The pain is gone...

[serendipity8791]

Now that I've eaten... maybe it was hunger pain, although my stomach is on my left side and it was the right side that hurt?

Either way, my inner hobbit is satisfied... Speaking of, one little question... would Hobbits have known yoghurt? It has been a favoured food in some places of the world for more than 10,000 years, maybe even longer...

Comments

[beehay.livejournal.com]

I would think that since they have butter and cheese, exotic foodstuffs such as coffee, and the knowledge and ability to make complicated confections (e.g. scones, cakes, etc.) that they would have been quite capable of culturing yogurt. I mean, as you say, yogurt's been around for thousands of years. At least a few thousand years longer than hobbits...although, I dunno, it was invented by accident in the middle east, so who knows if it would be known to that part of the world. *Shrug*

[serendipity8791.livejournal.com]

Exactly... But since they have cheese, I don't really see why they wouldn't have something similar to yoghurt... Looking at it this way, though, they have tomatoes, potatoes and tobacco, which are all New World indigenous plants, although pipe-weed might've been a completely different plant.

[beehay.livejournal.com]

Pipe-weed is a pure form of tobacco that doesn't have the harmful characteristics of our modern-day tobacco strain, but I think it's the same plant.

I think that Tolkien *intended* these plants *to* be Old World indigenous, given how he explained the creation of Arda and the peoples in it. Just because people in England and Ireland didn't eat potatoes or tomatoes doesn't mean they didn't originate there and were forgotten. Middle Earth changed quite drastically in a geographical sense, so why not horticulturally? Seems a lot easier to swallow, personally.