Lord of the Rings Re-Read 03: food is always the important part.

These two reading sessions covered, uhhh... from "The Uruk-hai" chapter, where the Merry-Pippin-Ents narrative starts, to somewhat into book four, in the middle of the Dead Marshes. I'll probably read more later, but right now my back would appreciate a break from sitting. We managed to fit in a trip down to SoCal and back this weekend - that's six hours sitting, each way, not to mention the part of the wedding that was all sitting - and my muscles haven't forgiven me for that yet.

I'm going to stop pretending I have anything coherent to say and make lists instead.

( Things that make me :D, things that make me :|... )

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We're making applesauce again. Somewhat randomly, this made me wonder how hobbits might make applesauce - and how elves would do it differently. And I thought, hm, hobbits probably didn't have vanilla or cinnamon handy - maybe they'd use allspice, or something more local...ish? And perhaps the elves would have access to vanilla beans and cinnamon, since after all Cirdan's people are sea-faring, and there's no reason they couldn't have traveled far in trade at one time - or Gondor, or someone.

Or is there? (<--- a real question, for the record. I have no idea.)

I should look into this. Hobbit recipes and Elf recipes could be interesting to try puzzling out! Just for fun, mind you. As I have not read nearly enough of the additional material to say anything intelligent, I may as well default to saying things that might be tasty instead. I don't think that's at odds with books in which hobbits are major characters. Checking out the opening chapters of The Hobbit might be a good place to start, now that I think of it, since Bilbo has to make a whole lot of food in a hurry, and I know he says something or other about ingredients. I also recall that later he was disgusted by the idea of hunting to eat and having to prepare one's own kill, because as far as he knew, meat came from a butcher, all wrapped nicely and such.

So anyway, it'd be interesting to pay attention to what sort of food they definitely have access to. Corn has been mentioned a lot during this stretch in Rohan, so my initial thought that the list might be restricted to "old world food" isn't necessarily right.

I've seen recipes pop up on middleearthnews now and then, though the only one I recall was lembas; I've seen a few recipes for that, but have never agreed with any of them. I think there's a site dedicated to this sort of thing, though, so I'll dig around. They might have citations, which would save me a lot of time.