I think that banana bread is a very hobbit-like food. I could imagine Bilbo having a slice with his tea. The thing is I cannot for the life of me imagine a fucking banana in Middle-Earth. They don’t belong there. Solution: banana bread just spawns in the Shire and no one fucking knows where it comes from
Someone’s importing caraway seeds for Bilbo to put in
“…two beautiful round seed-cakes which he had baked that afternoon for his after-supper morsel.”
Someone’s importing po-tay-toes for Gaffer Gamgee.
To-mah-toes (or to-may-toes if you must) got mentioned in the first edition of “The Hobbit”, though they were transformed into pickles for later editions.
Tobacco was also - and still is - mentioned in “The Hobbit”, and only became pipe-weed in “The Lord of the Rings”. This is a canon indication that, despite wishful thinking (and Radagast in “The Hobbit” movies didn’t help) pipe-weed is regular baccy, not weed.
The Prologue of “The Fellowship of the Ring” further describes it as:
“…a variety probably of Nicotiana,”
…and goes on to say:
“The Men of Gondor call it sweet galenas and esteem it only for the fragrance of its flowers…”
That’s entirely in keeping with Real World tobacco-scented colognes like Alt-Innsbruck, Acqua d'Italia Tabacco e Bergamot and Molton Brown Tobacco Absolute. I have them all, and very pleasant they are, too.
So banana bread in The Shire isn’t too much of a stretch - though if Tolkien had bothered, it’s likely he’d have dipped into his fount of philological knowledge and called the bananas something else entirely.
Which would, of course, have fitted perfectly into some appropriate language of Middle Earth. :->
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I think that banana bread is a very hobbit-like food. I could imagine Bilbo having a slice with his…
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