Hobbit-Inspired Meals + Discussions 🧙‍♂️🏔️🧭

a whole menu + some great quotes from the book

Hello! I love thinking about The Hobbit in January because, as you look ahead to the challenges you might face this year, it helps to see yourself as a character on a journey who has lots of heroic potential hidden inside 🗡 (Remember that easier isn’t always better.) So, if your family has been reading The Hobbit (graphic novel, illustrated edition, or audiobook!) here is a menu of meals that you can serve in a day if you’re bingeing the movies or books.

Some quick tips and links to recipes:

• Breakfast: Lembas Bread (Scones) - Storebought are great; just wrap them in green paper (Mallorn leaves.) These are great to pack on hikes or field trips. Tell your kids that “one small bite is enough to fill the stomach of a grown man” after they’ve gobbled down the whole thing 😉

• Second Breakfast: English Breakfast -The traditional English breakfast is a large, diverse meal that goes back to at least the 1300’s. The different elements of the dish vary, but we used two frying pans to make toast, bacon, eggs, sausages, mushrooms, tomatoes, and baked beans. Jamie Oliver’s method uses only one pan!

• Elevensies: Snacking Platter with Bilbo’s Marmalade - This meal is what the dwarves might’ve helped themselves to from Bilbo’s pantry. Make a cheese board with whatever you want and make sure to include some orange marmalade! (Marmalade is a great thing to get from a farmer’s market!)

• Luncheon: Poh-Tay-Toes (Fries, Smashed, Baked, etc.) - The famous “poh-tay-toes” scene isn’t from the Hobbit, but if you’ve seen The Two Towers, it’s the type of line that sticks with you for life. So just make some potatoes somehow.

• Afternoon Tea: Beorn’s Honey Cakes - These “cakes”—inspired by what Beorn served his guests—are really more like twice-baked muffins, but they’re delicious.

• Dinner: Pan-Roasted Fish for Gollum - It might not be raw or “juicy sweet” as Gollum would prefer, but some butter-basted, pan-roasted tilapia will blow your family away.

• Supper: Balin’s Spiced Beef - Beef stew is a great meal to have on lock. The linked recipe isn’t for the instant pot, but it’s extremely easy to modify for the IP, if you have one; sauté the meat, onions, and garlic, add the veggies, broth/wine, and seasonings, and cook at high pressure for 35 mins or so. Maybe serve with toast.

Quotes and Questions

And now for some quotes from The Habbit and discussion questions! You do not have to have read the book to get something out of these.

1. "We are plain quiet folk and have no use for adventures. Nasty disturbing uncomfortable things! Make you late for dinner! I can’t think what anybody sees in them." How do you define ‘adventure’? Might it be possible that caring for others, even at a cost to yourself, is probably the most extraordinary adventure you’ll find?

2. "It would have made only a tiny pocket-knife for a troll, but it was as good as a short sword for the hobbit." The gifts and abilities you have might feel small, but they’re yours, and you can use them quite well. What gifts do you have that might seem like a pocket-knife to others but are as useful as a sword to you because they’re yours?

   

3. “No great leap for a man, but a leap in the dark. Straight over Gollum's head he jumped, seven feet forward and three in the air; indeed, had he known it, he only just missed cracking his skull on the low arch of the passage.” Do you ever feel like you’ve had to make a leap in the dark to get out of a bad situation? When is a time when you discovered more courage than you thought you had?

4. “We must be getting on at once, now we are a little rested, they will be after us in hundreds when night comes on.”After a lot of action, the group finally had a moment of peace in the Eyrie (eagle’s nest.) What is a safe place of rest for you? How can you be like the Eagles and create that kind of respite for others?

5. “You don’t really suppose, do you, that all your adventures and escapes were managed by mere luck, just for your sole benefit? You are a very fine person, Mr. Baggins, and I am very fond of you; but you are only quite a little fellow in a wide world after all!” “Thank goodness!” said Bilbo, laughing. How did Bilbo change by the end of the story? Do you think the things in your life happen just by luck and only for your benefit? Or do you think it's possible there's a big wide world with all kinds of mysteries and heroic journeys quests for you?What does this make you daydream about?

I hope this encourages you, whether you’re a LOTR fan or not!

Warmly,

Hope from Family Scripts

P.S. If you are a LOTR fan and happen to be in the Nashville area on any Wednesday during the North Wind Manor’s open hours, you can hang out in front of Tolkien’s actual fireplace! He looked at this exact fireplace when he finished writing LOTR 🤯There are also a lot of other cool things to geek out over (like books from Madeleine L’Engle’s personal collection and a Harry Potter closet under the stairs!) and it’s a nice place to be cozy and meet other bookish folks!