Unpopular opinions go here

[payn]

Just don’t go looking for real barbecue in eastern PA or central NJ. Closest we could find the three years in LHV was Dickie’s. We did order our Christmas dinners from there, though.

We have bad BBQ sauce in stores here too. The best is Open Pit and its as phoney as bologna. Its the only one that I can stomach because its not made with a thousand pounds of sugar.

 

[Ulfgeir]

A book of food history i read argued that it was the British period of isolation in the Napoleonic wars that largely set the trend (and then WWII rationing did their cuisine no favours by homogenising everything in the name of central distribution and standardisation so a lot of local specialties like cheese varieties were lost or nearly so, and a generation of kids grew up with very limited experience of food that wasn't monotonous and bland, and tended to dislike strong or piquant flavours in later life as a result)

Particularly during the Napoleonic era, you have this very localist movement, not just in food. You have the picturesque movement in art, for instance, as British travellers can no longer travel to the great cities of Europe and instead look around their own country for bucolic scenery to enjoy. Wartime patriotism mixed with necessity. Fashion goes the same way - rather than following Paris fashions, English dress starts to branch out on its own. Men's clothing in particular - while breeches were still the thing in Europe, trousers were popularised as elegant mens' clothing in this period by Beau Brummell, who moved in the Prince of Wales' social circles (although in a turnabout, the Prince himself is held in disdain for his over-gaudy taste in an culture where restraint was held as a virtue). And it was the same with food. Things like onions, garlic, chilli, tomatoes, olives etc were much harder to get hold of as they grew better in the warmer European countries. But in general (although conspicuously not in the Regent's household), there was a reaction against (what was seen as) frou-frou fiddly French-style cooking in favour of (what was seen as) good honest simple no-nonsense English food - with much less embellishment. You can even see a touch of this attitude in Austen - there's a scene in Pride and Prejudice where Elizabeth Bennet meets a man who is stated to be indolent and self-indulgent - and Austen demonstrates this by showing him turning up his nose at Elizabeth when she claims to prefer a (virtuously?) plain dish instead of a (dubiously foreign?) ragout.

I'm sure they still did a bunch with herbs - parsley sage rosemary and thyme - and marjoram, dill, etc - and pepper to a degree. But most spices seemed to have ended up in dessert dishes along with the vast amount of sugar from the Caribbean colonies - ginger snaps, cinnamon rolls, allspice in puddings and so on

Sounds reasonable.

 

[MGibster]

Possibly another unpopular opinion --- having just moved to the Pacific Northwest in the past year, Seattle's overall food scene is MASSIVELY underwhelming if you're not into one of the various Asian cultural food traditions or seafood.

When I visited Seattle in 2013, I went to a pizza place by the stadium that was awesome. Garlic was a topping. They put a bunch of garlic cloves on my pizza and it was awesome. The seafood was also great....I missed out on the Asian food.

 

[teitan]

The rulebooks were eccentrically organized back in the day, and lots of rules were scattered throughout the books, rather than being placed together and explained clearly, as they typically are today in games like OSE.

The state of the art for presentation and clarity has advanced a lot since the late 1970s, to be sure, due in part to the desktop publishing revolution, but if it's not Gary's fault that plenty of people missed some or all of what he was saying, whose fault is it? Even if it's unfair to expect the old books to be OSE-level in clarity, they could certainly have been more clear than they were.

Nah it was forefront to his writing in everything and not just the DMG. He wrote extensively about it in Dragon for example and the OD&D and basic rules emphasized the same play style as well. Players chose to ignore it and we now reap the culture it created from selective reading such as alignment being inherent as opposed to suggestions even though Gygax was pretty clear that a good DM is aware there are exceptions.

 

[Twiggly the Gnome]

I can tell you one thing that non-Southerners put sugar in that most Southerners do not: cornbread. In the South, cornbread is savory and not sweet. Many Southerners even complain that cornbread outside of the South more closely resembles a sweet "cake" than what we consider proper savory cornbread. I also know that expat Southerners and non-Southerners often have difficulties replicating Southern cornbread, and there is a reason for that: the corn meal. Yes, the South uses different corn meal than you can find elsewhere in the United States and likewise here in Austria. Southern corn meal is naturally sweeter and thus doesn't need sugar added for making cornbread. (IME, honey will typically be favored over sugar to sweeten cornbread.) This is why I sometimes have my relatives ship me cornmeal from home. It makes a real difference in taste.

Saw this on the shelf in a grocery store, and it made my soul hurt...
View attachment Duncan-Hines-Dolly-Parton-s-Sweet-Cornbread-Muffin-Mix-16-oz_9a80cf75-a7ab-45a3-a5ba-364b9bae...webp
... I can guarantee she wasn't eating that while growing up in Sevier county.

 

[Thomas Shey]

I agree to an extent, but I think that is over-accentuated as a result of sweet tea. Sweet tea includes a LOT of sugar. The higher extreme tends to be what a few of my friends have referred to as "church sweet," which is the extraordinarily sweet tea made by the old ladies in the local churches.

This wasn't just tea. I recall her specifically mentioning stewed tomatoes.

IME, a LOT of southern meals lean on copious amounts of savory vegetables. We eat more meat nowadays due to accessibility, but meat was generally more of a special occasion thing. Despite how many restaurants emphasize the meat, that's often the "special side" in Southern cuisine. The vegetable or fruit dishes are where it's at! However, we do use a lot animal fat (and butter!) to flavor our dishes. Southern green beans, for example, are often slow cooked with fatback, salt pork, or some other variation of lardon.

Well, since this was the 70's, I doubt my mother would have thought everything being buttered was unusual.

I can tell you one thing that non-Southerners put sugar in that most Southerners do not: cornbread. In the South, cornbread is savory and not sweet.

I wish I could get that out here. One restaurant I used to eat at had that approach and I found it much more appealing than the typical cornbread.

(That said, what corn you use matters too; some of it is called "sweet corn" for a reason).

Many Southerners even complain that cornbread outside of the South more closely resembles a sweet "cake" than what we consider proper savory cornbread. I also know that expat Southerners and non-Southerners often have difficulties replicating Southern cornbread, and there is a reason for that: the corn meal. Yes, the South uses different corn meal than you can find elsewhere in the United States and likewise here in Austria. Southern corn meal is naturally sweeter and thus doesn't need sugar added for making cornbread. (IME, honey will typically be favored over sugar to sweeten cornbread.) This is why I sometimes have my relatives ship me cornmeal from home. It makes a real difference in taste.

I have no trouble believing it.

 

[Aldarc]

I have spent a lot of time perfecting my cornbread skillet recipe. You are correct, the corn meal is the secret. Here in yankee country mostly its Jiffy or some knock off meal thats like the floor sweepings. Then, they add massive amounts of sugar or vanilla extract etc... A good recipe should need very little sugar, let the good ingredients do the work.

A friend of mine is really into smoking meats. He asked me to whip up some of my cornbread to go along with some ribs he was doing for a competition. I didnt plan to enter my bread into the competition, but I won anyways after some folks tried it. Was pretty sweet

Nice!

I am not looking to perfect some sort of platonic ideal of Southern cornbread. My only goal is to perfect my grandfather's recipe. It's not going to win any competition for best cornbread but it's the cornbread that I grew up loving.

 

[payn]

Nice!

I am not looking to perfect some sort of platonic ideal of Southern cornbread. My only goal is to perfect my grandfather's recipe. It's not going to win any competition for best cornbread but it's the cornbread that I grew up loving.

I like to use buttermilk too. Gives it that savory taste. I'm not a perfectionist, I do tinker though to try and make my recipes better.

 

[Campbell]

What you can theoretically do (go anywhere, do anything) in a tabletop RPG doesn't matter. What you are socially free and supported to do is what really matters.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Nah it was forefront to his writing in everything and not just the DMG. He wrote extensively about it in Dragon for example and the OD&D and basic rules emphasized the same play style as well. Players chose to ignore it and we now reap the culture it created from selective reading such as alignment being inherent as opposed to suggestions even though Gygax was pretty clear that a good DM is aware there are exceptions.

Gary constantly contradicted himself in his writing, sometimes within the span of a single year's Sorcerer's Scrolls. And then, in his posting here on ENWorld, he regularly contradicted what he'd said back when he was writing for TSR. Rewriting history to make him a clear and consistent communicator requires ignoring the very abundant paper trail.