reference: a culture's food

[tofindthesun]

and the preservation thereof

also known as things to keep in mind when playing from a group of people with hunter-gatherer mentality/way of living

hunter-gatherer: in which most or all food is obtained from wild plants and animals

meats/proteins: venison, hare, squirrel, fish, duck?, eggs from somewhere
plants/starches: acorns, beechnuts, typical temperate forest plants, roots, tubers
fruits: idk i'll get back to this, probably not much though.

links
↪ wiki, on hunter-gatherers
↪ curing
↪ drying (technical)
↪ smoking, smokehouse
↪ sausage making
↪ jugging (stewing meat in tightly sealed earthenware jug with brine/gravy. can add DORWINIONNNN red wine or animal blood)

instructions
↪ salt-curing for dry curing, brining, and pickling
↪ preserving fresh eggs (cover fresh eggs in finely ground salt, bran, or charcoal. keeps 'fresh' for up to 2 years)
↪ pickling meat

everything gets stored in a cool, dry place, such as specific chambers in thranduil's halls, or wrapped and buried in the ground. can probably be taken out to store nearer to homes once cold weather arrives.

preservation
↪ sun-dry: vegetables and fruits, fish
↪ curing (salt+sugar): meats, sausages, fish, vegetables
↪ candied: fruits, fruit peels,
↪ pickle: fruits, vegetables, meats
↪ hot smoking: meats, fish, sausages
↪ burial (combined with other methods): vegetables, meats, fish
↪ dry-storage: flour (ground roots, nuts, etc), eggs

notes on mirkwood to figure out what the hell grows here
TERRAIN: undulating lowlands
CLIMATE: temperate, perhaps mildly continental (annual varying temperatures due to lack of significant bodies of water nearby). cold winters; southern region has warm summers, northern region has mild summers. wind always blows west.
VEGETATION: heavily forested.
↪ Southern Mirkwood was "clad in a forest of dark fir;"
↪ near Thranduil's caverns were solid stands of oak and beech
↪ It was significant that the trees opposite the doors of Menegroth and those at Thranduil's caverns were beeches, for pure stands appeared as green cathedrals, with the boles forming smooth gray pillars above a carpet of grass.
ELVES: can be found heavily concentrated near thrandui's halls, but also spread out in the woods around it
LANGUAGES: sindarin, silvan, common tongue, no quenyan whatsoever
TRADE: esgaroth (butter, apples), dale (previously?), dorwinion (wine), dwarves (previously? for shinies?)

theoretical things
↪ staple starches are largely based on nut/tuber based, with some grains traded in