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WoW Meta: Snacky-snacky, Stormwind-style.
Why 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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I usually mentally give Arathor a lot of qualities of Scotland/Ireland (though it lost most of its population when the Horde came through during the second war) and sometimes Kul Tiras will be based on the romanticized antebellum south that you sometimes see in old books. ??BUT IDK??
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Dalaran is kinda--you'd have that smush of elven and human so it's probably like France plus Ireland/Scotland plus gnomes XD
The rest of the kingdoms, I have clearish to vague ideas--Kul Tiras and Theramore being kind of New Orleans ('cos ossum girlfriend and her discussions of Theramore snacky-snacky that inspired my post), Stromgarde was Celtic as balls, Gilneas is straight-up Britain...Alterac is the only one that's kind of a mystery to me, like--about the only thing clear about them is "Alterac--IT'S GOT FUKKIN' MOUNTAINS! And people with orange bandannas!" Given its proximity to Lordaeron, which cookingwise seems to be kinda French (escargot!), it probably had some of that--idk maybe like Swiss? Dang orange people, be more clear in my head XD
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I apologize; I messed up in doing what I set out to do, and intent doesn't matter at all in this case anyhow. Being afraid of appropriation isn't an excuse for my having utterly failed to express ideas and been an ignorant dingus.
You're right about the antebellum south thig as well
Basically yeah everything you said is dead-on and this is what happens when I'm not careful, I make Typical Dumbass White Kid Errors.
This needs a fuckton of work yet; I am by NO MEANS ~enlightened~, and I got complacent, and made a mess of things.
This is going to get reworked. I am going to do my damn homework right like I should have from the beginning, and stop being a chickenwuss FFS.
Again, I apologize. I dropped the ball hardcore, and MADE THE SAME DUMB ERRORS BLIZZARD DOES (good game), and there is no excuse for that.
Thanks for being so patient with me, and for applying the cluebat when it's desperately needed. I know this exasperating as fuck for you, and painful as fuck. Lord knows this crap is everywhere already. I should NOT be doing it too. Ever.
I dropped the ball, and there's zero excuse for it. I apologize. I will fix this--and I'm going to leave this as-is because while you're supposed to pull things like this in print THAT DON'T WORK ONLINE as you informed me.
This was my bad. I got complacent and fucked up I will fix what I fucked up, and make amends.
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My girlfriend is right. Thank you.
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