While building and creating something for ALFA content and my never ending search for more lore about my Fav. race in FR I ended up with this info where Ed was kind enough to offer some info regarding it. Thought of sharing it for all of you Elf lovers.
Elves derive energy from contact with sunlight and (purer the better) water (including winter ice and snow) in a way that humans cannot, aiding them in metabolic processes (including healing and actual body growth), but they do still need to eat and drink as almost all creatures of Faerûn do. (The sunlight and water allow elves to derive much more nourishment [complete breakdown of ingested materials] from food than the average human does, so that an elf can 'go for longer' on, say, a handful of berries than a human can.)
Most mythals 'boost' this process until access to water and sunlight ALMOST replace food (elves existing within a healthy mythal can dine only sparingly, perhaps once a month, if they wish to - - although most enjoy the tastes and sensations of enjoying good food and wine, and eat regularly, their bodies storing excess energy in a chemical manner that increases endurance rather than putting on body fat). So yes, your supposition about mythals is quite correct; note that in terms of sheer survival (as opposed to culinary enjoyment), a large number of wild berry-bushes inside the confines of a surviving mythal is enough to support a surprisingly large number of elves, particularly if they make forays forth to go hunting.
One of the reasons many elves dwell and trade with humans (and other races), aside from the endless entertainment the strivings of these other races provide (and there are elves who follow the deeds and careers of non-elven individuals or families as avidly as some real-world folk follow the unfolding lives of characters on favourite television or movie series), is that these other races are a ready source of food that elves can buy rather than spending as much time on procuring and preparation as they'd otherwise have to do.
Most elves, unless they've grown up getting their bodies used to other fare, NEED raw fruit and vegetables, and raw fish when they can get it, and enjoy subtly seasoned raw and cooked fruit, vegetable, and fish dishes, but can subsist largely on meat if they have to [enjoying it most when superbly seasoned and mixed with plant flavours through skilled cuisine], and when blood from the meat can be separately combined with other substances and imbibed. Most elves LOVE bread goods (especially light, sugary pastries), and fine wines. Elves can of course subsist on a wide variety of foodstuffs, but these are their favourites.
In a recent answer to Asgetrion, I mentioned that half-elven dwellings are crowded with growing plants; the same holds true for elven homes, and many of these plants are edible (in ways that a human wouldn't necessarily find palatable; i.e. there's much eating of raw leaves and roots that human tongues find bitter or violently hard on digestion).
This doesn't mean that elves trying to 'blend in' in a human-dominated urban setting don't have rooms or areas or even entire floors of their dwellings that are plant-free, or that can swiftly appear so (there are spells that can levitate a room's-worth of plants up to float near a lofty ceiling until visitors are gone [or the elf residents need something to dump on the heads of unwanted intruders], just as there are spells that can transport water from afar to appear near such ceilings, to fall as a fine mist, for watering indoor plants). As far as self-sufficiency (earning coin, or having material for barter) goes, many elves tend in their homes plants that can be sold as herbs, plants that can be dried, ground, and mixed into spices, and flowers.
Elves 'seed' forest areas, farming not as humans do (with tilled, sunlit clear areas), but rather cross-pollinating plants, irrigating plants, grafting and planting seedlings and all of that [employing some magics not covered in spell lists to date, that enable them to so 'cut' plants in far less damaging ways than, say, a human gardener's knife] to continuously spread and replenish supplies of favoured edible plants, moving new specimens to spots with optimal growing conditions so that these 'lightly tended, for all passing elves' plantings (as opposed to the common human "this field is MINE, and the crop yield must be maximized" approach) outstrip harvesting for food.
In this way, elves do alter forests, over long periods, continually 'improving' them [if the alterations a gardener makes on wild nature can be said to be 'improvements']. Yes, elves go hunting, especially to eliminate creatures that eat a lot of plants (bunnies, bears, and large avian flocks that ravage berry-bushes), but the answer to 'what percentage' of elves are engaged in farming or food-gathering must be: almost everybody; it's something most elves spend several brief periodsof time every day 'working on,' on an ongoing basis (living in harmony with the land means you CAN'T strip it, but must encourage renewal and regrowth of all you take, and more).
The more urban elves you mention, lacking ready access to such wild foraging areas (and if day trips out from the settlement are possible, they will be done, in family or just large bands for safety if need be), buy fresh vegetables and fruit in markets whenever possible, and dine on whatever else they can buy when such provender isn't available.
You're quite correct: in urban settings whenever possible, "most 'common' elf families have some inconspicuous, small-scale fruit orchards and vegetable gardens."
So saith Ed.
Ed replies:
Certainly. Elves have created and refined a huge variety of incredibly complicated "special feast dishes" (some involving cantrips that allow dry ingredients to be "breezed" [a human observer would probably describe this as 'swirl-mixed'] in midair), so I'll confine myself here just to a modest selection of plain 'everyday' fare. Please note that the drinking of wines is common with most meals, both dry wines with the main fare and sweet dessert wines to finish - - and that (to elves; humans and halflings may find them potent indeed) most wines aren't nearly as readily intoxicating as most human wines are, to humans.
Quaffs/Slakes (non-alcoholic):
Sprucebark quaff (cleanses palate/freshens breath before meals and after)
Mintwater
various berry-juice drinks (unfermented)
Vegetables (eaten raw, sometimes diced and fried with herbs and other vegetables):
Cress
Leek (also chives, hotwhips [spring onions], searshoots [wild Faerûnian vine onions]: these last are a staple of elven cuisine, and if left to dry until fall, can grow as hot as garlic, but never give elves "garlic breath")
Parsley
Coushoots (the green, growing "new" shoots of certain forest vines, such as Chokevine and Thaelthorn)
Greenspear (asparagus, a staple with many elves, both raw and steamed with herbs)
various ferns, from fiddleheads to stewed broadleaves
Brownbuds (brown Faerûnian wild forest radishes)
Fruits:
Many sorts of berries
Rhubarb
Roseapple (a mild-flavored apple-like fruit that grows at the thorny junctures of a particular sort of forest vine, the "rosethorn," that grows abundantly in the Heartlands)
Soups (usually served cold):
Leek
Turtle
Blalatha (certain mushrooms, diced and then boiled)
Darblalatha (certain mushrooms, diced, then fried with leeks, and then the mixed result is boiled)
Haendur (simmered glow worms, seasoned with particular sharp-tasting leaves)
Blackbark (literally, the stewed bark of four or five different sorts of forest bushes; tastes and looks a little like a thick beef stew)
Snake (four sorts, beheaded and then boiled until skins separate from flesh; skins, like heads, are discarded)
Meat and Fish Dishes (some elves eat flesh, some do not):
Seared Rabbit
Thaenwing (spiced-and-diced grouse, partridge, quail, and woodguth [wild turkey]; most elves are revolted at the thought of eating owls, whom they deem "intelligent souls," and believe dining on raptors brings misfortune on oneself and one's kin)
Silvereyes (fish stew, of silverflash and other small forest stream fish)
Sornstag (roasted hotspice [equivalent of curried] venison)
Surkyl (beaver: belly-slashed to insert leek and herbs, then rolled in clay and fire-baked, to remove hide and quills with hardened mud shell)
Hooroun (moose, always marinated with particular herbs to counteract the natural seasonal tastes of spruce in winter and spring [when moose have been eating evergreen tips] and swamp in summer and fall [when moose have been grazing on swamp vegetation])
Lulleth (muskrat and equivalents [from shrews and voles to "branchcats," which are a tree-climbing Faerûnian cross between a mink and a raccoon], usually simmered into a thick stew; most elves dislike boar, but when they do eat it, treat it in this same way)
Groundsnake (beheaded and roasted on skewers over a fire)
Trail Food:
various nuts and dried berries
mintnut cheese
Taece (fire-dried tiny forest-stream fish, that look a little like brown, finger-length sardines, contain a lot of fat, and are "crunched" [eaten whole, bones and all])
Marruth (sometimes disparagingly called "root pies" by dwarves and humans): pastries into which cooked spiced and herbed mashes of vegetables have been baked, and then let cool, and then rolled into rallow leaves (heavy, oily, waterproof broadleaves) to keep them from rotting, and carried for eating cold when on the move
Desserts:
Mint jelly
tarts made of various berries, sweetened with a mash of berry juices
I could go on at length, but I'm afraid I haven't the time just now to set down a lot of detailed recipes, so I hope this helps. Elven cuisine is more sophisticated than human, though it uses almost no non-forest ingredients, so if you have to improvise, look at some of the dishes whipped up on, say, IRON CHEF and think of "forest-friendly equivalent ways" of making some of them.
So saith Ed.
