SimplyCooking RPGideas

Hello friends. Here you'll find a bunch of cooking related info, such as what knives to use, how to make mead, and what kind of food street vendors would sell in different climates. Used to be deliciouslycookingrpgideasl

[xenosagaepisodeone]

in retrospect it's crazy how we just let parents turn to the media and blame their child's hobbies when their children commit suicide. I get why news outlets let it happen (if you can say "video games made my kid suicidal" or "my kid hung himself because uh... he was doing The TikTok Noose Challenge" then it justifies banning those things and enforcing stricter means of monitoring what kids do, on top of giving the parent an out for their culpability in the situation), but if your brain hasn't completely calcified with a boomerlike contempt for The Youth, you should immediately recognize this rhetoric as cope for a massive parenting fuckup. and generally if you examine a lot of these instances that make news, the sequence of events is normally the same; a kid is relatively isolated due to bullying or abuse, their parents don't know how to connect with them (or at worst view their lack of conformity as a burden), the child does not feel safe turning to their parent for comfort, the parent doesn't make any effort to aid the child in connecting with similar-minded peers (or don't bother until the issue is so apparent that they can't afford to ignore it), the child turns to outlets to sate their desire for interaction and belonging until they feel backed against a wall. parenting is hard, but the isolation that produces suicide is largely preventable in ways that a lot of parents gloss over because they do not conside the inner lives of their children to be real or meaningful. and going on TV to bleat to the world about how the one thing that your 14 year old strongly identified with is actually a corrupting influence just seems like a means of obliterating the remaining personhood of that child. you can call me callous, but to me these parents are looking at their child's suicide as another tantrum to be managed, and controlling their image post-mortem is their discipline of choice.

[fallout-lou-begas]

it's finally that time of the year again for the clinically depressed newscaster describing february with disco elysium music

[puppygirllaika]

"you're really scraping the bottom of the barrel" girl i am living that balsamic life, that's the mommy down there at the bottom.

[puppygirllaika]

#are you havinf a stroke or am i i can NOT understand this

Balsamic vinegar is made by aging a reduced grape syrup in barrels with "mother", which is a kind of bacterial slime that develops naturally in the vinegar over time. True balsamic vinegar goes through a very particular process of aging it in a series of smaller and smaller barrels, transferring it from one barrel to the next either every year, or every few years, depending on the process, and then adding fresh syrup to the largest barrel and continuing the process. The slimy film that forms on the insides of the barrels is the mother, and due to the increased concentrations over the years, the mother in the smallest barrel is most potent, and is sometimes partially removed and used to seed new batches of vinegar, so production can be expanded. Scraping the mother from the bottom of the barrel is how you multiply the goodness, the sweetness, and the quality of your balsamic.

[puppygirllaika]

If you've ever bought a bottle of apple cider vinegar and thought "what's that cloudy stuff at the bottom?", that's the mommy <3

[puppygirllaika]

This is also a part of what makes a high quality balsamic, well, high quality. And part of what makes it expensive. Good quality balsamic is all about age, both the age of the batch itself, and the age of the mother that seeds it. Balsamic has to be at least 12 years old, but you can age it much longer, and many places do. As for the mother, that requires literal lifetimes. Some of the oldest balsamic producing families in Modena have mothers that have been kept alive for centuries, passed down through the generations to seed new batches year after year after year, hundreds of years over. The bacterial cultures develop unique and incredible flavors in this time, and you can really taste it in the end product. It's the kind of flavor and quality only age can offer.

[puppygirllaika]

we have entered laika's autism zone. u will learn food and cooking facts, whether you want to or not.

[puppygirllaika]

#That's beautiful actually#How each bacterial culture literally evolves in unique ways and we get to taste that evolution#It's like the population of a city changing with time and producing new cultural artifacts#Except it's bacteria#Feels almost anthropological#Beautiful!

your regular reminder that all living things in our macroscopic world are collections, systems, communities, and structures of other living things. a planet is alive in the same way a city or a forest is alive, which is in the same way that you are alive, and the same way your guts are alive. we are all just active complexity with agency defined by nested layers. <3

[fairycosmos]

people hate to hear this but is it a look or are they just skinny is the realest sentence ever uttered

[rappersdoingnormalshit-blog]

[st3fan00]

Why Wayne got socks in the jacuzzi

[whitegirlsaintshit]

those are his hooves you bitch

[professionalchaoticdumbass]

happy 10 years of those are his hooves you bitch

[whitegirlsaintshit]

why the FUCK am i still on here

[nianeyna]

[the-punforgiven]

Pick a mage to train under

Bookish wizard who lives in a magnificent grand tower with a huge library

Mildly off-putting witch in the forest covered in bones and mumbling to herself

Proper and well-dressed court mage, privy to all the kingdom's royal drama

Ragged and haggard caster, tired and dirty from months of nonstop adventuring

Evil mage living in her volcano skull fortress surrounded by an unending storm

Moderately armored spellsword, weaving magic and martial skill in tandem

Guy who's been banned from 6 nightclubs for opening fae portals in the bathroom

Wizard who portals room to room because their big hat won't fit through doorways

Silent masked figure who beams horrible eldritch lore directly into your brain

Grave robbing necromancer who's never owned more than $10 at a time

Turbo-explosion wizard banned from everywhere for reasons you can probably guess

All-Powerful archmage who's been sealed in the side of a panel van

Voting ended onFeb 7, 2025

[swordshapedleaves]

This is I think, my best prep tip as a DM:

When the players are about to visit a new town, pre-generate several NPCs who fit the demographics of the town, but don't give them jobs. Your town is Mostly human, with a number of halflings and gnomes? Make a list that's mostly humans with some halflings and gnomes mixed in, with names that match the vibe you're going for and maybe the barest description + a quirk of some sort.

So the list would look something like this:

Ophelia Bracegurdle, older Halfling woman who laughs a lot

Norabecka Johnson, a young human woman who seems tired

Geraldofinio Babblecock Nimsy, gnome gentleman who takes pains to maintain a fabulous mustache

Etc.

Then, when the players are like, "Can I go to the blacksmith?" You look at your list of NPCs and the one at the top is Ophelia Bracegurdle. She's your blacksmith now. Then they want to go to the tavern, where Norabecka is the innkeeper and Geraldofinio is a patron having a drink at the bar. He's using a straw so he doesn't mess up his mustache.

If they had gone to the inn first, Ophelia would have been the innkeeper with Norabecka as the patron, and then Geraldofinio should have been a blacksmith with some sort of mustache guard to keep the sparks off.

Making the list ahead of time doesn't take much time, and you can often re-use the people you never got to at the next town.

Your world will seem vibrant and interesting and like you have everything planned out.

Have fun!

[swordshapedleaves]

Since this post has been getting a lot of notes, I would like to clarify a couple of points. This method has a few different benefits I would like people to note:

This prep is fairly simple and easy. You could use a random name generator and find lists of character quirks online or you could just make your own shit up. Because no one has any jobs or stats, you have very little you have to decide ahead of time.

It removes in-the-moment decision making from your game. Because you assign NPCs to roles as the players meet them, you don't have to pick who is gonna be the blacksmith or make up a blacksmith ahead of time.

This third point is the heart of this method for me: Randomization thwarts stereotyping. Some DMs struggle with this more than others, but I know I have made my fair share of gruff burly man blacksmiths! How many of us would really pick Ophelia Bracegurdle, older halfling woman who likes to laugh, to be the blacksmith? Honestly I probably wouldn't. But since in the example the players wanted to go to the blacksmith first, there she is. And now we have the option but not the requirement to think about why and how old Ophelia got her job. Maybe she's a widow who took over for her dead husband. Maybe she just always wanted to be a blacksmith or this town just has always had halfling ladies be their blacksmiths. Or maybe you don't think about it at all, and she's just the blacksmith because she is.

I've been in games where literally every NPC except the pretty barmaid is a man, and pretty much everyone is a light skinned dwarf, elf, or human. I've also been in games with awesome diverse characters who bring the game to life. I know I want to be a DM who creates the latter, and this system helps push back against our unconscious biases. When you have the list of everyone in the town, you can see ahead of time if you have a good gender ratio, whether your descriptions include any people with disabilities or people from different points of view.

[prokopetz]

"Which spices go with which foods" lists are of limited value to me because, like, I have functioning taste buds. What I really need is a "spices that need to be added at the start of the cooking time in order to properly develop versus spices that need to be added in the last five minutes because extended heating fucks up the flavour profile" list – that shit is not intuitive.

[screampotato]

In case anyone else is wondering this, herbs fall into two categories, "woody" and "soft".

Woody herbs grow on a tough perennial plant with woody stems and are strong and resiny. If you try to eat them raw, they are bitter and unpleasant. Woody herbs need to be added early in cooking so that their flavour comes out over time. Examples: rosemary, thyme, bay

Soft herbs come from annual plants without woody stems and are leafy and soft. They can generally be eaten raw and will taste strongly of their herb flavour but not unpleasantly bitter. They should be added at the end of cooking, or sprinkled over after cooking, as their flavour will be destroyed by long cooking. Examples: basil, mint, dill.

Obviously it's not easy to tell if the herb is dried which kind it is, so you might have to look it up. In general, woody herbs retain more of their flavour when dried, soft herbs are less useful in dried form. I don't personally keep buy soft herbs dried as I don't see the point.

Edit to add: when it comes to dried spices that are not herbs, they pretty much all need to be added early, and a lot will benefit from being briefly fried first to bring out the flavour. This is especially true of curry powder and cumin. Be careful not to burn them, though! The key word is "briefly". Some recipes mix them with water first to make a paste, in order to prevent burning.

[prokopetz]

"Which spices go with which foods" lists are of limited value to me because, like, I have functioning taste buds. What I really need is a "spices that need to be added at the start of the cooking time in order to properly develop versus spices that need to be added in the last five minutes because extended heating fucks up the flavour profile" list – that shit is not intuitive.

[not-quitenormal]

Keeping this for my own records if nothing else. This makes so much sense!!!

[dankmemeuniversity]

[ttrpg-smash-pass-vs]

THE TOURNAMENT!

Simple, basic, 2 stage.

Stage 1: Qualifiers. we'll be polling each monster to see who makes the cut. Stage 2: Make a Tournament and see who wins! Then do a poll for what system/book to do next, and hopefully repeat! Starting with the 5e Monster Manual, as that's the meme that started this idea. I'm using "#not tournament" if it's not directly important to the tournament, and #answers for answering asks, in case you don't care about extra stuff. For a quick list of the poll results so far, Click Here!

Criteria I'm using for entry: We're assuming it's consenting, and old enough to. Its has to be able to at least understand communication, NATURALLY. I don't care if you can theoretically cast awaken on a deer, it's not going on the list. But the Giant Elk, which is apparently fluent in 4 languages, is on the list. Exception being things that don't really think, like an animated item. Programmable tools, automatons, and plants are fine. I'm just trying avoid putting up normal animals, things with a sense of self and such. CURRENT BRACKET SPECIFIC: I'm using the MM art where possible, which sadly does not credit artists directly. However, there is a wonderful blog post by Kato Katonian that has tracked many of them down We are going with base monster manual (for now), generic member of its race. We can hold one for specific characters in the future, but for now we're going general. I'm using communication and lore as the main signifier of sentience. There are animals with 7 int. there are normal sentient races with 5 or less. Can't really trust the stats on these, as they're made solely with gameplay/combat in mind. So communication seems the most fair, assuming my look at its lore doesn't say it outright.

[six-improbable-things]

Because I’m curious, I wanted to make a couple of polls. This one is essentially a poll version of a post by @mookybear12404

What was the FIRST class you played in D&D?

Barbarian

Bard

Cleric

Druid

Fighter

Monk

Paladin

Ranger

Rogue

Sorcerer

Warlock

Wizard

Voting ended onAug 31, 2023

Please reblog for sample size!! And feel free to tell me about your first characters!!

[your-url-is-problematic]

ok wait so

If You Can't Recognize Half Of These Vegetables, I Don't Want To Try Your Cooking

I'm ruta-beggin' you to try your best.

how did you score?

0-10

11-15

16-20

21-25

26-30

31-35

36-40

41-45

Voting ended onMay 2, 2023

[rathayibacter]

isekai about a nyc apartment block getting teleported into a fantasy realm, and how this group of people who previously have only had incidental contact with one another come together to build a vibrant community in their new circumstances. there's a season-long arc about introducing bagels and pizza to the fantasy world that gets into the details of sourcing ingredients, developing new technologies, and learning how to work with supernatural substitutions.

[friendlyneighborhoodmadscientist]

Clarifying question: just the people or the buildings and animal life too?

And does it include random people on the street at the time of the transfer?

[rathayibacter]

oh the whole thing for sure, im picturing the whole city block with a crust of sidewalk just dropped onto the outskirts of a small medieval village. im thinking theres probably a corner store and a couple other things included too, so youve got the people who work there or were shopping at the time of the transfer too.

i hadnt thought of animals but having a whole thing w pigeons would be awesome too; have new york feral pigeons meeting with tamed messenger pigeons of the era, a raccoon that was sleeping in a trash can eats a magical necklace and starts talking. love it.

[rathayibacter]

fucking love this. an army of monster rats descend upon the kingdom, led by a single subway rat under the banner of a half-eaten pizza crust

[callmebliss]

But they do not anticipate the rise of the Hero, their one, true, and most worthy foe—

THE BODEGA CAT

[elfgrove]

#Tumblr's “Yes and” game remains strong and on-point

[casgirl]

[drunkygoesonadventures]

Challenge accepted.

First, let’s skip the charcoal. A cuisine is not based on food color. I feel like our primary flavor is a combination of Sweet and Bitter. This is common in all the most popular gothic drinks; Coffee, Red Wine, and Absinthe. It would favor elaborate, ornate, near Victorian presentation and plating.    People’s values are also expressed in food so I feel that handcrafting, niche and novelty, as well as authenticity would come through. Cooking methods would probably prefer open flame and aging.

So okay, with that in mind here are some ideas. 

All goths love a a Charcuterie: You eat it with a knife and it pairs well with wine and absinthe. Breads in dark Rye (discuss the argot they may have formed! #witchtrials) and cheeses cave aged - like bats. 

Nightshades and bitter greens salad: Some tomatoes and peppers come in black. Black tomatoes specifically will look very very similar to belladonna. A salad made with dark, bitter greens like radicchio or endive, and black cherry tomatoes is a great combination. Add a balsamic vinaigrette for some sweetness and acidity. Is my date giving me healthy salad or deadly poison? Either way I love them. Bon Appetite!

Charcoal-grilled aubergine: Aubergine (yes, use the fancy word) is already a deep purple and has a natural bitterness that can be enhanced by grilling it over charcoal. Technically eggplants also contain nicotine so I feel they will feature heavily.

Squid ink pasta: Hella people said it, so sure why not?

Dark Cherry and dark chocolate: Make a tart, serve as a sideboard with the absinthe, leave it as a gift on your dead lover’s grave. There are no bad options for this deliciously gothic and bittersweet treat.

Black rice and root vegetables: The first is black and is notable for being black and sometimes called “forbidden”. Sick. And the second can come in black, deep red, and purples. Also they’re totally under ground. Fire roast these. 

Candle Light: Not optional. If a meal comes on plates it comes with candles

[gallusrostromegalus]

Some more suggestions:

Rip open a pomegranate for a charcuterie centerpiece to evoke the Persephone Mythos, and (according to one infamous tumblr debacle) it's reminiscent of a gory heart

Actually, why stop at evoking a Heart? Chicken hearts are available at a ton of Asian and Hispanic grocery stores and are actually really easy to cook up quick (very underrated Low Spoons food!) and what's more Goth than eating an actual heart?

Depending on what Goth Subcultures you're part of, there's a lot of less-eaten organ and bone meats that are less-commonly eaten because they're not aesthetically palatable to Normies despite being delicious. Tongue, Liver, Kidney, eyes, intestines, genitalia and BLOOD are all staples of many cuisines worldwide and really make you think about the very goth nature of. There's Duck-Blood soup at my local polish place that is EXQUISITE.

Hell, if you really want to think about how you are eating a once-living thing, consider a whole-animal roast like Trout, whole duck, suckling pig or even Rabbit. Celebrate it's life by cooking it well, pick it's bones clean and Memento your own Mori.

Re: Candles: Agreed, if it comes on plates, it comes with candles, but consider your dishware too: Black is a classic and obvious choice, but consider jewel tones to pop against a dark tablecloth and provide some contrast to your food. You know how birds of paradise and sunset moths and a lot of other animals with SUPER dark pigmentation also have patches of intense color? Take if from a Biologist and Artist- Jewel tones make Blacks Blacker, like how moments of joy make the despair so much more intense.

You can also try gold-tone tableware to evoke that Dracula's-Golden-Cutlery literary motif!

Do you know what stone fruits, potatoes, asparagus, tapioca, Rhubarb and cashews have in common? They're all plants where only parts of it are edible, or they need to be cooked very carefully or they're extremely poisonous. Think about all you ancestors who took their lives into their hands figuring this out while you eat.

Granted, this last suggestion is more Punk than Goth, but I feel like it adds something to any cuisine: In the continental US and I think a good portion of Europe, almost everywhere has local farm co-ops and game-shares so you can eat in an environmentally friendly way that supports your community and is also HELLA fresh and doesn't go through the aesthetic screening that grocery store foods, and I feel like having some genuinely grotesque-looking produce on the table adds to the aesthetic.

[sreegs]

Not to be all One Weird Trick This Ex-Tumblr Employee Discovered About Garlic, but I saw someone commented on my paprika post that garlic and onions make them sick.

My wife has an allium intolerance. If she eats garlic, shallots, scallions, chives, or raw onions she gets an upset stomach, etc. Cooked onions are fine, though. For the longest time I just had to omit those ingredients from the food I cooked for her.

One day we were at a bar and we ordered some food and asked for no garlic in one of the dishes. The bartender put in the order and asked if garlic makes us sick, and my wife said yes, and explained the allium thing. The bartender said his wife has the exact same thing, and he found out that freezing garlic first seemed to alleviate her symptoms.

So I went and tried it. I was cooking a polenta and put some frozen garlic in it. My wife came home and I asked, "Are you sure you want to try this? It's pretty garlicky." and she tried it and said "This doesn't taste like garlic at all." And I knew that it definitely did. I could smell and taste the distinct flavor of garlic, but to her there was a complete absence of any garlic flavor that she knew of. It makes me wonder if freezing garlic breaks down a compound that I don't even notice because I've never had issues with garlic.

Anyways, I freeze my garlic and shallots now, and my wife can eat those without issue. Sure it's not the same as fresh, but we can both enjoy it this way.

[ironic-points-of-light-deactiva]

On a lighter note.

The main reason I ever wanted to write a Hungarian mythology-based urban fantasy is that I needed to see someone do Bread Magic in a mundane modern setting.

Bread Magic shows up in a variety in Hungarian fairytales. It works like this: when someone evil, usually the devil, sometimes a dragon, wants to come into your house and hurt you, usually by taking your children, what you do is put a loaf of bread on the windowsill. It will speak for you.

When evil demands admission, the bread will say: First, they buried me under the ground, and I survived. When I sprouted, they cruelly cut me down with sickles, and I survived. They threshed me with their flails and I survived. They ground me to flour with their millstones and I survived. They put me in a bowl and kneaded me, then they put me in a hot oven to bake me, and I survived. Have you done all these things? Until you do all these things and survive, you have no power here.

This is pretty powerful magic I think, and it makes sense in a country where wheat is the staple crop and bread is the staple food. If you have bread, you are alive, if you have no bread, you are dead, therefore bread is life. It was customary to refer to wheat as “life” well into the twentieth century, and not in high literary circles either: rural seasonal workers negotiated their wages in so and so many sacks of life.

And I totally want someone to do bread magic with a shitty store-bought muffin.

[thedupshadove]

“They filled me full of toxic preservatives, and yet I can still nourish. They left me under harsh florescent lighting, and yet I can still bring comfort. The one who baked me will never see the one who eats mez and yet I can still convey some sense of love, of care.

Until you can have your nature so twisted, yet remember and hold to it still, you have no power here.”