New Year

This is the first of what will- with some compassionate allowances where they are required- become a daily blog or diary relating our life here at Steilston Old School; with a focus on the food we cook, eat, grow and forage here. The Old School is a former stone-built primary school building in South West Scotland with an acre and a half of garden where my wife S and I have lived for nearly one year.  I have enjoyed the privilege of a very restorative Year Off in 2023; in which I focused on improving my health and settling into our new home. As the last peals of the Hogmany bells fade, my thoughts turn to Work; specifically how to make a sustainable and rewarding life here. Cooking is how I have always earned a living, the only marketable skill I possess. Like many chefs, twenty years in the world of restaurants left me overweight, underfed, flirting with alcoholism, and neglecting most of life’s most important things. For S and me, moving here was a way to reconnect with each other and start to take better care of ourselves. We must also find ways to earn money; and perhaps equally importantly we must earn a place in the community and a sense of belonging in the local area. 

A dear old chef pal, B was down for New Years eve with his kind and lovely partner and their 3 year old boy. We laughed a lot and drank too much wine and reminisced a little about old kitchens and dining rooms where we have toiled and laughed before. We are all entering the second half of our lives now and even though we managed to complete a very energetic workout on the morning of New Years Day, the hangover hung around til bedtime. My friend is a co-director of a quite large bakery and has the ambition and disposition to expand it endlessly and successfully. I am much less driven and would perhaps take the rest of life in retirement if not for the nagging anxiety of not earning. As lovely as our visit with them was the quiet the house returns to when friends leave is always a particularly cozy blanket in which to wrap oneself. I have tidied the fridge and made a soup of all our feasting leftovers. Hummus and banana bread. In a few minutes I’ll go and boil rigatoni for the meatball sauce which is sitting in the bottom of the Aga. All things which requires no consultation of recipe books, that come together without thought in a practised domestic flow-state. I didn’t run today, or give the dog a very long walk, and I haven’t started the new workout regime or diet. Tonight I’m drinking the last bottle of red wine for a while and will later finish off all the holiday cheese in the quiet hours in front of the wood stove. Tomorrow the new year and its small ambitions can start in earnest.