Thursday, March 12, 2009

Food of the Shire

So you want to learn about the Shires finest dishes, do you, young Hobbit? Well, sitdown, order some ale (it is very good here you know, the finest in theEastfarthing) and I will tell you what I can.
-Dan Baggins, Hobbit Gourmand.

Welcome to Food of the Shire, the first blog (that I'm aware of)
to deal with the food and cooking of the Hobbits from J.R.R Tolkiens Middle Earth fantasy world.Much has been written about the Hobbits and the Shire, outside of Tolkiens original books. There is even some small amount of literature regarding the food of the Shire. But no where is there any website or book which gives practical advice and recipes for the recreation of Hobbit food.How can this be done, given that the Hobbits are fantasy creatures, and the Shire does not exist?

Both the Hobbits and the Shire reflect the old pastoral view of England, the idyllic English countryside of the eighteenth, nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. I will be taking recipes from old English sources, such as Mrs Beaton, which I believe can be justified for inclusion as a Hobbit recipe. I will write why I think this is the case, then reproduce the recipe, and if possible, follow the recipe myself and talk about the results. Then whether you are looking to have a Hobbit themed dinner party, just cook something to wat while watching the Peter Jackson films, or just learn about what those little Hobbits ate, you will have somewhere to come.

All constructive comments and suggestions welcome. Do not just take my word for why a recipe or foodstuff should or should not be included in a Hobbit Food Manifesto, tell me what you think.I will do my best to update this blog regularly, once every one to two weeks, and atleast one recipe a month, but due to real-life responsibilities this may not be possible.

Legal stuff: Hobbit, Middle Earth, etc, all copyright of Tolkien etc, everything is my opinion

2 comments:

Big Rob said...

Actually, fresh water fish would have been eaten fresh or salted, along with some fresh water mussels and plenty of eels. Yum !!

Adaire WillowBlossom said...

While this is mainly correct, I must disagree with your point about seafood. We SEE Bilbo buy a fish at the market. We SEE Hobbits fishing, though on a river. Also, Hobbits don’t ONLY live in the shire, they are much more wide spread than just one village. The Stoors (which Frodo is partly a member of and Merry and Pip are) specifically love to swim and fish, which is why Gandalf thought that the particular race of halflings Smeagol used to belong to was likely most closely related to them