Welcome to Food for the Ages. At Food for the Ages we are dedicated to cooking with curiosity from the ground up and making the most of the food we have on hand for the health and well-being of our friends and family. I am a burned out EA who left the corporate world to share some of my favorite ageless recipes with you.
As we all know, living well at any age starts with great food, plenty of exercise and rest. These are investments and just like tanking up your truck at the gas station, they fuel the work of your life.
This blog will talk mostly about good food and creating life balance between food and movement. I am big on Pilates, bicycling, Nordic skiing, downhill skiing and hiking and just plain walking.
I began cooking in 1978 when I worked for Sir Gordon and Lady Marion MacMillan at Finlaystone Estate, near Langbank, in Renfrewshire, Scotland. We were called slaves because we worked 40+hours/week for £10. We were included in the family’s life and ate all of our meals along side the MacMillan family. We shared in their various social occasions, such as Lady M and Sir Gordon’s 50th wedding anniversary, Scottish reel dancing, musical evenings and the like. Every night after dinner we were invited with the rest of the family up to the Drawing Room where there was always a fire burning and where Lady M sat and worked at her embroidery. She embroidered 5 handkerchiefs with my name on them during the time I was there and presented them to me before I left. I was very touched by this. The MacMillans are a hard working, intelligent and kind family. So learning to cook there was a pleasure for me. Lady M always encouraged me to cook and Jane always encouraged me to return to college; I ended up doing both!
View from the back lawn of Finlaystone Estate, Home of the Chief of the Clan MacMillan. Photo by Kirsty Jarman
Most Sunday’s we had 13 people or more in the dining room table and we served local favorites such as the squab the gamekeeper Mr. Blackistock would shoot from the sky over the MacMillan’s barley fields. They were considered a nuisance there like here but probably tasted better than your average city pigeon might. Blackistock would bring them in over his shoulder and hang them in the game larder until they were “high”–tender enough to pluck, prepare and feast upon.
In the scullery I leaned to skin rabbits, pluck ducks and chickens, filet fish and baking, and jam making! And I still had time to get called down from Cooky’s Quarters, just above the kitchen, where Lady M caught me devouring Wuthering Heights on her time. “Work comes before rest, Cooky'” she would say. Good advice that I give to my kids now. But more on Scotland later.
Thus began my love affair with creating good food. I hope to share my recipes and thoughts with you and I would love to hear from you.
Thanks for for reading and sharing your comments, thoughts and recipes!
Cooky