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Originally Posted by Thinlomien
I'm too lazy to find the exact quote, but isn't Sam in Mordor dreaming about waddling through the river? If hobbits fished like standing in a river and piercing the fish with harpoons?
And of course, we're forgetting one of the most famous parts of the chapter of Herbs and stewed rabbit! Sam boasts to Gollum about S. Gamgee's fish and chips. That, if something, proves that hobbits ate fish.
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There are lots of ways of
fishing that don't involve getting in a boat, from trout tickling to basket casting, to even stringing up nets across a watercourse to catch whatever might swim or drift that way. I'm sure Hobbits would think of some ingenious way of catching tasty fisheses that didn't involve nassty boatses!
And it seems Gollum himself is skilled in the art of trout tickling, something I can imagine many a Hobbit lad doing on a hot day.
I wonder if there was a water bailiff in the Shire, waiting to catch people without a permit?
It's happened to me, that's why I find the thought appealing...
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Originally Posted by Jenny Hallu
Perhaps Tolkien decided that potatoes, in the 450 some odd years since their introduction in Europe, had become such an integral part of the culture and cuisine of the British Isles he could not separate them. Or maybe it didn't occur to him to try. Sometimes I fear we read too much into the tale...As my husband would say, "Sometimes a red car is just a red car," signifying nothing beyond the idea that perhaps Tolkien had a soft spot for fish and chips, or for tobacco.
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I think taters have become such a strong feature in British cuisine that we almost think they are a native vegetable! Part of the reason (amongst many) why Ireland suffered so badly during the potato famine was that they had such an agricultural monoculture and had few other crops to fall back on when blight struck! I know that where I grew up there were fields as far as you could see which were devoted to growing taters.
EDIT: I've just found out that tobacco will grow just about anywhere - it's a big crop in Sweden apparently, where chewing tobacco is popular - it's called snus. What's more, it's totally legal and duty free. So pipeweed is perfectly feasible in a Shire which is equivalent to England.