The most remarkable thing about Ellie Warden isn’t that she drinks her coffee black, doesn’t text or has never owned a computer — it’s that at 77, she’s still working in a job she loves at a place she helped create nearly 50 years ago.
Tucked away in the back kitchen of Asheville’s French Broad Food Co-Op on Biltmore Avenue, Warden works three days a week baking tasty treats such as blueberry ginger scones, lemon ricotta rolls and salted caramel crunch cookies. Each item is packaged, priced and placed near the checkout for customers to snatch up before they’re gone.
“I’ve been a baker all my life,” Warden says, wiping her hands on her apron. “In the 15 years I’ve been baking at the co-op, I’ve developed the recipes myself — many based on whatever’s most abundant in our produce section.”…