World’s Best Celery Salad™

and some deeeeeep TV musings

Two things before we dive in this week:

1. I skipped last week as I languished in my ‘flop era’ and felt sorry for myself and devoured all your kind messages. BUT! For paid subscribers as penance… I am doing an Ask Me Anything in the ‘chat’ area of substack, which is like ‘personal mini quick cooking sketches’ for you over there. That’s my way of providing you with food love for last weeks’ missing food love.

2. This week’s recipe is ALLLLL the way down at the bottom (paid subscribers have access only). It’s a Celery Salad. DO NOT roll your eyes at me. It’s the World’s Best Celery Salad™. I kid you not. And it uses Tart Vinegar’s Celery Vinegar (but like Champagne Vinegar is fine too). It doesn’t have a food photo, because I ate it before I could share the photo. #notsorry

This past week, I finally had the a) courage b) gumption c) capacity to announce something I’ve known for about two months…Our show, La Pitchoune: Cooking in France was not renewed.

This is a fact that has made me very sad since receiving the news.

Not sad because ‘oh woe as me now I won’t be on TV’. (Because actually…I will very much still be “on TV”, whatever that even means anymore. That show will be around to stream for awhile. Probably into 'perpetuity’ more or less.)

I am sad because it allowed people to get a glimpse into the magic of what we do at the Courageous Cooking School. An experience that is out of reach for most Americans, and most people around the world. A true way to immerse yourself into what joyful and vibrant cooking does to the soul.

Letting TV cameras into our world, gave people a way to experience the whole thing. Deeply. Without having to drop what I KNOW is a metric ton of money, to experience. (Trust me, I know it is not ‘affordable’.)

(Photo by Leslie Choucard)

Many of the (hundreds) of kind messages we received came from people who were housebound, usually due to health reasons. We read dozens of instagram messages each day from people who would say how our show brought them comfort in a difficult time. Letters arrived from people saying how they changed their cooking and approach due to our show. Care packages were mailed to La Peetch from people expressing their gratitude for what we’ve created. People were able to be transformed, learn something about cooking, all without hopping on a plane. (Being able to do that is a privilege in and of itself)

All of that was (and still is) wildly overwhelming (in a good way) to me. I just never thought about what having a TV show would actually do. The real impacts it might have on people. Good and bad.