Welcome back! This week I’m wrapping up the LotR Bowl cannabis pairings introduced last week. If you’re wondering what the LotR Bowl is, last week’s post can be found here. And I’m working on the strains of Hobbit-leaf analogs that I mentioned last week, so keep an eye out for that in the coming weeks.
So, without any further adieu, I give you the cannabis pairings for The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers & The Return of the King.
Movie #2: The Two Towers
Orc Vitality Drink
Food: We’ve done everything from chocolate milkshakes to Kahlua and rum. Something opaque and brown.
Strain: Have you ever wondered what that brown sludge is that the Uruk Hai pour down Merry and Pippin’s throats as they’re taking the hobbits to Isengard? For the sake of my previously mentioned “tediously exhaustive” nature, I looked it up some years ago so that we could add it to the menu. It’s referred to as the Orc Vitality Drink, and it seems to be their disgusting version of the Miruvor of the elves. The Miruvor was paired with Lotus Blossom, but the orcs are decidedly not like the elves, so we need something dirtier here. I want to get weirdly creative here, but I also want this to be something that people can actually find should they endeavor to do so. With that in mind, I think good ol’ Sour Diesel will do nicely. It’s stoney and uplifting, but has that pungent, earthy, gassy flavor. Perfection.
“Looks like meat’s back on the menu, boys!” – Uruk Hai soldier
Food: Beef jerky.
Strain: The orcs and Uruk Hai have come to blows over eating Merry and Pippin, which leads to an orc losing his head (literally), and that leads to an Uruk Hai declaring the title of this “meal.” That brings me to the strain Meat Breath. I don’t think there’s a better strain for this moment. It’s got the flavor and aroma to match the scene, it’s heady and hard-hitting, and the name is just perfect.
Gollum’s Worms
Food: Gummy worms. Sometimes we’ve gone as far making “dirt” with chocolate pudding and crushed Oreos from which we have to dig the gummy worms out.
Strain: Gollum’s worm-eating may be disgusting, but I’ll take any excuse to eat some gummy worms. That being said, instead of pairing this with an earthy strain, I’m recommending Candyland, for its rich and sweet flavor, and for its uplifting effects. Who couldn’t use a bit of an uplift at this point in the movies? The Fellowship is fractured, one of the members has died, and Frodo and Sam are saddled with Gollum as they make their way to Mordor.
Ent Draft
Food: Birch beer; mead; cocktail of gin, St. Germain, lemon juice, and lemon seltzer.
Strain: As I am writing this, I realize that Merry and Pippin specifically are referenced a lot in the LotR Bowl’s foods and beverages. The Ent Draft is the drink they fight over that makes them grow taller. For a strain pairing here, I recommend Truffala Tree. It’s a sweet strain with an uplifting and energizing high, which fits well with the hobbits’ experience with Treebeard and the Ent Council.
“What’s ‘taters,’ Precious?” -Gollum/Smeagol
Food: Potato soup or stew of some kind.
Strain: Golden Lemon. This strain holds a special place in my cannabis journey: it was the first lemon strain that really caught my attention and got me interested in flavor and terpene profiles and their relative effects. I find this strain talkative and engaging, but relaxing and calming at the same time. It seems a good combination of effects for this point in the story, where Gollum/Smeagol is talking to himself a lot, and everyone (characters in the movie and participants in the LotR Bowl) might enjoy a nice heady but relaxing chill out. The name also has a bit of a tie-in, as Samwise describes taters as “golden.”
“Juicy fish, so nice and sweeeet!” -Gollum/Smeagol
Food: As may be somewhat obvious, the food we eat with Gollum’s eating of raw fish is sushi.
Strain: For a strain pairing, I recommend Salmon River OG. I labored over this one, as it is a more relaxing strain, and with all the food and drink and weed at this point, anyone following this strictly might need a nap, but honestly, at least one person has had an impromptu nap on the couch at every LotR Bowl I’ve attended, so I’m sticking with this one. And you simply cannot beat the name pairing.
Floating Turkey at Isengard
Food: Deli turkey.
Strain: This is kind of a throw-away snack, as we’ll be having more deli meats during the very next meal, but we find the turkey just floating around the flooded Isengard grounds so hilariously charming that we have added it into many of our LotR Bowls. Add to this that we’re currently at 16 strains before this (if you don’t add one for Boromir’s death) and 4 more after it, and I had to break the rule that I’d make all these recommendations from memory as best I could. I went to Leafly and searched for strains that have “bird” in the name. I couldn’t help myself. I’ve sincerely been putting a lot of thought into this, and this one had me stumped. I had finished writing this whole piece from top to bottom, all three movies, and I still had this one to write. Forgive me. All that being said, I suggest Dirty Bird, if you can get it. It’s a myrcene-dominant 50/50, so I hope it’s got the balanced high that would work well here. I’m open to suggestions.
Movie #3: The Return of the King
Isengard Spoils
Food: Charcuterie, apples, beer.
Strain: This is one of those scenes where there is both food and pipe-weed already. While I was at first tempted to match the strain more with the food, I was reminded during the most recent LotR Bowl that we see strain names on the barrels in the Isengard storeroom. The most visible is Southern Furthing, and so I would like to honor that with Southern Lights. It’s a light, typically lower potency strain with an uplifting head high and a relaxing body high.
Feast of Rohan
Food: Beer, bread, cheese.
Strain: Due to the beer, bread, and cheese, all of which have appeared in other scenes and meals, I think it’s time to finally get a cheese strain into this list, and so I offer up Critical Cheese. It’s pungent and cheesy and I find it’s got a euphoric and stoney high that puts me in a good mood for the kind of snark that we usually find ourselves engaging in during LotR Bowls. Running jokes at different events have included: Gimli always seems to be having a stroke, this Dungeons & Dragons game sucks, Frodo is having a terrible time at summer camp, and declaring “And my… fill-in-the-blank” whenever it seems most or least appropriate.
The Denethor Snack
Food: Roasted chicken drumsticks, grapes, cherry tomatoes, and wine.
Strain: This scene can go in a couple of directions as far as a strain pairing. As Denethor eats in a gratuitously messy manner, we endeavor to do the same, biting the tomatoes at each other and attempting to splash tomato guts on our fellow loved ones, in what is perhaps the most juvenile bit in this whole event. But the tone of the scene is terribly somber, as the men of Rohan, led by Faramir, ride to what is certainly their deaths, all as Pippin sings a sad hobbit song for Denethor’s perverse pleasure. There’s a lot to work with here. I’m offering Grape Pie, for the food-thematic tie-in, and its happy head high with anxiety reducing qualities.
Faramir BBQ
Food: We tastelessly added a barbeque or barbeque-inspired snack here, in honor of Faramir almost being burned alive on a funeral pyre by Denathor. We’ve had bbq pulled pork sliders, bbg boneless wings, and bbq potato chips.
Strain: Fire OG, also called Fire OG Kush sometimes. I’ll admit, I’ve only had this strain as Diamonds & Sauce, but not only does the sauce part (bbq, anyone?) make it even funnier to me, but this strain is perfect for this point in the movie and event. It’s a straight to the head evening ender of a high. It’s not so much that it’s sleepy (Faramir wasn’t going quietly into that endless sleep!) but it’s heavy and euphoric, and as we’ve only just over an hour left of this whole undertaking, let’s finish this off right.
Lighting of the Beacon Towers
One other moment in the movies that is on our LotR Bowl schedule but is neither food nor drink – but I think lends itself perfectly to this cannabis pairing concept – is at about 48 minutes into The Return of the King. Pippin – defying the wishes of Denathor – climbs the beacon tower and lights it, starting the chain of beacon fires that reaches all the way to Rohan, calling their aid against the forces of Mordor. During this scene, we have candles at the ready, we turn off the lights, and one person (usually a host) lights their candle, and then lights the candle of the person next to them from their own candle. That person then lights the next person’s candle, and so on, until we have lit all of our beacon candles. It’s a strangely moving moment, no matter how many times we’ve done it. More than almost any other aspect of the LotR Bowl, I think this would be most missed if we failed to do it. It may be beat by birthday cake, “It comes in pints,” and the Denethor Snack, but perhaps that’s it. It’s iconic for us. As with everything else here, you don’t need to add this, but I guess my point is more that having those little personal touches is what makes this event so meaningful. It’s a ritual that our chosen family practices that has just as much meaning as it did the first time, even years later and sometimes many years apart. I was so excited to share it with my kids when they participated in their first LotR Bowl recently. And if you’re still reading for a strain recommendation, I don’t have one for this, but instead I would suggest either everyone following the same practice as the candles, but with joints, or simply passing a joint or a bowl around the group. Something that represents the coming together of the group, and in this case also is exemplary of the social nature of cannabis culture. Shit, as I write this, now I desperately want to do this even more than I did when I started conceptualizing it. So, whatever strain or strains work for you and yours.
And that brings us to the end of our menu, as we traditionally do it. We’ve had so many variations over the years, and there have been many LotR Bowls of which I haven’t personally been involved, so if this is something you’re inspired to do (with the cannabis or without), I encourage you to be creative. As my college family has moved from our early-to-mid-twenties to forty-ish and up, dietary restrictions have had to be incorporated into our planning. We’ve added gluten free recipes, a few more heart-healthy options in general, less beer, and lower lactose cheeses, to name a few. This is an ever-evolving, almost living thing. My point is, make this (or something like this) your own! Do this for Harry Potter, or the Back to the Future Trilogy, Delicious in Dungeon, Avatar the Last Airbender, or anything where there’s some organic way of tying in food, drink, cannabis, or whatever.
As always, I hope you enjoyed reading. I hope you enjoy this idea. And I hope you can do something like this with your loved ones. I’m hoping to put together a whole cannabis-infused menu for the LotR Bowl as well, but that’s a major undertaking, as I don’t want to just take my same old recipes and just substitute “butter” with “cannabutter.” So keep an eye out. It’ll probably come in many parts, perhaps even single recipe by single recipe over time. And keep an eye out for the forthcoming post on strains of hobbit leaf.
Stoned Coast 