Here’s a look at how we made yesterday’s Farewell Feast in Bag End.
The menu
As with last month’s party, we have very little to go on in the text for an actual menu. Once again, this requires some imagination, but this time I’m trying to imagine a small, intimate dinner for friends, not a grand party.
“In the evening Frodo gave his farewell feast: it was quite small, just a dinner for himself and his four helpers… The dining-room was bare except for a table and chairs, but the food was good, and there was good wine: Frodo’s wine had not been included in the sale to the Sackville-Bagginses.”
Our take on Frodo’s last dinner in Bag End has Sam Gamgee’s fish and chips at the center, accompanied by boiled cabbage wedges with rosemary mint sauce. For dessert there is a simple blueberry soup. And with it all, a glass of wine for toasting the good old hole farewell.
Since this is quite a small, pre-long-distance-move dinner, the props are mostly simple, too: plain ceramics, plain glass, and wooden utensils on a bare table. Since the “good wine” was explicitly not included in the sale, we went with the spirit of indulgence and picked a fancier glass for it.
Check out what’s it about in the introduction, or read the how-to!
Images by Eppu Jensen
Geeks eat, too! Second Breakfast is an occasional feature in which we talk about food with geeky connections and maybe make some of our own. Yum!
Here’s a look at how we made yesterday’s A Long-Expected Party.
The menu
As Elves love song and Dwarves love the gems of the earth, so Hobbits love their food. We know more about Hobbit food than about the cuisine of any other culture on Middle Earth, so it is a surprise to find that in the description of the festivities for Bilbo Baggins’s 111th birthday, we learn nothing about what was actually on the table. (Though clearly there was plenty of it, whatever it was.) That means that for our very first Middle Earth dinner, we have to use a little imagination. Fortunately, there’s a lot to go on.
Since this is a party of special magnificence (with supplies brought in all the way from Dale), I’ve tried to make a combination of typical Hobbit fare with a few special or exotic twists.
“When every guest had been welcomed and was finally inside the gate, there were songs, dances, music, games, and, of course, food and drink. There were three official meals: lunch, tea, and dinner (or supper). But lunch and tea were marked chiefly by the fact that at those times all the guests were sitting down and eating together. At other times there were merely lots of people eating and drinking – continuously from elevenses until six-thirty, when the fireworks started.”
Our version of Bilbo Baggins’s party of special magnificence begins with an appetizer of potato and cream soup, followed by roast pork and root vegetables served with ginger gravy and asparagus on the side. It ends in dessert, with baked stuffed pears. (Of course, in proper Hobbit fashion, you may start and end with whatever you like.) A glass of red wine washes it all down.
Our imagined table comes with a variety of kitchenware styles. Glass and green glazed crockery complement basic redware pottery. There are wood and metal utensils, including a fork and silver soup spoon. The colors green and yellow were pulled from the general description of Hobbits’ preferences. A potted plant and candles finish off the table setting.
Check out what’s it about in the introduction, or read the how-to!
Images by Eppu Jensen
Geeks eat, too! Second Breakfast is an occasional feature in which we talk about food with geeky connections and maybe make some of our own. Yum!
“As for the Hobbits of the Shire, with whom these tales are concerned, in the days of their peace and prosperity they were a merry folk… with mouths apt to laughter, and to eating and drinking. And laugh they did, and eat, and drink, often and heartily, being fond of simple jests at all times, and of six meals a day (when they could get them).”
So Tolkien introduces us to his Hobbits, lovers of good food and good company. There is plenty of eating and drinking in The Lord of the Rings, from humble Hobbit fare to Elven delicacies, from the foraged meals of rangers in the wild to the feasts of great kings.
In 2016, we’re taking up a project to eat our way through The Lord of the Rings. Every month, we’ll prepare and present a dinner inspired by foods from the novel, working our way through the story from Bilbo’s 111th birthday party to Frodo’s return to the Shire. Along the way, there are some meals that Tolkien describes in such detail that we can read the menu straight from the page. In other places, he offers only tantalizing hints that require us to engage in gastronomical-literary archaeology to fill a table.
We’re doing our best to stay true to the novel in the project, so where Tolkien gives us a clear idea of what the characters eat, we stick to it. When we have to figure something out on our own, we use clues from The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit and ideas from historical cookery to guide us.
We’ll share the results of our work with you around the middle of the month. A post introducing the month’s meal and showing the results of our labors will come out on a Wednesday. The following day, we’ll offer a behind-the-scenes view of how we researched the food, decided on a menu, prepared the dishes, and designed the setting, complete with recipes you can try for yourselves. We’ll collect links to all the entries on this post, so you can always come back here to get caught up, or check the dining in Middle Earth tag to find them all.
A note on the behind-the-scenes posts: we’ll be referencing passages from the book and since there are many different editions of the text with different paginations, we’re using the book and chapter divisions given in Tolkien’s table of contents. For example, the first half of The Fellowship of the Ring is identified as Book 1. In that book, chapter 4 is “A Short Cut to Mushrooms,” so we reference that chapter as (1.4); we reference Hobbit chapters with (H).
January: A Long-Expected Party / Making A Long-Expected Party
February: A Farewell Feast in Bag End / Making A Farewell Feast in Bag End
March: Supper at the Prancing Pony / Making Supper at the Prancing Pony
April: Food in the Wild / Making Food in the Wild
May: In the House of Elrond / Making In the House of Elrond
June: Dinner with Durin’s Folk / Making Dinner with Durin’s Folk
July: Of Herbs and Stewed Rabbit / Making Herbs and Stewed Rabbit
August: Rangers’ Rations / Making Rangers’ Rations
September: The Courtesy of the Golden Hall / Making The Courtesy of the Golden Hall
October: Flotsam and Jetsam / Making Flotsam and Jetsam
November: The Return of the King / Making the Return of the King
December: A Proper 1420 / Making a Proper 1420
Image by Eppu Jensen
Geeks eat, too! Second Breakfast is an occasional feature in which we talk about food with geeky connections and maybe make some of our own. Yum!
Co-Geeking 
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