Meet Auntie Chrissie

Young Chrissie

Christina Reid Forbes (née Abernethy) was born in 1904 at her parents' farm, Bakebare, in Drumoak, Aberdeenshire, Scotland.  Chrissie came from a large family, the second youngest of eleven (from two mothers) and the only daughter of the second family.  (Her mother was also named Christina, née Greig.)  My Grandfather, Douglas, was in fact the baby of the family.  
Inevitably Chrissie developed an interest in cooking and baking, one can only assume through supporting her mother in feeding her large collection of brothers, and certainly cemented through her attendance at the Aberdeen School of Domestic Science (the "Do' School") and perfected through the following twenty years keeping house for her mother. 

Chrissie, far right, at the
Do School

Chrissie married James (Jim) Forbes in 1944.  Uncle Jim started his career modestly as a banker in Aberdeen prior to fighting in France during the First World War, followed by an interesting career in Africa for 25 years which is shrouded a little in family legend but I believe that his role was as an engineer.  They lived in a beautiful house in Milltimber, and having no children of their own, Christina became a very prominent figure in the life of my father, Douglas Grieve Abernethy, and subsequently her three great-grandnieces.  
To illustrate how central my father and our family were in Chrissie's life, she sold the beautiful Milltimber home to my parents in the late 1970s when she was ready to downsize, and it became our first family home and the one where I was brought home to from the hospital when born in 1981.  We named our spare room "Auntie Chrissie's room" and when we relocated to Edinburgh in 1992, the spare room there also gained the title "Chrissie's room" even though she wasn't alive to see that second family home.

1985 - Chrissie with great-nieces - l-r Lynsey (me), Kate
& Jane

Together with my Grandmother, Agnes Abernethy, these two women conjure wonderful culinary memories from my childhood out in Deeside.  My memories persist of my Grandma particularly in her kitchen which I remember as very dark, iron and formica-filled (this was the early 1980's after all).  Whereas my grandmother baked and cooked practically blindfolded, relaying the quantities as a "bittie o' this and a bittie o' that", Chrissie was  a disciplined documenter and patiently scribed each of her recipes into a series of notebooks, the first is dated 1922 and is most likely from her time at the "Do' School" - a neatly transcribed book of "Cookery Recipes" beginning with instructions on how to cook stock and including recipes such as 'Boiled Salad Dressing' and 'Brain Cakes'. Whereas I never experienced Chrissie's 'Brain Cakes' - perhaps one that never graduated into her repertoire - I do recall many a wonderful meal with her.

---------------------------