For this year’s Feast Week celebration, we are sharing Middle-earth News Staff Favorites from Feast Weeks past! These posts were chosen by the Middle-earth News team as our collective favorites for each day of Feast Week. So, enjoy the yummy goodness of these posts! If they inspire you to make your own Feast Week meals, be sure to tell us in the comments and save some leftovers for us — if there are any leftovers!
Join us as Lily takes us to a second evening with Tom Bombadil and Goldberry!
On this sixth night of Tolkien Feast Week, you can’t blame the hobbits for wanting to stay another night at Tom Bombadil’s house.
‘It’s a good day for long tales, for questions and for answers, so Tom will start the talking.’
The Fellowship of the Ring, Chapter 7: In The House Of Tom Bombadil
The wet weather keeps the hobbits indoors listening to Tom in wonder. When Goldberry comes in from doing her washing, the merry group sits down to dinner. Tolkien does not describe the food that they ate, but we imagine it was similar to the previous night. Oloriel provided last night’s feast, and using the same required ingredients, I’ll take a different spin on it!
A rainy day is a great day for baking bread, but I’m still a modern girl, so I brought out the bread maker and a prepackaged bread mix. If you have a bread maker at your disposal, it’s an easy, fast way to make bread, but make sure you follow the directions for your own machine precisely. It will still take a few hours, so you’ll want to get this started well before supper time.
Most of the other ingredients were at-hand or were easy to obtain. I purchased raspberries and I chose a heavy whipping cream from pasture-raised cows. (I did some reading online that said grass fed cows produce cream with a yellow tint.) I picked up Farmers Cheese made at a local dairy because it would melt well. For herbs, I chose Arugula and Oregano.
The honeycomb was a bit more difficult and pricey. Knowing that this feast was coming, I purchased honeycomb online from a family run farm.
When your bread is nearly done baking, rinse your fresh herbs. Strip the leaves from the oregano stock and chop, then chop the arugula. Mix together in a small bowl. Remove honeycomb from container and place on a dishwasher safe plate. Array all other feast items on the dinner table, except for the yellow cream.
I think it’s preferable to serve the bread warm! Cut a small slice of cheese and either let it melt on the warm bread, or melt it in the microwave. Spread on the bread, then sprinkle with the chopped herbs. Alternately, you could could enjoy your bread plain, or with with butter and honey. Or try it every way – it is a feast, after all!
Ripe raspberries are their own treat, but I decided to use the yellow cream to make whipped cream to top them. Simply pour cream into a mixing bowl, add sugar to taste, and mix on a low speed until the consistency is right. Then add to your raspberries to make raspberries and cream!
Enjoy!
There are still a few more nights of Tolkien Feast Week! Join us as we continue to follow the culinary journey of the hobbits on the road to Bree and The Prancing Pony!
