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Regular dad food?
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<blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 7249767" data-attributes="member: 4937"><p>I don't think there is any sort of 'right' answer for this, but the basic answer is "peasant food", where peasant food can be defined as what a peasant ate in a pre-industrial culture somewhere (or indeed anywhere) in the world back when the world had a subsistence agrarian economy.</p><p></p><p>I'll make a caveat to that by saying that I personally find it interesting to have my fantasy world be cosmopolitan, so that all the cultures have 100's or 1000's of years hence traded whatever cultivars that they had and most crops (like coffee, tea, potatoes, etc.) are now global in scope. It's worth noting that this is very Tolkien, as his pre-historical Western Europe still has tea and potatoes in it. </p><p></p><p>The fundamental answer to your question then is, "What effective latitude do your regular people live at?" The closer they are to the 'poles' the more they will have to rely on animal protein because the growing season won't be long enough to grow or harvest crops. Eventually you get to the point that you can't raise food animals either, because the growing season is too short to support herbivores. At that point you are sucking on chunks of frozen sushi and chewing whale blubber as a snack. You have no tooth decay and a lot of heart disease. The reverse happens as you get closer to the equator and can have two full growing seasons in a single year. Now you can live almost entirely on vegetables supplemented with butter, milk and maybe the occasional egg to provide the essential nutrients that are otherwise hard to get from vegetables alone. </p><p></p><p>In between you have a variety of mixed diets, mostly based around which starch you can grow because it's only starchy vegetables you can store. So you have rice, wheat, and maize based diets and in areas where you have cold ground also potato based diets. Rice and potatoes are historically best in terms of crop yields but rice requires a lot of water and a lot of technical ability (irrigation) and potatoes require cold storage because they have too much water in them to store 'dry' like a grain. Wheat is the most widespread because it stores exceptionally well, doesn't require a ton of sophistication to get going, and does well in a fairly dry climate. Less productively, you can have yam, taro, oats, quinoa, barley and oca based diets. </p><p></p><p>For non-humans in my world, their diets are strongly shaped by preferences and dietary restrictions that the omnivorous and adaptable humans don't have.</p><p></p><p>Goblin-kind: Goblins poorly process most vegetables. They starve on a vegetarian diet, and even small amounts of vegetables can make them flatulent and irritable. When possible, wealthy and healthy goblins subsist entirely on animal proteins - preferably animal flesh. Fish, cheese, and yogurt are considered second rate, and eaten in smaller amounts unless the goblins has lower social status. Most goblin communities survive on a combination of hunting, and animal husbandry - usually of goats and sheep. Shephards and goatherds, that most stay awake and go out during the day have very low social status, but owing to their importance to the community have comparatively high freedom, wealth, and food security compared to other low status goblins. As such, free shepherds and goatherds that own their own herds, form one of the most important goblin 'middle classes'. It's also one of the few ways that a goblin female can become independently powerful. Goblins with access to the underworld also farm some of the magical fungi that can be found and survive in the depths and which are capable of creating energy from contact with the stone alone. These are not particularly productive crops, but fungus are much more digestible to a goblin than say grains or cabbage, and are a welcome source of food that does not require going out into the hated sunlight. Goblins enjoy alcohol, but prefer those produced from simple sugars such as rum, sasma, tequila, or brandy. Diluted with water, and sometimes mixed together, these are all collectively known as 'grog'. Goblins prefer the taste of 'grog' that has been cured by placing a hunk of raw meat in it during the aging process, giving it a musky taste. Food is eaten communally, with higher status goblins taking the first share. A typical high status goblin table or 'board' will therefore have things like roasted lamb (in the spring) or mutton (in the fall), stewed salted goat, baked venison haunches, ewe's milk cheese, mushrooms and venison sweetbreads fried in butter, and jugs of grog. Poorer goblins will eat dried meat and various cheeses, and possibly even nut butters, fried potatoes, and other high fat vegetable food stuffs. On special occasions, slaves or captives will be slaughtered and served in a series of specially presented dishes. Goblin cooks are prized for their ability to showcase the flavor of meat or game of any sort, and to make long lasting hard cheeses and other preserved foods.</p><p></p><p>Elves: Elves on the other hand prefer a nearly strict vegan diet, supplemented only by small amounts of butter and cheese. They live mostly on nuts and dried fruit, and are capable of dealing with and enjoying high tannin forest nuts like acorns that humans find unpalatable. Elves garden with the intent of creating environments that look as natural as possible, so an elven garden looks a lot like stands of wild foodstuffs - blackberries, blueberries, apple trees, cherry trees, or whatever fruits are indigenous to the region. The proper way to farm is considered to be to find an area where something grows naturally, and then encourage its growth by subtly altering the environment and tending it to make it ideal for the foodstuff in question - whether it be oak trees or blueberries. Only an expert will typically recognize when they are in the middle of elvish 'farmland'. Elves enjoy alcohol and generally produce wines, meads, and ciders. Elves are more arboreal than humans and much more comfortable harvesting food well off the ground. Elves enjoy breads and grains, but typically clear only small amounts of land for what humans would recognize as farming, and so treat breads as a bit of a special treat rather than daily fare. Seeded or nut breads are especially highly prized, and - along with wine and cakes - are typical celebration fare. In areas where good relations exist, they often trade with human farmers to obtain grain and grain alcohols and also grape wines. Elven fare tends to be very herbal, with a great deal of flavors imparted by added the leaves of various herbs. Wild leeks, garlic, onions, ramp, and chives are highly desirable. Meat is rarely eaten, and many elves - especially high status ones - refrain from it their entire lives. Consuming meat is associated with low social status professions like soldiering or travelling merchants, and is done normally only as hardship fare when the need for quick energy outweighs all other considerations.</p><p></p><p>Dwarves: Dwarves are a highly cosmopolitan people and there food stuffs in many ways resemble those of humans. Dwarvish fare itself though borrows heavily and unabashedly from just about every culture it comes in contact with, so it would not be unusual to find a goblin salted goat and mushroom stew, stir fried peppers, herbed and seeded elvish bread, and beer. Dwarves like especially strong flavored foods of all sorts, and after adopting foreign recipes typically adapt them to their purposes by adding copious amounts of sugar, garlic, hot pepper, or strongly flavored spices like saffron or cinnamon. The result is a lot of thick spicy and often sweet sauces, as well as rich spiced deserts. As a consequence dwarven cookery is often highly prized in human lands, especially among mercantile classes. As a result, inns catering to merchants and travelers often serve dwarf style fare, both to attract dwarven customers and high class merchants. In dwarven culture, eating bland or unspiced food is a sign of poverty and hardship. Although cooking, brewing, and distilling are a highly prized and esteemed crafts, dwarves are not notable farmers or herders, and such work is considered unrewarding and even distasteful. As such, whenever possible dwarves prefer to trade for their food - most notably with human tenants. It's not at all unusual for a dwarven kingdom to have most of its surface dwellers be human tenant farmers or even freeholders with title to the surface land but not the land underneath the surface.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Celebrim, post: 7249767, member: 4937"] I don't think there is any sort of 'right' answer for this, but the basic answer is "peasant food", where peasant food can be defined as what a peasant ate in a pre-industrial culture somewhere (or indeed anywhere) in the world back when the world had a subsistence agrarian economy. I'll make a caveat to that by saying that I personally find it interesting to have my fantasy world be cosmopolitan, so that all the cultures have 100's or 1000's of years hence traded whatever cultivars that they had and most crops (like coffee, tea, potatoes, etc.) are now global in scope. It's worth noting that this is very Tolkien, as his pre-historical Western Europe still has tea and potatoes in it. The fundamental answer to your question then is, "What effective latitude do your regular people live at?" The closer they are to the 'poles' the more they will have to rely on animal protein because the growing season won't be long enough to grow or harvest crops. Eventually you get to the point that you can't raise food animals either, because the growing season is too short to support herbivores. At that point you are sucking on chunks of frozen sushi and chewing whale blubber as a snack. You have no tooth decay and a lot of heart disease. The reverse happens as you get closer to the equator and can have two full growing seasons in a single year. Now you can live almost entirely on vegetables supplemented with butter, milk and maybe the occasional egg to provide the essential nutrients that are otherwise hard to get from vegetables alone. In between you have a variety of mixed diets, mostly based around which starch you can grow because it's only starchy vegetables you can store. So you have rice, wheat, and maize based diets and in areas where you have cold ground also potato based diets. Rice and potatoes are historically best in terms of crop yields but rice requires a lot of water and a lot of technical ability (irrigation) and potatoes require cold storage because they have too much water in them to store 'dry' like a grain. Wheat is the most widespread because it stores exceptionally well, doesn't require a ton of sophistication to get going, and does well in a fairly dry climate. Less productively, you can have yam, taro, oats, quinoa, barley and oca based diets. For non-humans in my world, their diets are strongly shaped by preferences and dietary restrictions that the omnivorous and adaptable humans don't have. Goblin-kind: Goblins poorly process most vegetables. They starve on a vegetarian diet, and even small amounts of vegetables can make them flatulent and irritable. When possible, wealthy and healthy goblins subsist entirely on animal proteins - preferably animal flesh. Fish, cheese, and yogurt are considered second rate, and eaten in smaller amounts unless the goblins has lower social status. Most goblin communities survive on a combination of hunting, and animal husbandry - usually of goats and sheep. Shephards and goatherds, that most stay awake and go out during the day have very low social status, but owing to their importance to the community have comparatively high freedom, wealth, and food security compared to other low status goblins. As such, free shepherds and goatherds that own their own herds, form one of the most important goblin 'middle classes'. It's also one of the few ways that a goblin female can become independently powerful. Goblins with access to the underworld also farm some of the magical fungi that can be found and survive in the depths and which are capable of creating energy from contact with the stone alone. These are not particularly productive crops, but fungus are much more digestible to a goblin than say grains or cabbage, and are a welcome source of food that does not require going out into the hated sunlight. Goblins enjoy alcohol, but prefer those produced from simple sugars such as rum, sasma, tequila, or brandy. Diluted with water, and sometimes mixed together, these are all collectively known as 'grog'. Goblins prefer the taste of 'grog' that has been cured by placing a hunk of raw meat in it during the aging process, giving it a musky taste. Food is eaten communally, with higher status goblins taking the first share. A typical high status goblin table or 'board' will therefore have things like roasted lamb (in the spring) or mutton (in the fall), stewed salted goat, baked venison haunches, ewe's milk cheese, mushrooms and venison sweetbreads fried in butter, and jugs of grog. Poorer goblins will eat dried meat and various cheeses, and possibly even nut butters, fried potatoes, and other high fat vegetable food stuffs. On special occasions, slaves or captives will be slaughtered and served in a series of specially presented dishes. Goblin cooks are prized for their ability to showcase the flavor of meat or game of any sort, and to make long lasting hard cheeses and other preserved foods. Elves: Elves on the other hand prefer a nearly strict vegan diet, supplemented only by small amounts of butter and cheese. They live mostly on nuts and dried fruit, and are capable of dealing with and enjoying high tannin forest nuts like acorns that humans find unpalatable. Elves garden with the intent of creating environments that look as natural as possible, so an elven garden looks a lot like stands of wild foodstuffs - blackberries, blueberries, apple trees, cherry trees, or whatever fruits are indigenous to the region. The proper way to farm is considered to be to find an area where something grows naturally, and then encourage its growth by subtly altering the environment and tending it to make it ideal for the foodstuff in question - whether it be oak trees or blueberries. Only an expert will typically recognize when they are in the middle of elvish 'farmland'. Elves enjoy alcohol and generally produce wines, meads, and ciders. Elves are more arboreal than humans and much more comfortable harvesting food well off the ground. Elves enjoy breads and grains, but typically clear only small amounts of land for what humans would recognize as farming, and so treat breads as a bit of a special treat rather than daily fare. Seeded or nut breads are especially highly prized, and - along with wine and cakes - are typical celebration fare. In areas where good relations exist, they often trade with human farmers to obtain grain and grain alcohols and also grape wines. Elven fare tends to be very herbal, with a great deal of flavors imparted by added the leaves of various herbs. Wild leeks, garlic, onions, ramp, and chives are highly desirable. Meat is rarely eaten, and many elves - especially high status ones - refrain from it their entire lives. Consuming meat is associated with low social status professions like soldiering or travelling merchants, and is done normally only as hardship fare when the need for quick energy outweighs all other considerations. Dwarves: Dwarves are a highly cosmopolitan people and there food stuffs in many ways resemble those of humans. Dwarvish fare itself though borrows heavily and unabashedly from just about every culture it comes in contact with, so it would not be unusual to find a goblin salted goat and mushroom stew, stir fried peppers, herbed and seeded elvish bread, and beer. Dwarves like especially strong flavored foods of all sorts, and after adopting foreign recipes typically adapt them to their purposes by adding copious amounts of sugar, garlic, hot pepper, or strongly flavored spices like saffron or cinnamon. The result is a lot of thick spicy and often sweet sauces, as well as rich spiced deserts. As a consequence dwarven cookery is often highly prized in human lands, especially among mercantile classes. As a result, inns catering to merchants and travelers often serve dwarf style fare, both to attract dwarven customers and high class merchants. In dwarven culture, eating bland or unspiced food is a sign of poverty and hardship. Although cooking, brewing, and distilling are a highly prized and esteemed crafts, dwarves are not notable farmers or herders, and such work is considered unrewarding and even distasteful. As such, whenever possible dwarves prefer to trade for their food - most notably with human tenants. It's not at all unusual for a dwarven kingdom to have most of its surface dwellers be human tenant farmers or even freeholders with title to the surface land but not the land underneath the surface. [/QUOTE]
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