#ff popcorn

None of my food souls will be able to escape the potatoes.

I wanted to draw my other restaurant staff but I barely had any free time today :< Still, I managed to draw Popcorn (in my favourite skin of his, I’m so glad I got that)! I drew/inked this traditionally for once, and it confirmed that I am definitely more comfortable drawing traditionally and then colouring digitally. How do people draw digitally it’s so uncomfortable .-.

Margarita: The margarita is a popular Mexican and American drink, the Daisy (margarita is Spanish for "daisy"), remade with tequila instead of brandy. This drink became popular during Prohibition as people drifted over the U.S./Mexico border for alcohol. There are many creation stories for the margarita although none of them can be proven for sure, partially because the drink may have been invented in multiple places around the same time period do to its simple concept and appeal.

In a classic margarita, you can expect to find tequila, orange liqueur, and lime juice often served with salt on the rim of the glass. It can be served in many glasses although the most traditional would be the eponymous margarita glass. There are many variations on this recipe including things like flavored tequilas, different liqueurs, or even freezing and blending the margarita into a slush. Cornbread: Native Americans had been using ground maize as food for thousands of years prior to the arrival of Europeans. Corn, as we know it today, was actually the English word for any grain although maize was the one that retained the general term in modern times.

Native Americans, specifically the Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, and Creek tribes gave recipes for maize dishes to the southern colonists and adapted as it became a southern staple food. there are many types of cornbread these days, baked, fried, pone, it’s an incredibly versatile recipe. Pozole, otherwise known as Hominy, which is swelled and softened kernels of maize can also be used in cornbread instead of cornmeal, as well as many other traditional dishes native to the Americas. Brownie: The brownie is a sheet cookie developed in the United States in the late 1800s. Originally it was most likely meant to be a more convenient type of cake developed by the upper class’s chefs. While this is a more European styled use for chocolate, recipes have been developed using more traditional means, such as the addition of chile, the removal of dairy and processed sugars, and/or using different cooking methods.

Turkey: Turkey meat has been eaten by indigenous people from Mexico, Central America, and the southern tier of the United States since before our records of those regions. Turkeys were once so abundant in the wild that they were eaten throughout the year, the food considered commonplace. Turkey with mole sauce is regarded as Mexico's national dish.

Turkeys were domesticated in ancient Mexico, for food and/or for their cultural and symbolic significance. The Aztecs, for example, had a name for the turkey, wueh-xōlō-tl (guajolote in Spanish), a word still used in modern Mexico in addition to the general term pavo. There’s plenty of evidence that Mayans and other Native American groups had been domesticating turkeys over a very long time as well.

The character in-game has many Eurasian elements despite this and I am not actually sure why, from his clothing to the apple in his basic art. It would be nice to see a redesign more faithful to Turkey’s roots but I did not have the time or funds to arrange for that for this project.

Popcorn: Popcorn is a way of processing maize that predates many if not all other forms, an archeological find known as Bat Cave finding samples of it that have been dated back to about 5,600 years ago. 

Popcorn, or momochitl, seems to have been both a religious element (art and accounts from conquistadors describing it being used for ceremonial headdresses, ornaments, components, and necklaces) and as a staple food. Zapotec, pre-Inca Peruvian, Pueblo, and Iroquois native Americans were all documented to have uses and recipes for and with popcorn, and it speculated that even more groups of people had access to it and simply didn’t record it since it was such a normal food for them. 

Popcorn would be given as a token of goodwill during peace negotiations and settlers were taught how to make it, it was almost exclusively American food since it would not keep during overseas trips. During the Great Depression, it became more popular in America as a snack food thanks to its low cost and has maintained that reputation.

 Popcorn’s in-game design reflects the more modern fanciful decoration and uses, due to the color of popcorn, the sheer range, and mostly the fact that the in-game Popcorn could just be albino I chose not to try to adjust his design to be more regionally accurate. Pudding: Pudding, more specifically Flan as I believe the game’s character is designed after, is a dish brought to the Americas by Europeans. However, Flan has become an incredibly popular dish especially in Central and South America, to the extent that there are varieties specific to regions. This is possibly reflected in part by the character’s bolo tie. 

While Flan is not a dish native to the Americas it has been raised to new levels and enjoyed greatly by the people so he was allowed to stay. Honorable mentions -