Caramel - INTERVIEW WITH NINA DAVIDSON
Four years ago, Bordeaux-born Nina Davidson left Edinburgh, and the bistro she’d opened a decade earlier, for the promise of an altogether different life in the countryside. As she and her architect husband and two small children (who are now the eldest of four daughters, aged 10, six, three, and just three months) adapted to their new life, Nina photographed their next chapter, sharing it as @petiteschoses_. Last year, she turned her years of experience as a chef, and her years of cooking with Ada, Colette, Nicole and little Esther in the kitchen at home, into Je Sais Cuisiner, a beginner’s recipe book for children.
Where is home?
We’re on my husband’s family farm, surrounded by a hill, loch, fields, and woods. We have no neighbours except sheep! The farmhouse is a few miles away from us, and the house is Michael’s granny’s, so we’re doing it up while we are there, slowly doing things as we go. It’s a little house with not really any heating, but it has a couple of fireplaces and big south facing windows! It’s quite cold, so we’re used to wearing hats and woolly socks indoors, but we’ve got such a big outdoor space that it makes up for it.
How did you adjust, swapping the city for the countryside?
It was a first for me. I don’t think I'd go back, it’s just wonderful with the children. Growing up in the city, they were asking permission to go out and play, and now it’s very fluid and they just do it. The transition to the school, that was something very different - there is one school with one class, 19 kids in total, so my two eldest are in the same class, and there’s a little school bus that comes to pick them up. It’s a lot more adapted to their skills, rather than their age.
How does it compare to your own childhood?
It’s very different! I grew up in the city and I started dancing ballet when I was eight. I did it quite intensively and left my family to go to a dance school when I was 12, so there was a lot of self discipline and pushing myself. Not a lot of time for doing nothing, which is what I try to implement with my kids - boredom. For them to have nothing to do is great!
We don’t have a TV at home, but like every other parent, if I have something to do I can put the tablet on, I don’t ban it! But there are so many more things to do, with the freedom of them being able to do what they want outdoors. It’s a lot more imaginative: there’s not an adult watching over you. They’re not self-conscious anymore, it’s this completely un-reined play.
