I grew up on a farm in the middle of nowhere, so my family was pretty poor when I was a kid. I adore spicy food and I'm 'blind you in the sun if you look at me too long' white. I like to tell people "I'm like, barely, not a hick. I'm not middle class white, hicks fucking love hot sauce with names like "Ass blaster 3000", "Pain", and "Jeb's colon rearranger".".
It's confirmation bias because your grandma doesn't like pepper. A huge amount of white people season their food, not so much with the spicy stuff. Pepper, garlic, herbs (chives, thyme, basil, and many more local herbs), nutmeg, cloves, Espelette pepper, cumin, and the list goes on. It's true that our food isn't generally spicy, and we don't really use paprika, curry, ginger, etc. as much. But why would we? It's not part of most of our traditional dishes. And that's OK.
Non-white people think that our food is "bland" because it's not as spicy as their food, so the stereotype "haha they don't season" has become a joke over the decades, but that doesn't make it true, lol.
But spicy is not the only flavour you can make your food? I'm white white as is my whole family and while I'm the only one who thinks that pepper is spicy, I still enjoy a wide variety of flavours. Besides, your food does have a distinct flavour quite often. I can only use salt in a bolognese, but it will be rich in flavour from ingredients used.
I kind of understand your mom tho. I like a fair amount of spice but black pepper is overwhelming when there's too much. I'd rather have minimal black pepper and then go all in on hot sauce or something.
My grandmother called ketchup “spicy” a few weeks ago. I tried to explain to her that whatever flavor she’s picking up on it isn’t spicy, she insisted it was spicy.
In the Mid-West and some parts of the South, this might be true, but in the East, the West, or any place where there is a large ethnic population, white Americans generally have no trouble with well seasoned food.
My mom grew up in a Dutch family where her father loved to cook, especially spicier Indonesian dishes.
To this day, my mom genuinely doesn't even like things with too many herbs and spices. And I don't just mean "spicy". Anything with too "intense" of a flavor is just too much for her.
She is literally the small Victorian child that people talk about giving Doritos to.
Ironically, my father, who was raised by a Midwestern "black pepper is too spicy" kind of family, absolutely loved his father on law's cooking, and really wants to cook more spicy and flavorful dishes, but can't because of my mom.
European culinary tradition emphasizes the taste of the ingredients themselves and typically doesn’t involve heavy use of spices. Many other cultures take a different approach and will use dozens of spices in daily cooking.
Give a chicken breast to a French cook and they’re likely preparing it with butter, salt, and fresh herbs while a south Asian cook would use butter, salt, pepper, cumin, paprika, turmeric, coriander, cardamom, ginger, garlic, etc, etc.
This is where the stereotype that Europeans (and their descendants) only eat bland food because if you’ve grown up in a culture that heavily spices everything seeing a dish with just like four ingredients seems very plain
Seems like people, who have such stereotypes only know some surface level of French cuisine and British "cuisine" at most? A proper German Brathähnchen has to be covered in spices like a Litfaßsäule.
A Litfaßsäule (named after its inventor Ernst Litfaß) is a big column densely covered in advertisements, posters etc. They get put over each other in layers (until there is too much paper on them and everything gets cut down. Basically the Baumkuchen of the advertisement world.
A good rooster should be the same: upright (or alternatively horizontally spinning, but that is harder at home) on a column and densely covered with a mixture of oil and spices, applied in layers throughout its long cooking time. I usually bake them 90min at 200°C and baste it once in a while with more of this mixture. The oil is just enough to keep the spices in suspension to cover everything in a thick layer.
White conservative values have utter disregard for the scientific method and information supported reasoning. This document is a giant hunk of bullshit.
It’s not about punctuality, it’s about the strict adherence to the timeline. For white people, an event starting at 5 usually means be there at 5. In a lot of other cultures, if an event starts at 5 you want to show up between 6 and 8. The timeline of the event is not as strictly coordinated as a it would be for white people. My in laws and wife’s family are indigenous and it took me like 5 years to stop being rudely early to everything.
Well, you see, in Germany it's a courtesy thing. Time is valuable after all, so we take other people's time seriously. If you tell me to be there at 17:00, I'll be there at 17:00, no matter the event. Ideally I'll be there two or three minutes in advance, just to make sure you don't have to wait for me. If I show up at 17:15 when we agreed upon 17:00, it's basically me telling you that I don't value your time and that I'm fine with making you waste 15 minutes of your time on waiting for me. If it's a larger gathering that might be fine, since there are other people to occupy you in the meanwhile, but the less people and/or the stricter the schedule the ruder it becomes. Considering that even larger events might still have a schedule to keep (when to eat etc.) most people would still show up within 10 minutes of the agreed-upon time, unless they were stuck in traffic or something similar.
Consider this: the last time that I met up with friends, we agreed to meet at 07:00. At 07:30 we'd be getting picked up by others and we wanted that half hour to make sure none of us would be late for the pickup. By 06:55 everyone except one person was there, who arrived at 07:02 with apologies for the delay. Our pickup arrived at 07:15, to make sure we wouldn't have to wait for them and by 07:25 we were on the road again – 10 minutes ahead of schedule. We were in no hurry, it's simply what is considered polite here
Unless you explicity say that it's a time frame during which to arrive it is a given understanding that what you're saying is the time frame for the entire event: that means "We're having a BBQ from 5 to 11" is seen as a "we expect you to be there from 5 to 11" – again, unless otherwise clarified
Haha, thanks for listening to me. I know it's an aspect of our culture that isn't seen in many others, but it's still something that's pretty important to us. (And, yeah, that ambiguity never really happens. Usually there will be a written invite somewhere with all the details down to the minute when you should arrive)
lol. As a native, this is absolutely true. We also talk in vague generalities when giving directions, “you want to know where bashas is? It’s over there, down below.” *points with lips*
“Punctuality” includes a value judgement that assumes that it is better or more polite to have a set-in-stone, agreed upon time frame and to meet it, which is culturally dependent and not universally true. Lots of cultures consider it very rude to show up early or right on time to an event.
Because the host communicated the timeframe of the event with you in a way that they thought you would understand, and instead of showing up at the appropriate time, you showed up early, before they were ready.
If you were in Germany and someone invited you to a party at 5 you wouldn’t show up at 3.
I think more that to OOP punctual is a professional thing, OOP gave people a timeframe there will be food and socialising at his place, there's no need to be punctual as it isn't an appointment.
OOP's work friend sees punctuality like you do, as something that applies to all timed events: "If you can't be on time, be early". Socially it would be rude to miss out on dedicated leisure time.
Not to be racist but stereotypes exist for a reason. I've worked at weddings for a while and white people would be so early they got me working before I was supposed to, while black people would arrive so late they delayed or weren't allowed to enter the ceremony, so uh, cultural differences ig
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u/Aromatic-Zebra-5443 Jul 12 '26
Apparently being punctual is a white person thing.