Pasta la Feasta, Baby - Page 3
© Michael Martinez
As for what the Shire actually grew, well, Tolkien gave a small category of farm crops when Gandalf departed from Bag End "The Shire had seldom seen so fair a summer, or so rich an autumn the trees were laden with apples, honey was dripping in the combs, and the corn was tall and full." Okay, maybe Tolkien slipped up on the maize, too. But the word "corn" itself is pretty ancient and was actually used of other grain crops. Caesar spent a fair amount of time in Gaul trying to secure his corn supply, but he wasn't importing maize from the Americas.
Apples seemed to be popular with the Elves as much as with the Hobbits. When Gildor Inglorion and his folk hosted Frodo, Sam, and Pippin for a night in Woody End, they served the Hobbits apples, "bread, surpassing the flavor of a fair white loaf to one who is starving; and fruits sweet as wildberries and richer than the tended fruits of gardens." Fruits are actually good travelling food. Although they will eventually ripen, they don't need to be cooked or refrigerated. And you can sun-dry fruits so they last longer, but I don't think Gildor's people were serving dried fruit that night.
At Rivendell, Bilbo compared Hobbits and Men to peas and apples. Peas are another Neolithic food. Grishnakh seems to have read his Bible, since he tells Ugluk that the Nazgul are the "apple of the Great Eye". The Entwives liked apples, too, along with sloes (wild plums), cherries, and green herbs. These were among the kinds of plants the Entwives cultivated. And they also raised corn, teaching Men how to grow it.
Bombadil and Goldberry kept a pretty good larder, too. They served the Hobbits "yellow cream and honeycomb, white bread, and butter, milk, and cheese, and green herbs and ripe berries gathered." There is a distinct lack of meat in their diet, and I suspect Tom and Goldberry might have been vegetarians. The butter and cream had to come from one or more cows. Or maybe goats.
In Gondor, Pippin was treated to white cakes by Denethor, and to bread, butter, cheese, and apples by Beregond and Targon. The presence of butter and cheese implies that the Gondorians raised cattle and/or goats. But they were a pretty advanced civilization. When Frodo and Sam were fed at Henneth Annun, Faramir's men treated them to "pale yellow wine" and "bread and butter, and salted meats, and dried fruits, and good red cheese." Faramir later gave them "dried fruits, and salted meats, enough for many days; and bread enough to last while it was still fresh" for their journey into Mordor.
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