Since I have joined the Order on the day of the Shades concert in Falathlorn, I have been on many travels. On these travels, that brought me far outside the Shire, I was not only looking for ore and new cooking recipes. I was also looking for traces of my pa, who had left Needlehole when I was a little lass.
I found loads of ore. Better not tell Master Jiro about it.
I also found many great cooking recipes.
I even found traces of Pa. His former neighbours in Staddle did remember him and told me of his sister, my aunt, but they, too, had no idea where he had gone. After Ulfar brought us this book of his, which I am now carrying around with me all the time, Ma assumed he was dead. But I gave not up on travelling and went even as far as Lhanuch where the inhabitants are not only very unfriendly to every hobbit; they even did not serve more than three meals a day and kept me starving most of the time!
But there were also trips where I did not think of these things at all: My beloved fishing trips. When I was planning another ice fishing trip, what I was thinking of were salmon and flounders and carps and new recipes to cook and to fry them.
I had done many lonely fishing trips to the cold North with only my Pony Salama. Salama is a gift from the Lossoth people and loves running through snow and ice and is not afraid of going ice fishing with me at all. I was surprised and pleased when Master Tallic and Miss Lina offered to come along. And after I posted a note on our kinship board, the expedition became much larger than I thought. It was great having so many hobbit friends with me up there in the cold lands, which I had travelled alone before that.
First, we went to the local shaman. That is a kind of a Lossoth mathom master. Miss Haütha wanted us to have a good catch and did an impressive ceremony at a fireplace. She asked some local spirits for good fishing luck. They were the spirit of a strange toad (although, a little I had the impression that was a blunder) and then the spirit of a white cat.
Unfortunately I could not understand a word the spirits said, and also not everything Miss Haütha said, but I was hoping for good luck anyway. And then the recipe she told us about! The most impressive fish recipe I ever heard about. But how on Middle-earth am I supposed to find fresh mammoth meat in the Shire, let alone a mammoth in one piece? I hope next time I go to that place Miss Haütha will be able to show me how to do it and I will have the chance to get a taste of salmon in peikko in mammoth – and all the other kinds of meat that were involved.
Miss Haütha sent us to a hunter who waited outside the village for us. And a strange hunter Master Laki was, and strange stories he told – of which again I did not understand half the meaning. But finally he led us to a hidden fishing place that we surely would never have found without the help of a local.
The fishing started and soon our baskets were filled with the most delicious species the cold Northern sea has to offer. We kept a fire burning to prepare some of them at the spot. And then I pulled out that huge salmon! It was gigantic and I even doubt it would have fitted into a mammoth at all. That was enough to sate all hobbits of our expedition.
The things I found when I cut this salmon open I better not mention, even in my diary. Who knows who sneaks into my burrow when I am not around… And actually the best of all was frying the fish and eating it anyway.
It was a great day, sharing the ice fishing with so many other hobbit friends. At the end, one after one had to leave and finally the hunter Laki took Miss Ormaldana and me back to the village. I was not alarmed when on our way he made friendly compliments about my cooking. But I should have been, because next thing he offered me to take me as his second wife because of it! Scary, no? A tall lankyshank? Well, I refused as politely as I could and was glad when heading back to the Shire on my faithful pony Salama.
And here I am, writing into my diary and still unengaged. My neighbour Master Tallic has written a lovely song about the hunter Laki and his adventures, and so this ice fishing trip and this one-of-a-kind lankyshank hunter shall never be forgotten in the Shire.
