#Recipe Critic

[undead-knick-knack]

Please, I just wanna make ginger maple cookies 😭

[bixbiboom]

Cover reveal for the upcoming Critical Role cookbook!

Check out all the Easter eggs hidden in that art, lol

Plus a sneak preview of one of the included recipes: De Rolos’ Revenge Pasta!

De Rolos’ Revenge Pasta

For generations, the traditional dish of the de Rolos, rulers of the city of Whitestone, was a warming pasta puttanesca. Then the Briarwoods took over the city, slaughtered all but two of the de Rolos, and reigned for years of gloom and terror. After the survivors, Percy and his sister Cassandra, reclaimed Whitestone with Vox Machina's help, some old traditions were bound to evolve. Now a new dish has been added to the celebratory rotation. The topping is white, like Percy's hair, rather than the red of blood, and the pasta contains two entire heads of garlic. Partake in good health and stinky breath. Unless you're a vampire, in which case: go straight to hell, and say hi to the Briarwoods for us.

PREP TIME: 10 minutes

COOK TIME: 20 minutes

Kosher salt

1 pound / 450g dried spaghetti

½ cup / 120ml extra-virgin olive oil, plus more for serving

20 garlic cloves, thinly sliced (about ½ cup / 100g)

½ teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes

Freshly ground black pepper

1 cup / 15g finely chopped fresh parsley leaves (from about 1 small bunch)

1½ cups / 360g whole milk ricotta cheese

Bring a large pot of generously salted water to a boil over high heat. Add the spaghetti and cook according to the package instructions, 9 to 12 minutes. Drain in a colander.

Heat the olive oil in the now-empty pot over medium heat. Add the garlic and red pepper flakes and cook, stirring often, until the garlic is very fragrant and soft, 2½ to 3½ minutes. Remove the pot from the heat and add the cooked spaghetti, 1 teaspoon of salt, ½ teaspoon of black pepper, and the parsley. Toss the pasta to evenly coat it with the infused oil.

Transfer the pasta onto serving plates and top each portion with a generous dollop of ricotta cheese. Drizzle with olive oil and finish with additional black pepper.

[broodygaming]

My friend got me the Exquisite Exandria cookbook and I got it in the mail yesterday and found this REDACTED RECIPE 😂😂

[aeons-behind]

I need to know what goes in Byroden pie that took Orym from never having eaten pie in his life to buying a whole apple pie just for himself before an actual war meeting

[thenixkat]

It's still just wild to me that between

-> the setting (fantasy medieval-ish europe-y place where it's established that sometimes folks don't get to eat between lack of funds and bad harvests)

-> the worldbuilding (stuff like heavier adventurers likely being more skilled/too skinny means risking being unable to be revived)

-> and the themes (having a healthy relationship with food)

you would think that Dungeon Meshi would actually be kinda fat positive. But no. There's an undercurrent of fatphobia that runs through it that feels so jarring that once you notice it it's hard to stop seeing it.

And it's not just the two really blatant places that it happens in the manga, like characters deciding to insult the only fat noble/rich person in the setting on their weight (which never gets counterbalanced by any character like complimenting a fat character on their figure in the whole manga) or our main characters going 'oh no he might get fat' about the hero gaining what is effectively a disorder (that could very easily kill him due to accidental self inflicted injuries due to no longer being able to feel certain physical sensations) from the defeating the biggest bad in the setting.

But also the smaller stuff like the gag about Izutsumi being shocked to see the fat-looking succubi after it was drilled into her head that the things are mindbreakingly hot. (Hmmm)

Or how you see folks point at characters like Nemari, Dia, Senshi (and Leed) as examples of positive fat rep but like. If you actually pay attention to like the examples of fat dwarves in the extras or in a few minor characters, what they look like if they were turned into tallmen (more or less if they were built like real world humans), you'd notice that they aren't fat at all. They're just muscular and not dehydrated, much like how Laios isn't fat just built and not starved.

Or even looking at like Leed and Zon (named and important) compared to the unnamed background orcs after the artist changed their orc design by the second time orcs show up in the story. And you just notice how much thinner Leed and Zon are compared to every other orc in a scene.

(And of course, the extras that reveal that orcs and dwarves actually have a lot less body fat than it looks like they have b/c they are *literally just big-boned*. They are leaner than a irl human would be at their height and girth due to literally having thicker and broader skeletons.)

Or the whole thing where apparently fat elves just... don't exist. Not even fat civilian elves or fat adventurer elves. Like we know that there's fat half-foots even though none of the half-foot major characters are fat b/c being able to do their job in a dungeon means they have to be as light as they can to not set off traps. but we at least see some thicker half-foots. But elves? Apparently only come in noodle.

[afinickyguide]

episode 140: barovian garlic bread (nat 1 roll accompaniment) 🧄🍞✨

[galedekarios]

ngl my eyes are rolling out of my head when i see ppl claim gale is stable enough to take care of children.

never mind that nothing he says indicates at all that he even wants them in the first place.

unlike shadowheart, for example. unlike wyll or lae'zel, who have entire adoption subplots in the epilogue.

this is the man who you had to talk down from becoming a god five minutes ago because of his profound loss of faith and feeling left so adrift shook him so deeply and to his very core that he's not even in a secure place in his relationship with the protag yet.

i also don't understand what it is with gale in particular that has people like nah, i'm just going to ignore and chalk it up to insecurity that he doesn't think he would be father material.

where did that come from?

personally, i see it more as him establishing his boundaries in a relationship - since that was his assumption what the conversation would be about in the first place when the player initiates it about opening their relationship up.

also again, i feel like it needs pointing out, but there's more to parenthood than being able to cook or knit.

[disasterpurplebois]

“I think the smartest thing to do in this situation is to just eliminate the offender,” Essek said as he lifted his mug to take a sip. The steam fogged up his glasses for a moment before clearing up and giving Essek a view of the woman across from him.

Yasha shook her head, her braids and beads clanking softly. “But what if I just chop the heads off? Then I can put them on display.” She pushed the tray of cookies towards Essek. “Try these, I just got the new recipe from Martina.”

Essek reached a hand out and plucked a still-warm cookie from the top of the pile. “Alas, no, cutting off the heads won’t kill them, their roots go deep. I’m sorry, Yasha, but you’ll have to rip them up if you want to protect your tomatoes.”

Yasha sighed. “I suppose I can dig them up and plant them somewhere else in the garden, away from the vegetables.” She glanced across the kitchen table and out into the back garden at the offending plants.

Essek noted that the garden was flourishing, much better than his own. He tried to employ the tips Yasha gave him but he found that growing vegetables required much more work than the simple picturesque flowers he planted at Caleb’s cottage.

“Do you want to take some more green bean plants when you—” Yasha started to say. Her voice was cut off by the sound of the front door slamming open and heavy footfalls entering the house. Essek heard Beauregard grunt a question to which Yasha answered, “in the kitchen, babe.”

Beauregard rounded the corner, clad in her blue and gray Expositor robes. She was clutching a stack of notebooks and looked a little wild-eyed when she entered the kitchen. She dropped a quick kiss to the crown of Yasha’s head before turning to Essek.

“Yo, Hot Boi, you gotta get home. Caleb got a message from that druid lady in Tal’dorei and it sounds like he needs you for something. I have to review these notes from what we found the Archive today. We’re on to something, there’s definitely a connection to Molaesmyr.” The Expositor kicked out another chair at the kitchen table and plopped down, already flipping open one of the notebooks and tapping her chin. Yasha got up and set another cup of tea down at Beau’s elbow before walking Essek out to the front door. She pressed a basket of green beans into Essek’s arms and waved at him from the doorway.

“I put Martina’s cookie recipe in the bottom, if you want to try it for yourself.”

Essek waved back to her and hurried away down the street, his mind already swirling with the possibilities of what Keyleth of the Air Ashari might want with him. Something to do with another Beacon? More about that echo backpack being used by the Exultant Thule? Did she have a location on Ludinus? Oh, how his mind raced with the unending potential.

He rushed down the busy streets, reminding himself several times that Caleb would have messaged if it were life-threatening. But, then, Essek was still a little shaken up by the recent events with Trent Ikithon, and he hadn’t even been present for the encounter. Maybe Caleb was downplaying it? Although Beau hasn’t seemed that worried about it, just anxious to find more information about how to take down Ludinus. It probably wasn’t worth wasting a teleport spell to get home faster.

In eight minutes flat, Essek was rushing up the little path in front of the cottage he and Caleb called home. He was breathing hard, having pushed himself to go faster than his usual. When he pushed open the front door he found Caleb pacing in front of the couch.

Caleb’s crystal blue eyes jumped up to meet his upon his entrance and Essek quickly closed the door before closing the distance between them. Caleb’s large, warm hands grasped his own and he intoned, “Schatz, I need you to speak with Astrid.”

[sparring-spirals]

hopefully chucking random items into your cookpot and then the cheer that went up around the table at the properly cooked meal sound... thats it!!!!!! thats the feeling!!!

[dare-to-dm]

I don't enjoy cooking, but I do love eating home cooked meals and also doing nice things for people. So when I have the energy, I'll make a meal to share with someone as an act of love.

When I did this for my family, it would inevitably result in getting a bunch of unsolicited advice on how I could have done it better. As a result, I don't cook for them anymore.

I cook for my friends and they only say nice nice things. So I want to cook for them more. It's a virtuous cycle.

[all-this-panic-still-no-disco]

why does everyone on tumblr hate gbbo… i get paul is a dick but that’s what makes it so funny…

[bixbiboom]

Candela Obscura Libations for the Circle of Needle and Thread!

[lord-squiggletits]

NGL I think one of my least favorite "gotchas" that I see/get while critiquing stories is "so how would you fix it? oh so you don't have an idea of how to rewrite the story to make it better? oh so basically you're just complaining that you don't like it and don't have actual critique."

Buddy.

Sometimes the reason I don't have a "solution" to how the author should've rewritten their story to be better, is because I'm not privy to the author's thought process, what their alternate story ideas were, what they talked about with their editor, what they might've been forced to do by deadlines, or even what they might've thought they were writing towards at first but then later changed the trajectory of their story to be about something else.

It's all well and good for me to say something like, idk, "I think Character A should've gotten more narrative focus because their story could have helped fix XYZ Plot Hole," but it could very well be that the author never intended for Character A to be a prominent character (just a secondary or tertiary character). Maybe using Character A to solve one Plot Hole would've gone against the writer's plans because then it would open up a different plot hole for something else they had planned later in the story. If it's an ongoing story, maybe something I see as a "plot hole" is actually a deliberate mystery that the creator left open to write about later-- or maybe the plot hole is because there was a deadline crunch and the author had to drop a certain character/plot point/etc because they couldn't fit it into the story any more. Maybe having Character A be a more prominent part of the story is just based on MY personal tastes and what I would want to write in MY version of the story, but completely clashes with the characters/conflicts the author wanted to focus on.

Because yes, there are some story critiques that are as simple as "part A doesn't make sense, you could just fix it by doing B", but there are also some story critiques where suggesting a viable "solution" would require BEING the author or someone involved in the production of the story to understand what limitations or plans were involved in the selection of that flawed plot point. There are also some story critiques where even if there is a "problem" and my critique offers a "solution," there could be another "solution" or even dozens that do just as good of a job fixing the issue, but involve vastly different characters, plot ideas, so on and so forth.

Being a good critic isn't (just) about going "the story would've been better if X happened" because the story is ultimately in control of the author and their vision, and without knowing what the author's vision was (something that you almost exclusively know if you're 1. the author or 2. their beta reader), it's impossible to definitively say "this plot point should've been cut/[completely different thing] should've happened instead" because THAT is the point at which you're complaining, not critiquing. I would argue that in some cases, trying to "fix" a story yourself actually makes your critique worse, not better, because it ends up being a case of you simply imposing your artistic vision over the author's to say "I think it would've been better this way."

At least if you just say "this part of the story was flawed because XYZ" without saying "it should have been ABC instead", then you're stating your grievances with the story without being presumptuous enough to assume that YOUR version of the story would fit the author's original vision, or the constraints they were working under, or the other versions of the story that they were debating over at the time before ultimately settling on one version (even if flawed).

There's a point at which "this plot is flawed, that should've happened instead" is just fix-it fan fiction and not actual critique that could help the writer write their story in a way that fits their vision.

[villainihavedonethymotheronao3]

One thing I love about Ashton and Fearne is that Ashton very aggressively projects onto her all the things they want to be; blasé, confident, effortlessly loved, capable of shaking off anything. They see the best, brightest parts of her but it's an admiration that often obscures her real fears and sensitivities! She's not just the impulsive, flirty fae, she's really scared for her friends. She's a sheltered young woman who's never truly lost someone they loved before. Ashton connects instinctively with her whimsy, her need for challenge, the bouts of spite, the urge to shake things up, the "level of crazy that I'm kind of into" but he can't grasp the degree to which she'd be messed up if he died in front of her. Coming off of so many years of nihilistic self-pity, it's hard to recognize that your actions impact other people, and I think part of the reason they wanted Fearne is because they thought that exploding in front of her wouldn't be as bad as doing so in front of the others. Just take his stuff, it's fine!

(It's not fine.)

[mildmayfoxe]

was just violently confronted with the memory of being at a (white) friend's house & being offered peanut noodles and being like "oh sure thanks :)" and then being presented with a pyrex of spaghetti with the barest anemic suggestion of peanut sauce. no spice. no citrus. no salt. i ate some and she was like "do you want more i made so much" and i was like "no 👍"

[afinickyguide]

episode 141: pocket bacon 🥓🍽️💕