Bilbo’s birthday. A party menu for Hobbits and Humans to celebrate fantasy movies and books.

It’s that time of year again, when the air turns crisp (soon in Ohio, I hope!) and thoughts go to cozy fires, turning leaves, and lots of food and drink to celebrate Bilbo’s birthday. Not that we need anything extra to celebrate the coming of Autumn, but it’s fun to come up with a menu for a theme party, or just an assortment of delicious food to eat while watching a good movie. The Lord of the Rings movies are my go-to comfort movies and I’ve seen them dozens of times, but am always willing to watch them again, though there are plenty of other good fantasy movies to match the menus below as well.

What goes into a Hobbit menu? Two menu ideas are below. The first is more a complete dinner, though easy enough to add and subtract as desired.

Roast Chicken

Roast Potatoes and Carrots

Mushroom and Leek Tart

Pickles

Dried Fruit

Apples and Pears

Cheese

For dessert, Fruit Crisp (I must admit I’m not a fan of cake, though a traditional birthday cake would have been more appropriate for Bilbo’s birthday.)

Not pictured: hard boiled eggs, celery sticks, and assorted nuts

I went with easy and bought a rotisserie chicken instead of roasting one myself, though I suppose that isn’t too difficult if you have time. Of course potatoes had to be included. Who can forget Samwise Gamgee’s love of potatoes? “‘Po – ta – toes,’ said Sam. ‘The Gaffer’s delight, and rare good ballast for an empty belly.” (from the Two Towers book, though the lines were changed a bit for the movie.) I roasted carrots with the new potatoes. I’m not sure if carrots are mentioned in the books, but It’s a memorable scene in the first LOTR movie when Merry and Pippin are stealing carrots and other vegetables from Farmer Maggott.

We know Hobbits love mushrooms. From the first book: “Hobbits have a passion for mushrooms, surpassing even the greediest likings of Big People.” I made a mushroom and leek tart by using a pastry crust and then placing sautéed mushrooms and leeks along with a little cheese on it, and free-forming it into a rustic-looking dish. Pickles seem like an appropriate food for Hobbits, like any early farming society. In the first edition of The Hobbit, Gandalf requests tomatoes from Bilbo’s pantry, but Tolkien later changed it to “pickles” in the third edition to avoid using an American plant that wouldn’t fit the setting of Middle-earth. Tom Bombadil feeds the hobbits cheese and apples, and the dried fruit and pears seem likely hobbit food as well.

I didn’t do a birthday cake, but instead made a blackberry crisp since Hobbits seemed to eat the typical berries found in England. Bilbo searched for blackberries in The Hobbit, though they weren’t yet ripe so it’s easy to imagine they used them in many different ways when they were ripe.

Now for something simpler:

If you want easy and last minute, that’s doable as well. One year I did a simpler one of a charcuterie board with cheeses, sausages, bread, butter, apples, nuts and pickles.

 I also added in some baked stuffed mushrooms to get the beloved mushrooms in there.  Again, avoiding cake, I did blackberry tarts, though purchased birthday cake certainly would have been easier.

Next year, if I’m feeling ambitious, I might try pork pie. In The Hobbit, Bombur the dwarf requests pork pie. Whatever menu you do, enjoy! Eat and drink like a Hobbit.