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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   32052 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 31, 2022

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Any fans of the Great British Bake Off here? I think this season has been a case study in the mechanisms by which wokeness latches on and does its best to ruin things. I'm so sick of people talking about how offensive Mexican week was. If you ask me, I really have no idea what was so offensive about it. Acknowledging that Mexican culture and food exists is not the same as being racist towards Mexicans. Also, since when are Mexicans even considered to be oppressed, and worthy of people getting outraged over? Have Mexicans historically been oppressed, especially by the British?

Following Mexican week, now, I guess the outlets all saw that claiming offense at GBBO was a great way to get more views, because every week I see at least one article about how viewers were "shocked and outaged" at the latest episode of Bake Off. Often, these are related to the fact that several contestants this season aren't native to Great Britain and are not being handled sensitively enough with regards to the recipes they do and their ability to follow the instructions in the technical challenges.

Most Mexican food is very obscure in the UK. US racial politics surrounding Mexico are even more obscure, especially with the standard audience for the Great British Bake Off being 50-something Brits watching TV in the evening, not Blue Tribe Americans. Even the idea of Hispanic as a distinct race will confuse the median (not terminally online) person on this side of the pond. It's an Americanism. Ask about it, and expect a response somewhere between "Huh? Isn't that something in America?" and "What do you mean Spanish people aren't white?"

My take as an American: Given that the Spanish were once the hated rivals of the British, you're telling me your civilization never kept receipts/tabs on what the Spanish did in the New World? Nothing like, "ah, yes, the Mestizos, the offspring of those Catholic fools who couldn't hold together an empire"?

My wife is Mexican and a big fan of GBBO. She isn't woke and wasn't offended by that episode per se, but we were both pretty disappointed at how phoned-in it seemed to be. Mexico has a huge variety of interesting baked goods, yet they chose a taco as the technical challenge? It's an extreme stretch to call that baking, and it felt like they were just too lazy to google "popular baked goods of Mexico."

Yeah, the taco thing was BS.

With that episode, I was just left wondering how much of a presence Mexican food and culture has in the UK. I feel like this episode would have made much more sense in the US.

They did tacos? I figured out how to make tacos in like 10 minutes, sounds boring.

were both pretty disappointed at how phoned-in it seemed to be. Mexico has a huge variety of interesting baked goods, yet they chose a taco as the technical challenge? It's an extreme stretch to call that baking, and it felt like they were just too lazy to google "popular baked goods of Mexico."

This seems unfair to GBBO. Sure, the show's producers could have googled "obscure Zapotec cuisine no-one except you and your Mexican wife recognises", but then the median viewer's going to be muttering at her TV something along the lines of "Oi wot's all this shite made outta rattlesnake meat, I 'fort it's Mexican week? Where's the bloody tacos?"

GBBO's not an educational Attenborough documentary, it's not supposed to teach anyone anything, and therefore their Mexican food is REQUIRED to be tacos because that's the only Mexican food that British people already know of.

It's be like having French cuisine week and no garlic snails. It's just not credible without them!

If escargot was the technical challenge in "French Week" of the GBBO, I'm pretty sure everyone would call BS since it's a baking show not a cooking show.

They didn't need to do some obscure baked good, it could have been something like conchas which are widely available in grocery stores in US border states.

Or maybe some Pan de Muerto. They could even have had fun decorating it different ways. Lots of varieties of pan dulce they could have picked.

I do understand what you're saying. But I do think there were a lot of other better options than taco.

Putting together guac and a steak marinade really should have been trivial for almost anyone. It had very little to do with baking - even doing a nice Torta vs a Taco would have been an improvement IMO.

What kind of steak marinade would you make? I know it's a goofy question but I just bought a steak and was thinking about how to cook it when I got distracted by the motte, but Mexican style steak and guac sounds perfect.

I am a carne asada guy, so lime juice with a little orange, garlic, cilantro, and Chiles. Salt/oil/couple drops of soy as well.

Oh yeah that sounds perfect (aside from the cilantro, but that's a me thing), thanks mate!

If I don't know what a Torta is, then your average Britisher definitely doesn't.

It's a taco sandwich... I didn't think they were that rare. And technicals frequently feature rare items IMO.

I've never heard of 50% of the stuff they make on GBBO.

FYI a torta is just a Mexican sandwich served on a sweet baguette-like roll. Basically a taco on bread. At least that would have required some actual baking.

but then the median viewer's going to be muttering at her TV something along the lines of "Oi wot's all this shite made outta rattlesnake meat, I 'fort it's Mexican week? Where's the bloody tacos?"

I really don't know what GBBO viewership demographics are like in the UK. However, the way you phrased and spelled your imaginary median viewer's quote implies that they would be lower class British, the equivalent of a southern/hick/redneck accent in the US. And as a American fan of The Great British Baking Show, I can confidently say that the American fanbase is solidly Blue Tribe, educated, urban, PMC, etc. And I certainly don't react that way ("Yo, I thought this was supposed to be British, where's the steak and kidney pie?") whenever they pull out some obscure European cake or bread or pudding I've never heard of for a technical challenge. I Google it and go "huh, that's interesting". I agree that GBBO/S doesn't have a requirement to teach anybody anything, but one of the reasons I do enjoy it is the opportunity to learn about baked goods I'm unfamiliar with.

For what it's worth, the only commentary I've seen on Mexican week online was a bunch of TikTok videos making fun of Brits inability to pronounce "avocado" and "guacamole".

And as a American fan of The Great British Baking Show, I can confidently say that the American fanbase is solidly Blue Tribe, educated, urban, PMC, etc.

Well if that's your prior then I can see how it would lead you into thinking that British GBBO's viewers could indeed cognitively handle "Zapotec rattlesnake steak garnished with cranberry jus to evoke heart-blood of a Flower War sacrifice to Huitzilopotchli".

My prior is extremely different: that the only people who watch television in the UK are Red Tribe cockneys and everyone else is out grouse-shooting.

I do find it quite fascinating how the class-status-marker associations of outdoor sports like fishing and hunting, and rural living in general, are completely reversed in the UK compared to the USA.

I mean, just look at how different these two very similarly-named magazines are:

Country Life - UK-based lifestyle magazine for people who can afford two million pounds for a manor house, and vacation in the Maldives and Seychelles.

Country Living - USA-based lifestyle magazine for fans of Kelly Clarkson and decorating one's porch with gourds in the fall.

Nobody is actually offended. The public displays of anger are a way to put an organization on the back foot, and the rule "you can only use ethnically/sexually correct personnel" (with the exception of whites of course) is a way to get party members in.

Get “party members” into what, in this case? The contestants? The judges? I don’t even see a proposed remedy, just people who want to complain.

This also implies a level of conspiracy among the plaintiffs that I find unrealistic. I think you’re too credulous of anything that could potentially support an anti-white agenda.

EDIT: yes, I know that DEI consultants are a thing. I hadn’t seen examples of requests for such political spoils, so I figured the backlash was performative. I have since found quotes specifically calling for Mexican judges and consultants, so...objection retracted.

Sometimes you ask these questions and I can't tell if you're taking the piss or just suddenly got amnesia about the last 2-6 years.

I know what a DEI consultant is. Not trolling either. All the examples i was seeing were either cringing at the humor or mad about the food, with no requests for DEI compliance officers.

A little more googling found an actual example, though, so I’ll concede.

The claim "only Mexicans are allowed to make Mexican food" means that anyone who wants to make Mexican food commercially has to use Mexicans and can't use whites. Across all domains where cultural appropriation can be alleged, the replacement of whites with non-whites (who owe their position to leftist politics) is essentially adding party members.

conspiracy among the plaintiffs that I find unrealistic

Those who buy the cultural appropriation thing at face value would also make the claim that white people have no culture to justify the exception to the rule. So at best we have plaintiffs conspiring against whites for purely cultural/ethnic reasons, at worst they are politically motivated. I think it's fair to say that the specific rules of USA progressive leftism are always self-reinforcing i.e. they have the effect of replacing non-progressives with progressives inside organizations.

Get “party members” into what, in this case? The contestants? The judges?

The production team and management. Obviously the Great British Bakeoff will need to hire one or a dozen DEI consultants to help ensure their show is inclusive and represents the diverse world we live in today, and such terrible racism and white supremacy doesn't seep into the show again.

Have there been calls for that? The criticisms quoted elsewhere are more performative outrage than requests for concessions.

Edit: yeah, surprisingly close to word for word. Sigh.

Get “party members” into what, in this case?

Consultant role. Not everyone involved in the show works in-front of the camera.

anti-white

Not anti-white, this the UK with plenty of "whites" which consider themselves outside of the legacy majority ethnicity (Poles, for instance), anti-British or anti-English.

My mother and sister are religious fans. We’re also Texans. I’ll have to ask.

Costuming and cringeworthy jokes are sort of par for the course, as far as I can tell. The hosts’ ability to maintain a straight face is the only way it’s tolerable. I find it unlikely that this is somehow worse, so I’m inclined to call it manufactured outrage.

since when are Mexicans oppressed

Uh...there is definitely a long-standing perception that Mexicans are an underclass. From the American side it’s more about exploitation than historical oppression. This is one of the ways that criticisms of a “progressive hierarchy” miss the mark, by giving too much credence to the historical justification. But I’d need more time to flesh that out.

I think major confounding factor there would be that Texans, for obvious historical reasons, have far more familiarity with Mexican cuisine than British people. A Texan seeing mole poblano or horchata flavored flan or concha bread on Mexican week has at least heard of those things and thinks of them as stereotypically Mexican, even if they don’t know that much about them. A British person would see an episode about baking concha bread and go ‘I thought this was supposed to be mexican?’, a Texan would go ‘oh, must be Mexican week.’

I don't watch cooking shows and haven't seen the episode, but looking at Twitter, there seems to be people offended at mispronunciation of Spanish-language food names (a trifling complaint - why should Spanish-language words even be pronounced in a Spanish way when speaking English? It's a different language!), some anger at stereotyping (maybe valid?) and just sheer anger at food being done the wrong way.

Coming from a country with a notoriously bland cuisine (people still remember when Silvio Berlusconi appeared to have prevented the European Food Safety Authority from being placed to Finland because Finnish food is so bad), I've never quite got the idea how seriously the people from Actually Good Cuisine Nations are when they do these ostantateous displays of grief and anger about food being done the wrong way. Are the Italians really on the point of suicide when seeing someone posting online how they've cooked Carbonara with cream and bacon?

If someone did Finnish food the wrong way in a big foreign cooking show, we'd probably just be happy about being mentioned outside Finland, and also befuddled why someone else than us would choose to eat our food. (Then again, I just ate a bowl of porridge so gray and chunky that my toddler daughter spontaneously went BLEUUGHHH! when looking at it.)

Are the Italians really on the point of suicide when seeing someone posting online how they've cooked Carbonara with cream and bacon?

...Yeah this isn't a good example because Italians have their pretention at 12 (out of 10). The average mexican, by comparison, is something like a 3. Unless they're genderfluid, in which case it's more like an 8.

To be fair, sometimes the UK misses the mark so badly that they can get all of South East Asia and East Asia to agree it's wrong even if none of them would agree on what is right.

I knew it was going to be Uncle Roger. There's nothing wrong with draining the rice, though.

Why would you do that though?

Much better margins of error. Add 3x water, taste for doneness, drain.

If I cooked the same amount and type of rice every day I would probably switch to the "just enough water" method. But I have jasmine rice, basmati rice, some rice my wife buys in an Azeri grocery, wholegrain rice, I cook rice maybe twice a week max and I can't be bothered to master the ratio and cooking time for all of them.

Fair enough. For East Asian purposes it rather ruins the texture in my opinion, but if you’re cooking a variety and mostly in a South/Central Asian/Middle Eastern style then I guess I can’t complain.

Are the Italians really on the point of suicide when seeing someone posting online how they've cooked Carbonara with cream and bacon?

Italians are justly famous for overblown drama over food. You pronounce it wrong, maybe just a correction and a dirty look. But you make that meatball with a little less veal and a little more beef, and you've committed treason, treason I say! Even if -- no, especially if -- your neighbor has made them that way all along.

That's true. But Italians don't have brown skin, so no one cares what they think about how other people make their food.

Southern enough Italians definitely have brown skin. But brown is a term of art...

Excuse me, but on the motte we have to provide evidence for contentious questions like "are Italians white"

We had an Italian grad student in a lab my wife worked in. We started getting Hawaiian pizzas just to fuck with him. It was great.

Hawaiian pizzas? You are like a little child when it comes to trolling Italians.

Finnish people winning at trolling by food desecration seems like a guy who always wins at gay chicken because he's gay. On the one hand, congrats, first prize for you, no one else was close, but on the other...maybe you started with a bit of an advantage?

Cultural appropriation is an issue that involves more nuance than the media tends to give it. The part of those complaints that made sense to me is that they didn't know what the things they were baking were and making confidently wrong comments about how they were supposed to be. See this tweet about the s'mores challenge:

me: I feel no special attachment to my american identity

paul hollywood: you see, it’s essential to carefully apply the blowtorch around the edges of the s’more—obviously we don’t want a gooey mess

me: I must throw him into the boston harbor

with the follow-up

I should clarify that the dessert featured in the technical looked delicious, I would like to eat it, the ganache and meringue sound heavenly and the digestive biscuit is a good substitute for graham cracker

but it is at best a s’more-INSPIRED dessert, not a s’more

Cultural appropriation is an issue

Hard disagree.

Can you give me some example where it is an actual issue. It's one of the topics that I have a tremendously difficult time steel-manning.

Here's a steel-manned scenario:

  • Group A oppresses Group B.

  • Group A also berates Group B's culture.

  • Group A adopts some aspects of Group B's culture.

  • Group A claims it as their own.

  • Group A denies Group B had anything to do with that activity/thing ever.

The above is the hypothetical worst possible instance of "Cultural appropriation".

And DESPITE THAT you still can't make an argument that Group A should stop doing what they appropriated from Group B. Yes you can say they are a bunch of jerks.

But (in modern times) then you end up with the reparations argument wearing different clothes all over again. Why should the son pay for the sins of the father?

Let's say you are an oppressed Briton under the cruel yoke of invading German Saxons, c.700AD. After your parents are killed and your wife and sisters are stolen by Germans as sex slaves, you are forced to toil on a turnip farm to provide food to Saxon king Hengist's armies, under pain of summary execution if the crop fails.

You are therefore filled with schadenfreude (a word of Old Saxon you picked up from your cruel masters) when the Vikings invade and do to the Saxons what the Saxons did to you. Hengist fucks off back to Jutland, a power vacuum ensues, and while you are nominally under Viking oppression within the Danelaw, the jackboot lies on the Briton neck much more lightly than it did at the start of the century. Also Viking rule leads to a lot of out-of-work Christian monks and you get one of them to teach you literacy. You write a book about your experiences...

...but you can't make any money. Because Hengist already wrote a book about the life of an oppressed Briton in the 700s. And it was very realistic too - he had intimate knowledge of the Briton plight from all the years he spent inflicting it. The book is already a bestseller and completely saturates market demand for "tragedy porn of Briton oppression". Not only did he and his relatives steal your wife and your sisters, he also stole your story: the broad strokes of your plight are filling up his coffers, not yours. He has appropriated your sad culture.

This seems unfair.

Eh, I think worse case scenario is that in a weird turn of events the North Macedonians reverse course and cements their claim over the Greek Macedonians and proceed to take not only Thessaloniki and Greek Macedonia but the full borders of Alexander's Empire.

For reference there has been a continual slapfight between the local Greeks and Slavs over the cultural legacy of ancient Macedon.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Macedonia#Naming_dispute

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_of_North_Macedonia#Kutlesh_Flag_(1992%E2%80%931995)

This is how the topic "Cultural Appropriation" was introduced to me, and made way more sense than every other instance I've ever heard.

Agreed, and to take a different tack - if you said ok to some sort of weird cultural reparations cultural appropriation would still be fucked though, because cultural appropriation is an integral part of how cultures evolve. Mexican food today is nothing like Mexican food two centuries ago, which is nothing like Mexican food a millennium ago, because every culture is always assimilating from other cultures! It is just nonsensical.

Yes you can say they are a bunch of jerks.

I'm unclear on the distinction you're drawing between saying "If you do X, you're a jerk." and "You shouldn't do X.". I would think the former implies the latter.

Quite. Even if one can't legally stop people from doing X, it could be seen as reasonable to... start a social media campaign to highlight the jerkish behaviour; encourage boycotts of products which rely on the jerkish crux; contact distributors / employers and draw their attention to the jerkish conduct and ask them pointedly if they really want to exercise their freedom of association over the jerk, etc, etc.

Exact example of your steelman in reality--Rings of Power. Though the "reparations via descendants" part isn't relevant (yet) because this cultural atrocity is currently in progress.

I don't have a settled opinion on what should be done in this case, because I know the real answer will be "nothing, suck it up, bigot nerds."

"YOU KNOW WHAT NOBODY HATES EACH OTHER ABOUT YET? THE GREAT BRITISH BAKE OFF."

I would like to say "I can't believe anyone would be offended by 'Mexican week' on a cooking show," but of course, I have no trouble believing it at all. The cold open definitely made me say, "oh, someone is gonna be pissed," not because I think anyone should be upset about it, but because I knew someone would be. When I try to steelman this sort of reaction, I just come up empty. If you happen to be Mexican (or even more generally Hispanic) I'm sure it can get quite tiresome to have your heritage routinely boiled down to tacos and sombreros. But I can't think of a single ethnicity, nationality, religion, or other group that is immune from that sort of reduction. So long as you're not being actively and genuinely persecuted, the appropriate response is to just roll with it. People need to stop making mountains out of molehills, and anthills, and level ground.

I don't watch the show, but a quick googling revealed that the complaints focused on promos featuring the hosts wearing sombreros and serapes, which I don't personally think is "racist," but it is certainly cringe-worthy. I don't see anything that can be fairly characterized as claiming that acknowledging that Mexican culture and food exists is racist.

I've seen people complaining about them making tres leches cake. If you ask me, if it's a baked good, it's fair game for them to use in a challenge. And likewise, I think the complaining about them wearing sombreros is something like them simply complaining about the acknowledgment that Mexican culture exists. Mexicans exist, and sometimes they wear sombreros. Why is it any sort of problem for them to wear this Mexican style of dress?

What fun is it being "cool" if you can't wear a sombrero?

certainly cringe-worthy

Yet embassies commonly organize events in which trying on their traditional dress is considered a means to promote their country.

Which is exactly what is called "racist" here.

You're going to be shocked when you learn that Black people who use the n-word regularly in their own discourse get mad when people who aren't Black use it.

Less sarcastically: it's a well-known, timeless and universal fact about humanity that cultures get upset when outsiders make fun of their culture, or attempt to adopt aspects of their culture in an insincere or imperfect way, even if they themselves do the exact same thing all the time.

Just another instance of America having successfully exported its woke culture. And yes descendants of the ancestors of the British did at one point under some definitions oppress the ancestors of present day Mexicans. That's more than enough justification for woke grievances. But I don't really think it has much to do with that, its just larping. White bad, brown good.

Also I find it highly amusing that the woke think some gringos cooking some Mexican food is going to offend Mexicans when they are having a literal war (300k+ dead) within their borders (Predictions on US intervention within our lifetimes?). Mexicans can totally handle seeing their countrymen beheaded, quartered, flayed and left to hang off bridges on almost a daily basis (and you still continue to buy cocaine (avocados)!), but making tacos is crossing the line.

And yes descendants of the ancestors of the British did at one point under some definitions oppress the ancestors of present day Mexicans.

To push on this a little, I'm not sure that a single war usually counts as oppression, even in woke eyes. Like, did the French historically oppress the English, just because Napoleon existed, or something?

Also I find it highly amusing that the woke think some gringos cooking some Mexican food is going to offend Mexicans when they are having a literal war (300k+ dead) within their borders

There were very long discussions back in The Old Place about the righteousness (or not) of fighting the Ukraine War, where a very popular strand of thought was that minor slights to your national honour are much worse than hundreds of thousands dead in a war. Because a generation of war dead can be replaced in 30 years, but an international reputation of being a little bitch will lead to your sovreignty getting salami-sliced for centuries.

TL;DR demanding the heads of those who besmirch you on Twitter is more important to national defence than tanks.

(and you still continue to buy cocaine (avocados)!)

For those who don't know (I had to look it up myself), there are claims that violent cartels in Mexico have branched-out from traditional narcotics and human trafficking and into lucrative agricultural exports, such as avocados. This apparently takes the form of protection rackets, with the cartels taxing legitimate farmers.

I'm so sick of people talking about how offensive Mexican week was.

I'm a massive, massive fan of GBBO. People talking about being offended by mexican week are the literal scum of the earth - twitter wastoids with nothing to offer the world. Ignore them.

I'm offended by Carol peeling a goddamn avacado in the episode. It reminded me that the brits aren't universally superhuman queuers and cooks (since this show is just so superior to the American alternative). At the end of the day I would have crushed the shit out of that episode. My "I'm tired after work" taco is better than anything the average brit can put together.

Often, these are related to the fact that several contestants this season aren't native to Great Britain and are not being handled sensitively enough with regards to the recipes they do and their ability to follow the instructions in the technical challenges.

See point 1 above for the most part. GBBO's diversity is its strength ironically. The fact that certain people struggle through technical challenges and others breeze through on a pretty even basis is what makes part of the competition interesting. Of course straight men always have a tough time making it through to the final rounds but that's OK in my book.

One of the reason I love the show so much is because the runners/hosts are still taking gambles like Mexican week. The moment the show becomes political or begins obviously folding to wokies is the day I just re-watch old episodes. There's enough fodder there for me to slowly walk through an episode or 2 per week for at least a year and then just start over.

I'm offended by Carol peeling a goddamn avacado in the episode.

I mean, yes, that's bad, but did you know that some places think guacamole can be made with green peas instead of avocado?

I was only offended by having tacos as a challenge. Nothing gets baked in a taco, so it's not a good choice for a baking competition. Otherwise, Mexican week was fine if not particularly good.

IDK, remember when they had people cook pitas on hot stones for the finale technical one year? It's bread-adjacent!

Of course straight men always have a tough time making it through to the final rounds but that's OK in my book.

Old women seem to have trouble too. I think it comes from them being too old to give a fuck to try to improve! They've lived long enough, and cook how they cook, for better or for worse.

Nancy from one of the earlier seasons did well, but I think it has a lot to do with:

  • They have their own ways

  • There's a lot of exotic and cosmopolitan bakes out there that weren't around/available to them before. Not to mention flavor preferences.

  • The physical dexterity required for impressive decoration is going to be more of a challenge

Both groups (straight men and old women) you can pretty much group together by episode 2 as "Lasting a while because of good fundamentals but will not finish"

I'm offended by Carol peeling a goddamn avacado in the episode.

It's heartening to know that I'm not the only person who was taken aback at that. I actually said aloud--"what is she doing to that avocado!?" I had a similar experience with the brownies they did last (?) season. I would personally be hopeless at reproducing the vast majority of the stuff they bake, I know, but that only makes it all the more amusing when they utterly botch what to me is simple American fare.

I quite enjoy GBBO, which I feel is a bit odd because I have never really enjoyed anything like it--not cooking shows (except Shokugeki no Soma), not reality shows, not game shows. I don't go in for competitions and I'm not really a foodie. If I'm watching a "TV show" at all (leisure hours are more often spent gaming), it's almost always either anime or sci-fi. But there is something inescapably wholesome about GBBO. And I know it's deliberate, because in the early episodes there was definitely some reality show style egging on from the crew. But the decision was clearly made to encourage helpfulness and cooperation and camaraderie between the contestants, and the show has been an absolute gem ever since.

Yes, but I feel like the male hosts are just annoying the contestants out of boredom these days. Mel and Sue were so warm and encouraging and Noel is weird and Matt Lucas is obnoxious. I had the realization last week that after six years of devotion I really don't care to watch week to week this year.

Actually, I have felt that losing Mel and Sue was one of the better things to happen to the show. They were just so annoying, and never ever funny despite obviously trying to be funny. Noel and Matt (and Sandy before him) are still warm and encouraging when people are down, with the bonus that they are funny sometimes! And when they aren't funny, they at least aren't annoying.

Really the only downside to the change in the people on the show was losing Mary Berry. She is a gem. Prue is nice and a good judge, but it's hard to follow that act.

As a Slovak this whole cuisine "weeks" are very strange to me. First, cuisines did not fully develop until probably mid 19th century, before than the local cuisine probably consisted from oatmeal or other grain type of stuff for subsistence of peasants. Even classic foods like Italian tomato pasta rely on "appropriation" of tomatoes from the New World, similar with chili for Asian cuisine with chili based foods.

For instance here in our region around Bratislava we have eclectic cuisine from all over Austria-Hungary. One of my favorite foods is from cabbage region of Cluj-Napoca (Kolozsvár ina Hungarian) called Szekelykaposta, but with so many variations between meat and side dishes that it often does not even resemble the original recipe. The same for "Hungarian" kettle goulash which is basically potato, chili, onion and meat. And parenthesis are there for the reason that "inventing" to boil onion, potatos and meat inside kettle is probably not that hard to do. But that is how it is called now so I respect it. How this can be called as Hungarian recipe is a question - given that two thirds of the ingredients are from the New World, there had to be some cultural appropriation taking place there. Plus of course there are dozens of local variations of the food that have deep roots in some original culture like Wallachian but which were popularized in restaurants with some changes, e.g. Slovak national food of bryndzové halušky.

The point being that if you want to have Hungarian, Czech, Slovak or Romanian or Balkan cuisine contest you would have surprising results of cooking the same foods. For instance aforementioned Szekelykaposta is a recipe from original Hungarians now living in Romania, thanks to the best "cabbage in the world they have" (this is a fact mind you). So is it Hungarian or Romanian recipe? I do not care, as long as I have cabbage from that region I am okay. Similarly with other geographical "brands" like Champagne or Parmigiano-Reggiano. And at home I can culturally appropriate as much as I wish.

And I also have to say that this is in the context of being in the middle of "ethnonations" with two world wars. Nobody bats an eye if a Pole cooks Wienerschnitzel or Czech cooks Hungarian goulash. This whole debate is alien to me.

I wasn't offended by Mexican week, but I thought it was a hilariously bad idea. Tacos do not count as baking. Also, they're not pronounced "Tack-Oh."

Also, they're not pronounced "Tack-Oh."

They are in the UK! Both the American and the British pronunciation are approximating the original Spanish; neither is truly "correct".

Yes, they should be pronounced take-oh.

I hope your genitals may be afflicted by a very concerning and itchy rash as punishment for your pronunciation of taco.

What about burr-eye-toe? And kwess-ay-dill-ay?

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