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starsmuserainbow · 9 months

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Headcanon Time - Tamaranean Food

You might still know this from when this blog was still only Star, but here's a repost because I wanna have this stuff anew for my "new" multi-main!

This post, as you might have guessed from the title, is about tamaranean food!

Find the text, illustrated in parts too, below the cut!

Maybe I should add, some of these might be a bit strange (or appalling - but that sounds too harsh) to imagine, so be aware that the tamaranean culture is different and has its own ways about stuff so this can be very different from what we know in parts.

So, to start things off, something general. Compared to earthen food, tamaranean dishes are a lot stronger in flavour, whichever direction they go into. Sweet food is sweeter, sour food more sour, and so on. This isn’t even because of them artificially enhancing their food, but their plants and eaten animals simply had such strong tastes and as such the people are used and accustomed to strong flavors. However, as multiple ingredients are usually mixed together, the flavours often combine and that makes it a bit easier for the earthen tastebuds to accept the strong flavours. Next up, I will present some food, and explain about it. Partly with images, partly just a description, but I’ll do my best to give you some information here.

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For the beginning, something easy, something already seen, named, and even the taste having been described in the cartoon.

(If you return the stare of the tamaranean face behind the food, you have to try it. The food, not the face.)

This is Glorg, a tamaranean dessert. It tastes, to quote the first human that enjoyed the taste, “like sushi mixed with ice cream”. The green jelly-like mass that you see comes from a berry called Hraki. This mass is, despite its jelly-like look and behaviour when shaken, more like ice-cream in texture, and has a lime or lemon-like flavour. Now you can probably guess where the sushi-like taste comes from. What you see wobbling around in the green fluid are fungi, or mushrooms if you prefer. Fascinatingly enough, they taste very similar to sushi without having ever been more than a plant. These fungi are called the Glooz, and they are sustainable of many different climates so luckily it was very easy for Starfire to start growing them in her new home on earth.

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Next up, another sweet dish, though it is more commonly used as a main dish than as a dessert on Tamaran.

This is Clurblopf. [[Yes, I know, in ‘The Lost Episode’ Starfire calls this ‘Glorg Supreme’, but I don’t accept that as it doesn’t make any sense given the Glorg above. So this is in fact not Glorg, but Clurblopf, for me.]] It is like a thick pudding, but with something to chew on in it as well. The pudding resembles chemical strawberry a lot (since its most important ingredient are the Zorkaberries which taste similar to chemical strawberry as well), and the pieces inside taste like chicken-meat. It is usually served warm, and eaten from bowls with a spoon (so basically like pudding in that regard).

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You most likely know this from the cartoon already, as well (if you know the cartoon good enough that is).

Here, you see the pudding of sadness, though the name might be a little irritating. It is more like a stiff kind of mashed potatoes, and for the taste… you know of Wasabi? Take that, but also add a bit of a ginger-flavour and a slight burnt taste as well. That’s how it tastes. (Or, if you prefer the way a certain green Titan described it, ‘What is that? Cream of toenails?’) It is a snack, and as such usually taken when one feels like doing so, without any specific order or other meals preceding or following. As the name says, it is commonly taken when the tamaranean feels sad, as its taste presumably helps to burst the sadness away.

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There is a combination of different tamaranean berries that created a mash of sorts (similar to apple purree), it creates a pink mass similar to the one Clurblopf is, with the differences that this doesn’t have any pieces to chew on inside, and it’s also more a dessert or snack than an actual meal.

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This, before it’s processed to be a main dish, is a tamaranean creature with some similarities to a snake. The vork, as these beings are called, ‘slide’ over the ground similar to snakes, however it is not their bite that you need to be careful of, but a scratching with the parts that we might call fins can be very dangerous very quickly. The color of the fins represent if they are dangerous; when they are still alive and a threat, their fins have a dark purple color instead of this green you see in above picture, which is what they look like when ‘empty’. Another difference to a snake is that this creature does not have a tongue. The vork has 4 eyes on its head, they are entirely black with pink pupils, and 2 close to the other end, so it is very hard to surprise a vork or attempt to kill it before it gets you. If split in half, both halfs are still very much alive and will move faster than before, usually in an attempt to get their attacker. I won’t be going into more detail here as this is a food - and not creature - headcanon, so to get back to the actual topic: They taste surprisingly sweet, somewhat reminding of marzipan, once the venom has been professionally removed and cleared out of their system.

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What you see here is called Gah’ky. Or rather, the being is, before it is processed. It shares similarities to a turkey in looks now, but the actual being had 4 wings (which is still visible here) and the head is located between what we might recognize as legs. The meat is rather tough and hard to actually chew through, and its taste is a little reminding of flour; and the ‘bones’ are hard but with enough force they are chewable, ‘crispy’, and taste very sugary sweet. This is usually eaten as a ‘clearing’ of the tastebuds, so it goes before other food as it doesn’t have that much flavour in any direction and so is rather boring in taste for a tamaranean.

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These are Maco, another type of fruit from Tamaran. Bigger than a berry, it has about the size of an apple or similar earthen fruits. The brown stripe that every Maco has is usually used as the line where the fruit is to be split in two parts. The inside looks similar to a brown-colored (and already chewed) bubblegum. It is gooey and sticky, and poisonous - at least for tamaraneans. But it has other advantages that allow it to be used in the building of houses and the likes, as long as it is put aside to later deliver it to someone that can use it, and not simply thrown away as it happens many times. The ‘shell’ of the fruit is similar to wafer in texture, and has a taste that’s somewhat reminding of hazelnut. It’s a snack.

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The Cangoor is a plant that every now and then erupts and ‘spit’ out the fluid from its inside similar to a volcano - when the fluid lands on the ground it turns into new cangoor-plants. The pieces that hang outside are fruits, taken usually by grabbing to the black ‘grip’ they have and forcibly pulled off of the plant. They taste somewhat fresh, like cream cheese, but the fluid inside the cylinder-like middle of the plant has a taste reminiscent of very mature/strong cheese, and the outside pieces are commonly dipped into the fluid before eating it. Depending on the amount of people eating from one of these plants, it can be used as a main dish or as a snack.

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Here you see Cangki, which shares similarities to cake in look and texture, it’s seen as a dessert, and uses Cangoor-fruits along with the fluid of the Hraki. It is a sour-ish taste combined with cheese-flavour The Cangki is split into slices, and shared similar to cake (unless it’s one of these big buffet-like tables because when there is much to offer there is no sharing and rather a ‘fighting’ about getting what you want - which is what happened in the scene in ‘Betrothed’ by the way, but that’s not the point here so I won’t elaborate further - and once a slice is removed, the rest of the ‘cake’ tends to fall in and become a green mass with the Cangoor-fruits inside it; unless the one giving out the slices is quick enough to separate all the slices immediately - as once in smaller pieces, it sticks with its previous ‘cake’-shape.

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This is Wulemm, usually taken as a snack in between the courses, or as a snack simply between meals. It has a strong sourness when first taken in the mouth, but when the mass begins to soften up the taste becomes more sweet, though the actual taste depends on the fruits that had been used for creating this mash. It can be made of anything that is fruit-like, and is first mashed and then processed to become harder and almost fruit-like again.

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This is Alch, a plant that is only found in caves. It is a snack that is only taken in very small sizes, as it is incredibly sour even for the tamaranean tastes. The red pieces are very hot in temperature and taste no matter the temperature of their surroundings. To take a piece from it you grab into the ‘ball’ of the remaining plant that still lies in the bowl, and with the other hand grab one of the hanging pieces and pull on it, eventually tearing up your piece. No matter how big the slice you tore off, putting it back isn’t allowed, so you are to eat it or have a friend that is willing to take it from you.

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This creature (before being made into food) is called Rr’hul. It’s a jellyfish-like creature that can fly, and used to hide in trees and drop onto its unexpecting prey. Now that there is almost no flora left on Tamaran the Rr'hul don’t have many hiding spots anymore and are easier to kill, but they are still very dangerous if they happen to approach you unnoticedly. Its tentacles are a snack, but as a whole thing it’s eaten as a main dish. It tastes bitter, with a hint of something that tastes close to caramel; and the eyes are of the consistency of bubblegum and have a very very spicy flavour.

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These are Glorka Roaches. As Starfire mentioned in the cartoon, as food they are ‘crunchy on the outside, yet runny on the inside’. They have a rather burnt taste, though the insides are fluid and like a syrup with a slight coffee-taste. They are a main dish.

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Above pictured Ronel are a snack. They look and feel like stone, and are as strong too, but a tamaranean enjoys chewing it to pieces nonetheless. Behind the rock-y shell, there’s a blue dough-like mass. The things you see sticking out is where the blue mass didn’t fully stay inside of the snack and poured out, it’s then hardening (not as much as the actual Ronel though, more like pretzel sticks in hardness) and turning black. The hard shell doesn’t taste any different from the inside, it doesn’t have much taste in itself but during the processing the taste from inside has spread to the shell too. It tastes very sweet for just a moment, and then suddenly turns into a very hot spicy taste.

Ronel is a thing many tamaraneans like to take with them when going on a longer travel, both in and out of the planet. Usually, it's taken along with the ‘sticks’ broken off of it for easier storing. It’s a hard thing, can’t be easily broken or mashed or otherwise ruined while carried, and most tamaraneans like the taste.

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Looking like burnt (and slightly mis-shaped) cookies, Kiw’sa are a tamaranean dessert. They are soft in texture, filled with a wobbly green mass, usually served while heatened (meaning very very very very hot as otherwise a tamaranean wouldn’t notice it), and have a somewhat sour taste, though not as strong as some other of the dishes I mentioned.

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These two dishes both fall under the name of Mef, simply the ingredients vary. This is a dessert that is usually eaten by grabbing one of the black pieces on the outside, and using it like a shovel to take some of the (red/green, in these cases) stuff from the inside along with it. The black pieces have similar texture to waffles but taste bitter, and the taste of the softer stuff on the inside varies by ingredients. In these two examples, the red one tastes somewhat salty with a bit of sweetness, and the taste of the darker-green one is reminding of carrots.

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This main dish is called Brinb. The head in the center is from the creature that the slices come from, but it is basically only decoration, as only the slices that are placed around it are for eating. Surprising for anyone that expects a meat-like-taste: This tastes like pure sugar in slice-shape. And the pink parts of the slices are actually behaving like melted cheese as in the ‘pulling’ when one bites off one piece.

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Another common dish is the Bli’ip. It’s basically, about the size of a ball as we know it, like say soccer ball or basketball-ball (can I just say basketball? I think that works?), a ball of dough. The shell is a little crunchy, but not more than like a pizza is on the “edges”. The ball is completely of dough (which is soft to eat, like not-fully-finished pizzadough, to compare it to pizza again), with minor spots of juice or sauce in sometimes, and most of the dough has taken in the flavor or whichever other ingredients the creator had chosen to add in. There are different variants of tastes, some sweet, some spicy or bitter or just bland, but usually they’re purposely all made to look similar on the outside. Often, eating this dish is a bit of a contest for the present tamaraneans - it’s a game of getting your hands on the ball that you want and taking a bite (or more) before someone else takes it from you again.

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What you see here is called the Zierr. It’s not quite defined if it’s a plant or a creature, and it is still alive when placed on the table. Eating from it is almost like a game for tamaraneans, as it is commonly done by multiple people each grabbing one of the tentacle-like ends and pulling. If you get too close to the middle-part while going in to grab, the Zierr will spit a fluid at you that isn’t dangerous but it leaves behind a bright orange glow for a few days on the spots it hit. When all parts are pulled at, eventually the pieces are separated from the then collapsing middle and these tentacles-like pieces can be eaten. Sometimes, when it’s actually done as a game, the lengths of the torn off pieces are compared and the one that pulled off the longest one is deemed the winner of the game and is the one that may then drink the fluid that left the Zierr after it’s been pulled apart. The tentacle-pieces taste dry and sour, and the fluid has a sweet, in some ways plum-like taste. This is usually taken as side-dish, as one of these tentacle pieces is definitely not enough to make a tamaranean full.

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This fish-resembling creature is called Karsh. It’s a being that looks similar to some earthen fish on first glance, but it walks on its tail and lives on land. The green slices you see there are from a fruit, they taste somewhat like pineapple and for the tamaranean that is a fit to the tomato-like taste of the Karsh. The Karsh is filled with these fruit-slices, and it cut into slices to then share it with everyone that wants a piece. The head remains though, only very few tamaraneans enjoy eating that. Oh, and the pink/brown things you see lying on the plate? That’s what made the Karsh’s tail before it was processed. It tastes a bit like oranges but mostly rather bland, and is a rather tough material to chew through. It’s a main dish.

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And for the final piece in this collection, this is Jellorel. It grows on trees, and once ripe these soft and flexible rounded slices fall down. They are sweet with a slight bitterness, and the pink pieces are more like a fluid that can leak out once you’ve bitten into it. It depends on the amount of Jellorel offered, what kind of dish it is. Usually it is seen as a dessert or snack, but if enough has been gathered it can also be enjoyed as a main dish.

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So! You are now knowing of a few different foods on Tamaran. Please remember that the taste-comparisons I mentioned are only to give you an idea of what it tastes like, most are still only somewhat resembling the tastes I mentioned as it is a different culture and world after all.

I don’t have anything else I can add to this, so this is the end of today’s headcanon-post!

#✫ Out of Characters ✫ | OOC #✫ It is the way of our people. ✫ | Tamaran Headcanons

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