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It's february 16th, which means @Glitter_brawl, our daughter & I are watching all 3 Lord Of The Rings films as a weird memorial to my dad, while eating _every food item shown on screen_. This is #ThereAndSnackAgain, and we're in for nearly 50 courses over the next 12 hours... 
1. Already seen a hobbit honk down a cake in a montage, so first course is a litte slice of cake with a mug of weak, sweetish tea
2. Bilbo is chatting about butter spread over too much bread (know the feeling mate), and we're in his larder, so we're having a very small bite of buttered bread and cheese. 6 month old is monstering the bread.
3. Now merry has had a good chomp of an apple, so we've followed suit. Hobbiton is bloody relentless.
4. Finally for this stretch of the film, it's Bilbo's 111st birthday, and his cake is *right there* while he's doing his speech, so we're having another nibble. Little and often is the key.
(Ps if you're just landing on this and want to know what the crikey is going on, you can read about #ThereAndSnackAgain, and follow the menu along, here: nate-crowley.com/single-post/20…)
5. Oh bollocks, we just saw a cheeseboard at the pub where merry & pippin are having a rager, so we had one more bite of bread & cheddar. We're playing this on hard mode today, so if food is shown onscreen at all we have to have at least a taste. (Not drinks though)
6. Frodo's packed bread and apple to leave the shire, so we've finished the apple and the slice of bread we carved at the start of hobbiton. Now we've put the cooked breakfast on to grill, as we saw sam do it.
(Also 7 - sam smashes a mouthful of bread for no reason before he goes to sleep on the first night out of the shire. Hobbits are pathologically obsessed with bread.)
8. Merry and Pippin show up with some stolen veg, so I decide to cosplay the moment
9. Peter Jackson cameos to munch a carrot, so @Glitter_brawl follows suit
10. Second breakfast (lol no it's the tenth)
11. The hobbits get interrupted by mean ghost kings during their breakfast, so we'll have to finish it without them 😥
Shout out to the man himself, Isengard Kingdom Brunel
12. Frodo just got given a heaing herb so smashing a shaky handful of basil I guess??
13. Had a massive pint of ice cold fizzy water right as liv tyler summoned the magic river horses. Badly needed that.
Right, disc change - so time for a 15 min cleardown/prep break, and then we're onto the second half of Fellowship! Portion sizes been tiny so far, so we're feeling vigorous.
And we're off again. The rhythm of #ThereAndSnackAgain is really odd - the first third of Fellowship is just a non stop pantry beasting, and then the movie just mellows right out. Still, as we're playing Hard Mode, there are some surprises coming
14. The boys have stopped for sausages and bread befoe the Gap of Rohan, so we're sharing a sandwich made of the weathertop leftovers. And an apple rolled past boromir with little justification, so we're having that too.
15. Ok so this arsehole might be stretching the definition of 'food', but the tentacles getting lopped off are pretty appetising so I've bashed out a quick squid salad
16. And although his line was just before the squid-ganking, I couldn't resist Gimli's enthusiastic promise of "red meat on the bone", so I did this single bit of beef rib. Also pictured: my daughter absolutely *marvelling* at the sight of old Gims himself
Ah, the fellowship has reached the Basement of Curiosity
Poor old Frodo, always getting stabbed in slow motion
Daughter took one look at the elves in lothlorien and dropped an absolute bumleopard of a shit; she has a dwarven heart
17. Lembas bread! (This year we'll be using Warburtons thins)
The #ThereAndSnackAgain group chat is currently just 2 pages of people pressing F for Boromir.
And that's Fellowship of the Ring done with! I'm glad you're with me, @Glitter_brawl. If anyone is up and wants to play along with #ThereAndSnackAgain, we'll be starting Two Towers at 10am!
Starting Two Towers a few minutes late due to orc prep - if you're just tuning in to #ThereAndSnackAgain, you can follow the menu along here... this year, @Glitter_brawl and i are playing on HARD MODE, with almost double the courses
First course of TT is course 18: "the best salt in the shire", which Sam brings on the journey in case they find a chicken to roast. We licked some smoked garlic salt, while thinking about this chicken, which is in the fridge for later.
19. Following up with a scrap of lembas bread - one of the last times sam will be able to enjoy it without being fatshamed by the sinewy grey baby known as gollum
20. Flagging? Fatigued? You need ORC ENERGY!
21. LOOKS LIKE MEAT'S BACK ON THE MENU BOYS
Before and after
(I hasten to add that a) we're no way gonna eat all that orc now or we'll fail the marathon and b) we've got mates coming over later to help us eat all the leftovers - there will be next to no waste from today's feasts!)
22. Gollum's had a worm and failed to eat some lembas, so we've had a jelly worm sweet and a half-hearted nibble on a warburton's thin
23. Minor point but worth replicating - gimli tastes a bit of orc blood while tracking in Fangorn, so we just had a spoonful of the orc's roasting juices
24. For when Merry and Pippin start getting bungled on ent wee, we've decided to use this coconut water because it's fun to chug and makes u taller
25. When the refugee kids from Rohan show up at Edoras, they get fed what looks like a red soup and some bits of ham and cheese, so we've made these lil bowls of warming soup
26. When Sam and Gollum have their barney about how to eat rabbits, it's time for this triple course of rabbit stew, fish & chips (tiny portion as it only gets a shout out from Sam), and po-tay-toes cooked three ways: boiled, mashed, and stuck in a stew! WHAT'S TATERS PRECIOUS?
Oh wow, my daughter just took a long hard look at gollum arguing with himself and did a completely wild, braying baby laugh. She finds gollum hilarious, apparently?
27. Oh shit, here we go. The nadir of the whole experience, when Eowyn cooks a canonically garbage fish soup for Aragorn and he's so upset he smokes his pipe til he passes out. I've done my best to replicate this atrocity.
As ever, the strangest part of this whole day is tipping a saucepan of inedible fish soup into the garden, technically in memory of my dad. Whole new way of pouring one out.
28. Just got treated to a really arbitrary panning shot of some potatoes in helm's deep, so we've joylessly chomped down on a boiled spud. Second half of two towers is a bit of a low point in #ThereAndSnackAgain
29. It takes a surprisingly long time in this trilogy to get to a point where you see gollum actually chomp down on a pond boy, bit here's where the magic happens:
My daughter is channeling gollum:
Complete Lad of the Trilogy is that one orc outside helm's deep whose whole job is just to stand on a boulder being hench and making sealion noises
I can really imagine Merry and Pippin doing something a lot like the Bros documentary, 30 years after the events of LOTR
30. The river has been released, Isengard is being quenched, and we're having a lovely, digestion-aiding herbal tea to represent all the chemical steam coming out of all the orc pits
Ok so the lads have just busted open Saruman's storeroom and there's all the food in the world on show - but we're not going to eat it til we see them stock up onscreen at the start of ROTK. And with that, we're just about done with Two Towers!
Ok! We are 2/3 done with #ThereAndSnackAgain - time for a quick break and a clearup, and then it's time for Return Of The King at around 2.35!
Decided to have a shower as I was beginning to feel I had taken on some grim odours. Fresh as an elf now and ready to begin ROTK at 3pm sharp. The first half of this film has some BRUTAL food moments, so I'm glad we've saved the last of our appetites.
For course 31, it's time for Gollum's grimmest mouthful yet, and I've decided to actually crouch in front of the telly and eat it with my hands, cos I'm all about the method
Luckily that bit's over now, and so after a brief course 32 (bite of lembas bread from frodo), it's on to 33: the raided Isengard larder, featuring - at its centre - Gimli's problematic fave: Salted Pork
34.
(The edoras feast also contained roast pork and cheese, but since those were already on the Isengard larder platter we just sort of shrugged and kept nibbling)
35. Just clocked two gondorian soldiers having a dismal bowl of stew at Osgiliath, so we've had a couple of spoonfuls of the rabbit stew from earlier
36. That vile thin monkey gollum is scattering the last of the lembas bread to the wind in an attempt to frame sam, so we're going to consume the final morsels of the package we opened back in Lothlorien, 7 hours ago...
37. Here we
Here we
Here we f*cken go
Here we
Here we f*cken go
Oof, that scene's brutal. To do it right, you really have to grimly pack the chicken & tomatoes into your mouth, taking loveless gulps of grape juice & staring at the screen as a man rides to his death. It's pretty intense, & arguably the final boss of this marathon. Or is it?...
Denethor's a shit dad rt if you agree
Aaahhhh, he's coming. The best character in the trilogy. Possibly the best character in fiction full stop. The Big Man himself. It won't be long now!
38. GROND! GROND! GROND! GROND!
So, admittedly #ThereAndSnackAgain gets into a really quiet patch in the second half of Return of the King, as nobody really stops fighting long enough to eat. But we're still watching away - the ghosts have shown up to beat up all the elephants, and the end is in sight!
Although the group chat is *still* just pages of people chanting for Grond
39. Twelve and a half hours and thirty nine courses since we started, we've finally reached the slopes of Mt Doom, and Sam is reminding Frodo of the taste of strawberries to kee him going. Luckily, we have the real thing.
Press F for gollum
Just bit the final chipolata in half to represent Gollum's final bit of finger food
And now it's time for the 40th and final course, as we return to the shire - tea and cake, just like we started the day with. We've been all the way #ThereAndSnackAgain.
But it wouldn't be a LOTR thread without multiple endings, would it? First, a grand salute to everyone who joined in for their own #ThereAndSnackAgain marathon at home. There were nine of us did it today - a full fellowship - and my friends, you bow to no one.
Bravo to @olliegerlach @helena_heald @RubyReckless @Mark_Perrell @EthanTBale @ZappityZ @jazz_banjo @PsyX3 and of course my Sam, @Glitter_brawl. Oh and our daughter, who was sort of like a friendly gollum. And evn without her that's 9. Oh well I guess I was bill the pony.
And thanks of course to mum and dad. There are some things that time (or even a dozen plus cheese courses) cannot mend. But if there's one thing these stories have taught me, it's that that's ok. After all, not all tears are evil.
Thanks for joining us x
Thanks for joining us x
(Ps that "thanks for joining us" was addressed to you lot, not my parents. Ghosts, unlike nazgul, are not real)
