Nature Cuisine

This is a collaborative page! Please feel free to make good neighbor edits, especially to add new dishes. Since this page is for the entire Flight, please also feel free to add whole big new chunks and styles that go beyond the normal scope of said edits. I'd ask you don't delete my stuff though; instead, I'm happy to collab, give me a ping!
Nature cuisine is an umbrella term for the various cuisines of the Viridian Labyrinth. While there's a high degree of both cultural and environmental variation throughout the Flight, there are some general observations to be made. "General" is the operative word; clans may follow their own unique traditions or rely on resources, tastes, and experiences not available to an "average" Nature clan. That said, the broad strokes of Nature cuisine are shaped in equal parts by environment and Flight values.
== Features ==
In general, Nature lairs benefit from a continuous "harvest season" that provides plentiful and varied foragables, but are also careful stewards of their surroundings, and thus have diets that fluctuate with location, season, and availability. Nature cuisine tends to be somewhat improvisational, with a focus on preserving the freshness and quality of the constituent ingredients. Beyond this, Nature cuisine is best described on a regional basis.
=== Everbloom Gardens ===
The Everbloom Gardens are rich with easily-foraged ingredients, and the sheer accessibility of fruit in particular inspires many of the region's dishes. Everbloom cuisine often favors sweet over savory, and is popular with hatchlings both within and beyond the Flight. While foraging and eating without further handling may account for a large share of the Everbloom diet, prepared meals can be complex or even ritualistic affairs, involving many small courses and floral garnishes with ancient symbolic meaning. Of course, garnishes may also be purely for looks--Everbloom cuisine can be as much an affair for the eyes as it is for the stomach.
=== The Gladeveins ===
A radical departure from the Everbloom Gardens, Gladeveins dishes tend to be intensely savoury, shaped as they are by the region's waterways. Soups and stews are popular. Onion and sweet pepper serve as a base to which local ingredients are added, with no two stews being exactly alike, with additives including freshwater crawdads and fish, the roots of water plants, obscure herbs, swamp insects, mushrooms, and kelp. It's considered poor manners to ask a chef what they've put in their stew before eating, as it demonstrates a lack of faith. Other popular dishes tend to emphasize simplicity and taste, and include pan-fried fish, roasted root kebabs, and smoked buttery grubs.
=== Shrieking Wilds ===
The clans that dwell in the Wilds' depths live in equilibrium with their beasts; some dishes are shaped by this abundance, as certain species must be responsibly culled to keep clans safe. All parts of the animal are used where possible, with no taboos against offal or bones. Other dishes are instead shaped by the region's flora, including many toxic species. Flavors tend towards bold, rich, smoky, bitter, and spicy, though non-Nature dragons should exercise caution. There's also a long history of "trail food", though what a Shrieking Wilds dragon considers "food" may, again, cause some issues for those not used to the diet. Shrieking Wilds cuisine tends to overlap somewhat with Plague cuisine; bring this up at your peril.
=== The Behemoth ===
As the de facto capitol of the Flight, the Behemoth combines the culinary traditions of other Nature regions with its own specialties to create a truly world-class cuisine. The fusion cuisine of the Root Tunnel hawkers is a must-try, as are the rare ambrosias of the flowers that can only flourish in the Behemoth's magically-potent arms. In addition to this more "traditional" cuisine, it boasts an array of experimental foods. The Behemoth is home to many of dragonkind's greatest druids, and their work in accelerating the cause of Growth occasionally yields entirely new ingredients. Additionally, the massive amounts of Nature magic invites experimentation with dishes that empower the eater; research is underway to mix the Flight's [in]famous medicinal herbs into palatable, magically-enhanced rations. 
== Notable Dishes ==
Name 	Region 	Image/Description 	Notes
Honeypaw 	Everbloom 	More of a technique than a dish. A tart fruit is
halved, slashed, topped with honey, then broiled 	The name comes from its association with sticky-pawed hatchlings. Tart citrus is a favorite.
Glowguts 	Wilds 	A mash of bioluminescent mushrooms and insects
is roasted with herbs, crushed, and roasted again. Trail food. 	Does not actually cause guts to glow. Should be safe for general consumption.
Roasted root kebabs	Gladeveins	Chunks of onion, potato reed root, swamp squash, and succulent mushrooms are skewered, seasoned, and roasted in their own juices. 	Potato reed is a bulrush relative best known for its starchy and somewhat buttery roots. Dish is often served with fiddleheads.
Marrow raclette 	Behemoth 	A long bone is halved and fire-roasted alongside sliced, subtly herbed roots arranged to catch any drips. The top layer of marrow sloughed onto the roasted roots, then re-roasted with new roots, repeating.	Fusion of Gladeveins and Wilds cuisine. Has been described as "intensely indulgent".
== Additional notes on Nature diets ==
Perhaps unsurprisingly, Nature clans tend to be heavy tea drinkers, and embrace many definitions of "tea"--herbal teas in particular are popular, and in some clans, the drying and preparation of tea mixes is treated as a social event.
Category:Communal Traditions
Category:Nature