European cuisine

The cuisine of a people is often limited by their geography. For thousands of years, European food was bland - few spices grew in the climate of Europe and what little did grow in nearby North Africa was quickly extinguished. The introduction of new world crops proved to be revolutionizing for the European peasant - abundant new stores of calories and taste arrived in the form of potatoes, tomatoes, peppers (The impact on our own society of these is not to be forgotten either - what would Indian food be without its distinctive heat? Curries, sambar and rasam without tomatoes would be much more humdrum) and corn.

'Indigenous' cuisine
It is considerably difficult to determine what exactly is indigenous European cuisine, partially because of the shifting borders of Europe and the dependence of Europe on imported goods for economic development.

 

European alcoholic drinks, however, are incredibly rich and variegated. While the nomads of the steppe and people of Arabia are proud of their various fermented dairy beverages such as koumis and ayran, the Europeans developed a varied pantheon of alcoholic beverages. They can be categorized into four overarching categories, but the taxonomy is as complex as the tree of life. There are beers, wines, liqueurs and spirits. While Europe may be lacking in indigenous spices, there is no shortage of varieties of European fungi, with mushroom-picking a favorite hobby of nearly every European peasant culture. This has contributed to the explosion of alcohol variety as well.

 

While beer-making flourished in ancient Sumeria, little record remains of their varietals, however today we have an enormous selection to choose from in Europe and its sporelings. Each area, with its unique strains of both wild and cultivated yeast contributes something to the global gene bank of mycology. It is understandable that in an area with as rich a variety of alcohols and few other ways to store calories for winter, the idea of teetotaling seems downright irrational. Perhaps Europe’s climate and diverse fungal family contributed to a nuanced understanding of alcohol which is missing in other areas where for a very long time, the only alcohol that could be produced was moonshine of a strong and unpleasant nature. Ethiopia, also Christian in the manner of Europe has similarly lax attitudes towards alcohol, and is blessed with similar mycology and climate. It remains to be seen whether lax attitudes are because of varieties of alcohol or the other way around.

 

The Europine is quite fond of alcohol in its various forms and there are fewer reliable ways to understand the true nature of the Europine than to ask questions after imbibing. Opinions and actions which would shock the sober Europine are freely and jokingly exchanged during extended drinking sessions, often meant to be a form of strength trial - bodies are physically tested through dehydration, starvation and excess activity often after a long week of work.

 

Cocoa, which is neither native to, nor grown in Europe is a crucial ingredient in the creation of desserts in European culture, to be rivalled only by vanilla which is similarly native to the Americas and grown in Madagascar. While the raw ingredients are not native to Europe, they are invaluable as a part of understanding European values and culture. Originally, only the wealthy could afford chocolate - the product of dairy and cocoa. Today, Europeans everywhere, in the Americas and Australia purchase chocolate for a piddling portion of their salaries. This commodification of a luxury item is a pattern that is repeated in European modern history, and has resulted in many ‘rich man’s diseases’ of the past occurring among the poorest of Europeans. This has also had the concurrent effect of European elites seeking out that which is most expensive and difficult to acquire so as to distinguish themselves from the lower castes. Many of these distinctions for upper class clientele would seem bizarre to outside observers - the expensive champagne is often just as bitter and tart as its competitor at a tenth of the price, diamonds although commonplace in the Earth’s mantle are prized as rarities would be. A large system of artificial scarcity is created through the use of ‘brands’.

 

Here, a special note must be made for the European fascination with meat. Meat and manly vigor are intricately tied, with seeds of this kind of folk belief traceable to the ancient Roman physician Galen and the belief that “You are what you eat.”. Europeans believe deeply in the inherent cruelty of life and have few qualms about relishing in the kill - notably even in the modern age when few of them kill their own meat. They seem to derive an enormous amount of satisfaction, not just from the taste and texture of the meat (the seasoning of which would often appear bland to one of us) but from the fact that it has been taken from an animal. The cruelty of the process by which their material pleasure is achieved is rarely interrogated and when it is, is not apologized for, but seen as a necessary evil or sometimes even a proud victory over the peaceful and ‘dumb’ animals.

 

Such an attitude is easy to see in the European conquest of other lands - attempts to negotiate peacefully and equitably with Europeans have often resulted in the complete extermination of such groups . War is glorified and pacifists are denounced, peaceful natives are seen as being lower beings incapable of fighting, not ones who have achieved a higher stature or enlightenment.

 

Indeed, the easiest understanding this gives us is that Europeans understand little other than force, and there is no hope of appealing to moral values or even brotherhood, as witnessed by the betrayal of the Ukrainians, Poles and Moldovans time and time again, on both sides of the conflict by fellow Europeans. In personal dealings with Europeans, it should be remembered that they are extremely civil and polite. At least a part of which is a descendant of the missionary personality - someone who wishes to be your friend, confidant, who poses as an interested party in preserving your culture, but in reality wants to freeze your culture, prevent its development, reap the benefits of its labor and ultimately dominate it in order to impose their own scale of cultural values. Europeans largely see education, especially of other cultures, not as a means to greater spiritual understanding or a good in itself, but as means of conversion, co-option, and domination.

Men in the culture who choose not to eat meat are seen as somewhat deficient rather than respected as one would expect in a civilized culture. As in the Arab cultures and folk cultures of peasant India, much emphasis is put on libido - in English, the word ‘meat’ is often meant to mean not just the flesh of the animal, but also the animal flesh of the man - the generative organ. Europeans embrace this metaphor, and one can spot late night TV advertisements offering male enhancement medications to increase the animal nature of the man. This is nothing new within human civilizations - the Chinese often purchase the horn of tusked animals in order to increase their vigor, and similarly the Europeans use a much more effective technique to enhance their libido, but with little question as to why they must do it and why they value the bigger member. This is nothing new either: a pre-modern European explorer and mass murderer was looking for the Fountain of Youth in post-collapse North America to revive his sexual vitality. One wonders if much exploration, European or not is driven by the tension of an absence of libido and the societal pressure to live up to a certain expectation of libido in some individuals.