When one is king, one can get eggs exactly the way one likes.
- 01.141 fried not poached,
Picnic
Bilbo mourns that he is missing the pleasures of high summer in the Shire. Picnic’s obsolete meaning is what I would call a pot-luck meal, in which all the guests bring something to share. The word’s history may be French, it may be a sound-play, it may be German, but the German may be a borrowing from English – quite the enjoyable little mystery to entertain us as we dine outdoors.
- 04.003 and picnics.
“picnic, n., adj., and adv.” OED Online. Oxford University Press, March 2015. Web. 13 May 2015.
Pickle
Shout-out to Heath Dill, fabulous Renaissance caterer and Tolkien chef, who provided the provender at a recent Mythgard Movie Marathon (keep your eye on the “Activities” tab for future events). There were cold chicken and pickles, oh yes there were!
- 01.057 and pickles!’
- 02.080 A nice pickle they were all
Pantry
The only pantries, alas, are Bilbo’s.
- 01.002 cellars, pantries (lots of these),
- 01.022 as he went to the pantry.
- 01.036 and then to a pantry
- 01.057 as the hobbit stumped off to the pantries.
- 01.065 Pour the milk on the pantry floor!
- 08.074 with its beautiful pantries.
Mouthful
Trolls need sustenance, too!
- 02.059 “He wouldn’t make above a mouthful,”
Meat
The only use of the generic “meat” is from the spiders, referring to the dwarves.
- 08.090 the meat’s alive
Mead (drink)
As a bee-keeper, of course Beorn would brew a fine mead. It’s a word found in northwestern Europe from Irish to Old English to Gothic since the earliest written records. It is etymologically very different from this kind of mead.
- 07.096 with their wooden drinking-bowls filled with mead.
- 07.116 and drunk at least a quart of mead –
“mead, n.1.” OED Online. Oxford University Press, March 2015. Web. 13 May 2015.
Marjoram
It’s mentioned only as foliage along the route.
- 06.040 and the marjoram,
Loaf
“Loaf” presents us with a little mystery. Thorin says that the Lake-men will not get “even a loaf’s worth” of treasure. Does he mean “the value of a ‘prized-loaf’ (obsolete, an official assized bread-price)” or “a pile of coins the weight of an ‘assize-loaf’ (obsolete, an official assized weight of bread)?
- 06.100 though really he would have liked a loaf
- 07.116 he had eaten two whole loaves
- 09.063 carrying a loaf
- 15.050 not even a loaf’s worth,
“loaf, n.1.” OED Online. Oxford University Press, March 2015. Web. 13 May 2015.
Update 2016.05.18: It is not impossible that I, Dear Readers, when searching through my word-hoard for this word lit on a sufficient substitute: “skein”.
Larder
“Larder” does come from “lard” and shows its origins as the room where bacon was stored.
- 01.058 about the inside of my larders
- 02.116 at what they had got from the trolls’ larder.
- 09.062 of a well-filled larder.
“larder, n.1.” OED Online. Oxford University Press, March 2015. Web. 13 May 2015.
words that you were saying 