalry with Theramore over who makes the better ale-battered fish and chips. With Moira Thaurissan Bronzebeard's faction of non-douchey Dark iron dwarves now allied with Stormwind, the pubs around Stormwind have begun offering Dark Iron Ale as a batter option.
SHELLFISH: Goes without saying. Scallops, mussels, oysters, and various clams. The Wetlands is now even more a haven for things in shells than ever before, and the folks of Menethil Harbour have set up a plan to begin financing city repairs through oyster farming. Shrimp, crab and lobster are also common--so much so that they're really not considered luxury foods, though certain kinds are more fancied than others.
Shellfish go in soups and chowders, or get sauteed, or steamed, or they go in clam bakes on special occasions (or clam boils if the weather is rotten).
OTHER SEAFOOD: Octopus and squid are not something Stormwind chefs shy away from. Calamari is a popular pub thing. Whether it's best fried or grilled is a matter of opinion.
SEAWEED: Stormwinders aren't skittish about nomming kelp. It's good for you! Most of what's eaten is similar to dulse and nori and laver.
Seaweed goes into soups or gets made into salads or gets roasted to eat for a snack food or gets made into something like hashbrowns etc. etc. Some human chefs have started taking hints form their Kaldorei friends and making seaweed-wrapped rice balls. These are becoming popular.
GRAINS AND LEGUMES: Stormwinders like rice. They have since Kul Tiras introduced them to all the fun stuff you can do with it. Now that the Kaldorei are part of the Alliance and even MORE recipes are in the books, they love it more. Corn is a staple, whether for nomming off the cob or making into something like polenta or making into cornbread. Wheat and oats round out the grain categories, and there are multiple varieties of each.
The Draenei introduced Stormwind to curries with rice, and Stormwind is joyful about this.
Stormwinders also love their baked beans. Everybody has their own opinion of what ought to go in the sauce. They've also taken to the steamed green beans that the Kaldorei like as a snack like a duck to water.
DAIRY: Stormwind's FAMOUS for cheese, particularly brie. Elling Trias is the most famous cheesemaker there as a result of said brie, but essentially any variety you pick up from his shop is going to be good. Shops also stock Darnassian bleu cheese, Dwarven mild and Dalaran sharp cheddar, Alterac-style holey cheese, and so on. Goat cheese and fresh cheese is also available, in various forms. Yeah, Stormwind likes their cracker garnishes.
After cheese, the most popular uses for milk are related to tea--the meal and the beverage. Stormwind's black breakfast tea blend is commonly drunk with a lot of milk in, and the most common accompaniment for said tea is a scone with jam and clotted cream.
Tigule and Foror's ice cream is a close third in the running; the most popular flavours in Stormwind are Strawberry, Moonberry, Chocolate chip, and peanut butter cup.
Needless to say, Stormwind produces a heck of a lot of milk. The fertile valley lands around the city are ideal for raising cows.
VEGGIES AND FRUIT: Stormwind's almost as famous for apples as Dalaran. The most common variety grown are Goldenbark. They make good cider--hard or fresh. (Varian incidentally prefers the latter.)
While Elwynn's pumpkins are nowhere near as huge as their Tirisfal cousins they're no less popular. Autumn sees them made into pies, or simply baked whole with butter--either with ginger and sugar or garlic and herbs flavouring the butter.
The lands around Stormwind are ideal for farming almost anything. With the aid if the Cenarion Circle and Earthen Ring, Westfall's farmlands are recovering as well.
BEER, WINE, ETC.: Readily available in various types. Beers, ales and stouts are the most popular alcohols, though Stormwind likes robust fruity red and white wines too. Dark Iron Ale, intorduced to Stormwind by Moira Thaurissan Bronzebeard when she and the non-jackassy Dark Irons joined up with the Alliance, is growing in popularity.
...And that is all I can think of for now XD
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no subject
Date: 2013-01-06 06:38 am (UTC)Jaina loves fish. Like, loves it. Her very favourite fish is super-battered fish like you can get from a cheap vendor stall, wrapped wax paper. There have been any number of instances of Jaina giving people the 'wtf is this shit?' look if they present breakfast to her and it doesn't have kippers. Many think she's insane. Other than that, she has a fondness for goblin food, like Kezan Deviled Eggs, which are spicy as all fucking get out, and Kezan Fireball Whiskey, which is the closest my very arcane/frost!Jaina ever gets to using fire spells.
Jaina also has a huge thing about tea. Tea is a comforting thing, and any problem can be solved by sitting down, shutting up, and DRINKING YOUR GODDAMN TEA.
Orgrim Doomhammer has a secret love of spicy goblin food due to a *cough* liaison involving a Steamwheedle Princess that Grom-Won't-Shut-Up-About-It's-Not-That-Funny-Come-On.
When Thrall was very young, he dumped a bowl of oatmeal on his sister Taretha's hair. The mess was *so bad* that they had to cut her hair to get it all out. Tari never let Thrall forget it, and Thrall is still kind of apprehensive of oatmeal as a result.
Garona has endured poison tolerance training since she was small, which has contributed to her smaller size, lowered appetite, and the reason why Varok Saurfang will NEVER EVER EVER steal food from her plate to be a smartass.
Trolls do things with rice. All the things with rice. Also, curries, and have their own version of chilis that are so hot that they kill the plant they're grown on. Hey, regenerating's got to be good for something, right? Also, they have a lot of fruit in their diet, and can do exciting things with smoothies.
Lordaeron is the country I imagine being very formal and proper regarding meals and the treatment as such. Azeroth, I imagine, for whatever reason, likes to steal bits of cuisine from everywhere, but has a line in on fresh fruits from tropical areas. Essentially, Azeroth (to my interpretation, which isn't at all to say it's the only one or the right one) is basically the country that went through about a dozen royal houses before the Wrynn "dynasty", and their nobles are a bunch of back biting, vicious assholes.
Lordaeron, by contrast, has been ruled by the Menethil line for well over five hundred years, and is noted for a king (whom Arthas was named after) who started conquering all the unclaimed bits of that area, then started on the claimed ones. Five hundred years later, a queen (whom *Calia* was named after) not only ended the war, but managed to get away with such a one-way, beneficial agreement for *Lordaeron* that people are still shaking their heads about it. So their country has a lot of weight and pomp, but a sharp edge hiding behind a velvet glove, whereas Azeroth wears everything on their shirt front and you can just goddamn deal with it.
The tauren I once described as making large amounts of flatbread, and having basically different pastes and jellies and such. They have a bunch of little bowls of it, and rip off pieces of flatbread to scoop and eat. I saw this at an Algerian (I think?) restaurant, and it looked cool. It's a shame I couldn't eat anything because it was all peppers and spicy food and the bread was this weird, always-wet stuff.
The orcs we envisioned having very meat-heavy diets, and having lots and lots of ways to prepare meat, but their actual side dish creativity to be decidedly lacking, coming from a world where the most popular side dish was something we called 'gresht' which is a chewy root that grows basically everywhere and is harder to kill than orc-Jesus. At some point, because I don't suck like Blizzard, I assumed the trolls taught the orcs how to farm, so now they have rice and other grains and veg.
no subject
Date: 2013-01-06 06:38 am (UTC)Dwarves throw things in a pot and boil until dead. Since they eat a lot of goat and sheep, and less beef and pork and fowl, it's harder for them to get good, tender meat without boiling it a lot, so there you go. But they know beer!
I think gnomes would put as much creativity and innovation into their food as anything else. Which means sometimes it turns YOU into a chicken, and sometimes it explodes.
Kul Tiras relies strongly on fishing and seafood collection, but since they're also merchants, they trade for a lot of things. They're also very strong on mutton and goat meat, and their side dishes tend towards 'what didn't get washed away when it rains all the goddamn time'.
Dalaran can, to a lesser extent, control the weather, though they don't dare do it as much as Quel'thalas does, and they have actual farms outside the city. They treat those people LIKE GOLD. Do you want fridges? Please, have some fridges. Don't poison our tea.
As was noted when I rewrote Undercity for Unity, the Forsaken 'raise' their own food, basically capturing infected animals or infecting healthy ones and eating it. They do not *have* to go around eating other people, but they can draw sustenance from it. Many of Lordaeron's living impaired citizens desperately try to cling to how their lives used to be, and that includes going to market for meat.
I'd imagine the Draenei eat very little meat out of necessity, if they've spent generations on a space ship. Cattle take a lot of room to grow, to feed, and to slaughter, so it would be easier to go for, say, hydroponic gardens that grew high-protein plants than raising cows and chickens.
That's all *I've* got for my own thoughts.
no subject
Date: 2013-01-06 02:15 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-01-06 10:30 am (UTC)It's IT-and-Sod-canon that Karandra Fordring loves cooking, and makes the best dessert pies in Lordaeron. In general, Karandra's cooking is suspected to be the reason why Taelan Fordring grew up to be even bigger than his father. (This because of the fact that pre-Cata, when you did the In Dreams quest, Taelan's model was HUGE.) Darion Mograine complains about this unfairness, but not too loudly, 'cause Taelan is a good little paladin-to-be and always shares his pie.
Oh, and Kael'thas Sunstrider has - in his own words - a passionate but ultimately mutually destructive love affair with chocolate. This became a bit of a problem after he went to Dalaran and could finally eat whatever and whenever he wanted without being respectfully scolded and reminded of his royal dignity by one of his brigades attendants. Luckily Jaina Proudmoore stepped in and helped him regulate the habit before he could seriously make himself ill (though not before he developed his first ever facial zit, a most traumatic experience).