Literary Eats: Tolkein

As the quest intensifies in The Lord of the Rings, the food becomes scarce and descriptions of it even scarcer, down to water and lembas crumbs at the end. While hobbits are food-loving creatures, once the Fellowship departs the Shire, meals are not described in great detail, only the comfort and sustenance derived from them. Yet there are little treasures of domesticity to be found in the Old Forest…

A door opened and in came Tom Bombadil. He had now no hat and his thick brown hair was crowned with autumn leaves. He laughed, and going to Goldberry, took her hand.

‘Here’s my pretty lady!’ he said, bowing to the hobbits. ‘Here’s my Goldberry clothed all in silver-green with flowers in her girdle! Is the table laden? I see yellow cream and honeycomb, and white bread, and butter; milk, cheese, and green herbs and ripe berries gathered. Is that enough for us? Is the supper ready?’

‘It is,’ said Goldberry; ‘but the guests perhaps are not?’

Tom clapped his hands and cried: ‘Tom, Tom! your guests are tired, and you had near forgotten! Come now, my merry friends, and Tom will refresh you! You shall clean grimy hands, and wash your weary faces; cast off your muddy cloaks and comb out your tangles.’

He opened the door, and they followed him down a short passage and round a sharp turn. They came to a low room with a sloping roof. Its walls were of clean stone, but they were mostly covered with green hanging mats and yellow curtains. The floor was flagged, and strew with fresh green rushes. There were four deep mattresses, each piled with white blankets, laid on the floor along one side. Against the opposite wall was a long bench laden with wide earthenware basins, and beside it stood brown ewers filled with water, some cold, some steaming hot. There were soft green slippers set ready beside each bed.

—”In the House of Tom Bombadil,” from The Fellowship of the Ring, by J. R. R. Tolkein, George Allen & Unwin Ltd, London, 1966

Forest Soup

Image source: https://www.sparklestories.com/

Envision if you will, a backyard bordered by a low stone wall. Above the stone wall slopes a hill of pine trees, pachysandra and rhododendrons. Two paths go up the slope, spaced about 25 feet apart, each set with a few stone steps.

This was my back yard growing up, and the hillside was an excellent place for adventure. It seemed the size of a mountain when I was young. I’m sure if I went back today it would look like a knoll.

The path going up on the left was, by some unspoken agreement, my brother’s path. Except in wintertime during a snowfall because then it became our sled hill. On a really good run you could launch off the stone wall and get some serious air.

The path on the right was mine. It passed by a flat space where the toolshed was built. That was not mine. That area was to be avoided at all costs. I did not acknowledge the Shed as part of my path. Unspeakably creepy things were in there: spiders and slugs and wasps’ nests and sharp implements and the lawn mower. I did not like the lawn mower. I did not like things that made loud noises. When Bert Rechtshaffer came to visit us on his motorcyle, I would flee the premises.

So the two paths went up the hill, and then they connected at the top in a small secret place surrounded by pine trees. This was prime real estate. This was a fort. My friend Julia and I would spend hours up there with our imaginations, anything we could find to play with, and one old cooking pot in which we’d make Forest Soup from stream water, pine needles, rhododendron leaves and dirt. We still talk about it to this day. If anything we cook turns out supremely bad, we laugh and say, “well, it wasn’t as bad as that Forest Soup.”

Forest Soup, Yard Stew, old-fashioned Mud Pies—these are delightful creations that kids make when exposed to nature. Sometimes I think it is a dying art and kids today don’t have that connection to the outdoors that Julia and I did in my backyard fort in the pine trees. Then one day, I’ll see Pandagirl and Redman outside with my old saucepan or some filched Tupperware, filling it up with water and then running around the yard to find things for the pot. It’s like Stone Soup come to life but on a purely imaginary level. Sometimes I’ll come across the birdbath, choked to the rim with grass, leaves, flower petals, chives, lavender, wood chips, gravel, and a plastic spoon or two.

When my vegetable garden is in season, things get kicked up another level. I grow a huge and varied garden and my philosophy with the kids is total hands-on.

“Mom, can we pick something out of the garden?” they will ask.

And I will say, “You can pick anything you want out of the garden.” And so into their stews go (depending on the season) peapods, cherry tomatoes, parsley, tiny matchstick green beans, zucchini flowers, nasturtiums and little baby carrots. Sometimes, some of the bounty gets rinsed off at the garden hose and they eat it. I encourage any and all snacking from the garden. Have at it. At the end of the day, it all gets tossed on the compost pile and the Circle of Life continues.

If you are acquainted with a child who loves outdoor cooking, I highly recommend, in fact I insist you get a copy of Mud Pies and Other Recipes (A Cookbook for Dolls) by Marjorie Winslow. It's seriously one of the most charming books ever written, and will get any child excited about finding the larder within the backyard, the woods, and the seashore. And it’s a nice little read for grown-ups too, a book to make you remember simpler times.

Here are a few examples:

Boiled Buttons

This is a hot soup that is simple but simply delicious. Place a handful of buttons in a saucepan half filled with water. Add a pinch of white sand and dust, 2 fruit tree leaves and a blade of grass for each button. Simmer on a hot rock for a few minutes to bring out the flavor. Ladle into bowls.

Marigold Madness

Shred several marigolds into a pan and fill with water. Set in the sun to simmer. When the liquid has turned to gold, strain into bowls and put in the shade to cool. Serve chilled.

Mud Puddle Soup

Find a mud puddle after a rainstorm and seat your dolls around it. Serve.

Literary Eats: Gone With The Wind

From Chapter XXV, Gone with the Wind, by Margaret Mitchell, Macmillan & Co, New York, 1936:

Beyond Tara was the war and the world.  But on the plantation the war and the world did not exist except as memories which must be fought back when they rushed to mind in moments of exhaustion.  The world outside receded before the demands of empty and half-empty stomachs and life resolved itself into two related thoughts, food and how to get it.

Food!  Food!  Why did the stomach have a longer memory than the mind?  Scarlett could banish heartbreak but not hunger and each morning as she lay half asleep, before memory brought back to her mind war and hunger, she curled drowsily expecting the sweet smells of bacon frying and rolls baking.  And each morning she sniffed so hard to really smell the food she woke herself up.

There were apples, yams, peanuts and milk on the table at Tara but never enough of even this primitive fare.  At the sight of them, three times a day, her memory would rush back to the old days, the meals of the old days, the candle-lit table and the food perfuming the air.

How careless they had been of food then, what prodigal waste!  Rolls, corn muffins, biscuit and waffles, dripping butter, all at one meal.  Ham at one end of the table and fried chicken at the other, collards swimming richly in pot liquor iridescent with grease, snap beans in mountains on brightly flowered porcelain, fried squash, stewed okra, carrots in cream sauce thick enough to cut.  And three desserts, so everyone might have his choice, chocolate layer cake, vanilla blanc mange and pound cake topped with sweet whipped cream.  The memory of those savory meals had the power to bring tears to her eyes as death and war had failed to do, had the power to turn her ever-gnawing stomach from rumbling emptiness to nausea.  For the appetite Mammy had always deplored, the healthy appetite of a nineteen-year-old-girl, now was increased fourfold by the hard and unremitting labor she had never known before.