Elvish food

[lindil]

but they nonetheless have to eat and sleep like others

as for sleep, they did NOT need it, as Legolas makes plain in the great race after the Uruks in TTT.

As for food, I imagine what we see from Gildor's company to rather representative [mostly vegetarian and rather light].

I am sure both Rivendell and Lorien grew what they could, anjd also while we never hear of trading with Hobbits [for Rivendell] the remant of the Dunedain lived c. 150 miles down the Bruinen from Imladris and may well have been their primary source of agricultural imports.

I imagine meat-eating was [as was common in many older cultures] primarily associated with feasting for the elves.

I can imagine then eating salads myself.

btw the 'corn' of lembas [cited in the Lembas fragment from HoM-E12] is generally considerred to be an archaic way of saying grain.

So if they grew grain for Gildor's bread and for Lembas it is hard to imagine Lorien Rivendell did not have a large and considerable agricultuarl spread somewhere.

I imagine most families would tend to have familiel gardens as opposed to giant mordor/archer-daniels-midland style corporate farming having one mono-crop for miles.

Also back to livestock, another reason the elves may have eaten far less meat than the average 'westerner' today is that you have to feed livestock many pounds of grain or many more acres of food that you would get by eating the grain/acreage directly.