Roasted meats were being prepared in every kitchen throughout the Shire—beef brisket here, lamb there, and pork shoulder across the Water, while chickens and geese were sizzling on spits in between. The Master of Buckland was preparing his famous roast duck, whilst the Thain had an entire deer cooking in the largest fireplace in the Great Smial.
Meanwhile, Hamfast Gamgee was down in his root cellar, fetching up rutabagas and radishes and other root vegetables to be served with the meats to be offered at the Yule Feast. Cooked or raw, none, he knew, would go to waste.