The UCNA as wrap culture

Not all of my work is actual outlining and planning historical events. I take a lot of breaks working on Andalusada, and focus my attention on the parerga: stuff that doesn't advance the world and its timeline so much as detailing it. In particular, my authorial gaze falls on a few specific kinds of parerga: humanities, foodways, and militaria.

So on the subject of foodways, let's start by saying that the UCNA is a wrap culture.

Global foodways have lots of convergence, because when push comes to shove there are only so many ways you can prepare foods for regular consumption. Some places have stuffed rolls; some places have non-dessert pastries like spanakopita; others have sandwiches. The UCNA has wraps.

The origins of wrap culture

I'm not sure that Andalusi cuisine has anything akin to the wrap (or the sandwich, for that matter.) And I'm not sure it matters, because Andalusi haute cuisine is not the basis for the continental UCNA's foodways. Those are established by at least two important demographics:

• Old-stock French. The Montagnards originally came from coastal France, specifically northern coastal France. One of the few northern French foodways that carries over well is crêpes - and once they're established among the Montagnards, they get transmitted to all later French settlers.
• Mesoamerican immigrants and refugees. There's going to be a lot of them, because the fall of Umayyad Seville implodes its empire into a catastrophic mess. The first and biggest wave is from Mexico, fleeing the initial anti-Muslim violence and subsequent Reclamation; smaller waves come later from as far south as Gran Ainil. When they come, they bring tortilla cultures with them.

And because a wrap is (more or less) a wrap regardless of what's inside, the wrap as a foodway is established from enough sources to cross-pollinate.