Make An Adult Wish: My Lifelong Dream To Cook The Fuuuudge Out Of Julia Child's Kitchen Came True! Now Let Me Fulfill Yours

PLUS: A "health product" warning Jane wishes she had known.

Hi guys!

As promised (maybe only other people whose dads always promised them Disneyland and Levi’s and never delivered anything can relate to how honorable - how like an upstanding citizen -it feels to be able to write those two words - tell me in comments if you relate):

Here is some more reading for your still-snowy days if you're having them and more distraction from work or whatever else you want a break from if you're not. Today's featured piece has the extra bonus of including something for the indulgent materialistic hedonist in you. So if you're going to skip anything, skip my introduction and Genevieve's story and just go right down to the bottom paragraph where she tells you how to cash in. Be as greedy as you deserve.

Meanwhile, I'm sticking with my plan to regularly give you my made-up tips and tricks that work. Today's is not a product recommendation like that beloved toilet paper which I've joyfully wiped with a few times today, flooded with gratitude each time. (Thanks also to those of you who wrote in about your experiences trying this life-changing TP. And I do understand that bidets are the better way to go for all the reasons – I'm just not there yet.) Today's tip is kind of the opposite of a product recommendation.

When Shawna (fantastic writer you will be seeing more of here very soon) did a story here for you about teeth whitening, exactly no one asked me to follow up on what I did that completely destroyed my teeth a couple of years ago. Now I personally love me the aesthetic of some broken messed up teeth (yum! sexy!). But it’s not just the looks. It’s that mine got so worn down and fragile that some of them completely broke off closer to the root and some became painful. So even though you didn’t ask, here’s what I did to cause my total tooth destruction that you ideally won’t do at home once you read this.

Let me preface this by saying that I don’t consider myself an addict (codependent though, yes of course) in the sense that I tend to be able to stop a substance or behavior when it no longer serves me (as someone with more of a psychology background than I have might phrase it). I have become deeply emotionally tied to many things, from my highly specific makeup in college to my running when I was coping with the stress of starting Sassy and don’t even get me started on my dozens of herbal supplements which I have certainly not yet kicked. Also Vodka, but that’s a story for my (upcoming!) memoir. I have been attached to the point where being separated from these things involuntarily sent me into long-lasting panic attacks, for sure.

I also tend to take what I think of as healthy behaviors to a way extreme. (Defying my Grandma who lived to be 107 and said her secret was “everything in moderation.”) When I first got into coconut water as a hydration booster in Brazil (on tour with Michael who introduced me to it, if you want the glamorous name drop element - my specialty!) I noticed how energetic I felt and how smooth my face looked - like the hydrating effects of it plumped every wrinkle from the inside. (Though we have already discussed the fact that I like wrinkles, it was interesting to see how quickly they disappeared and how dehydrated I must have been for years prior.) So when I got back home to the US, before coconut water was as readily available as it became, I found a place to order it and bought it by the case and drank maybe five of the larger containers of it every day. Courteney (ultimate hostess and another name-drop glamour infusion for those of you who are aboard) then got it in her house for when I was coming to visit. When she saw how many of the containers I was downing, and how much I was complaining about my recurring yeast infections and BV (ugh!), we made the connection (ultimately confirmed by a gyno) that my ailments were due to the massively high natural sugar content I was constantly ingesting.

That was not even my cautionary tale for today (though: don’t drink more than say one large bottle of coconut water a day unless you enjoy BV). But it relates to how I destroyed my teeth with my “hypervigilance” as more than one therapist have described it. It started back at the xoJane offices when I saw the lovely Madeleine take a swig of her Braggs Apple Cider Vinegar that she kept on her desk, and I asked her why she did it and she told me about the benefits for digestion, etc. things I can’t remember right now, but I knew they were good, and she offered me a swig of it which I took, and then she laughed that I had not only taken a very large gulp of straight apple cider vinegar, but had swallowed the mother. I added that to my arsenal of healthy rituals and for all of the years since then I have some apple cider vinegar (I am loyal to Braggs and only believe that one truly works) every single day. It never occurred to me that it was eroding my teeth.

The dentist I see now says that yes it will destroy your teeth and to be careful with it and also always brush it off right after (which I was never doing - sometimes I would even swallow some right before bed if I had forgotten that day and let those little teeth SOAK in it). So if you also use apple cider vinegar, my advice is to not use it in food (salad dressing, whatever sauce) where it will be on your teeth longer. I would only use it when you are prepared to down it quickly (I suppose a straw would be even better), and then brush your teeth right after so that they don’t erode from all the acetic acid in it. I still drink it every single day for some type of health benefits that I’m not even quite sure what they are, but that I believe in. Now I just brush right after. So don’t do what I did! Thanks for not asking!

Now go on and get our help making your biggest wish come true.

Bye bye (as my Oberlin classmate, also named Jane, used to say - completing name drop number three for this note!),

Love, Jane

PS This piece is free for all, so pass it around or keep it to yourself, depending on your mood.

By Genevieve Sage

So Jane and I kind of reverse-engineered this idea — but it might actually benefit you, dear Reader.

Do you have a lifelong adult wish you’ve wanted to make happen? Dare I say manifest (a word Jane may or may not hate, which feels important to acknowledge up top)? [I can live with manifest... but when you get to your “manifesting notebook” later in the piece, you’re pushing it. Haha. -Jane]

Well, here’s my story of how I manifested the fuuuddgge out of cooking in Julia Child’s home in the South of France — the very place where she created the iconic tome Mastering the Art of French Cooking, as seen on HBO’s La Pitchoune: Cooking in France.

No big deal. Just casually screaming internally that I learned recipe-free cooking in Julia Child’s actual kitchen. Amy Adams can suck it. (JK -- luv her) [Also, this picture is from the La Peetch website and Genevieve didn’t take it, nor did I. -Jane]

The Pandemic, the Click, the Hook

It’s 2022. The pandemic still lingers: masks on planes, flinching when strangers stand too close, and if someone coughs? You jump back like a cucumber surprising a cat (IYKYK).

I’m a sucker for a new spin on easy cooking, and I swoon at anything French (it’s literally in my name). So when I absentmindedly clicked on the HBO TV show La Pitchoune: Cooking in France one lazy, red-wine-drenched night, I. Was. Hooked.

Host Makenna Held and her Michelin-trained co-chef Kendall Lane teach a twisty little magic trick called recipe-free cooking. Using a pyramid — okay, a triangle — they show you how to build a dish the way Julia might have: with intuition, not by doom-scrolling through someone’s tragic backstory and 47 pop-up ads before finally landing on an untested recipe.

Through a simple framework — foundation, salt, fat, acid, aromatics, and garnish — they empower rebellious cooks who hate following directions to throw down and make something great out of whatever’s left in the fridge.

That idea lodged itself somewhere deep. I wanted to jump through my TV screen and BE THERE.

Me in the middle with the owner and head chef, Kendall & Makenna: Proof that culinary trust exercises work. If found, please return to these women. [Genevieve didn’t tell me which was Makenna and which is Kendall in this picture, so your guess is as good as mine. Tell me if you know. -Jane]

The Dream Location (a.k.a. My Brain’s Personal Heaven)

The setting? The very same kitchen where Julia Child, alongside her French compatriot Simone Beck, tested and invented the recipes that would become Mastering the Art of French Cooking.

It felt like someone cracked open my brain and projected my personal heaven: dreamy Provençal sunsets, baby-blue shutters on storybook cottages, Julia Child’s emerald-green kitchen with its goldenrod Lacanche stove, cutting herbs in the garden, simmering stock, and — my favorite — long, al fresco dinners overflowing with new friends and unlimited wine.

In 2022, I scribbled one line in the corner of my manifesting notebook:

I will attend La Peetch as a writer.

Cheese Board: When we got to do a Field Trip to a Frommagery, I chose the stinkiest cheese ever not even allowed on the Paris Metro called 'Epoisse'. I inhaled it. Pretty sure my blood type is just cheese now. ~Pink Hummus: This was beet hummus and it was as delicious as it was pretty. I would marry it. ~Kitchen Shot (from their website): A Lacanche stove and emerald green kitchen with single origin spices dotted around. I dreamt of it smelling like chicken stock before I arrived. It was a premonition. Blue Shutters:Somewhere between a perfume ad and a personal reset, I found myself.

The Shot (and the Unexpected Yes)

Cut to November 2024, when Jane Pratt launched AJPT. On a lark, I pitched my first piece — an It Happened to Me about landing in the ER thanks to one extremely overachieving pot gummy.

Thus began our year-long writing relationship. Jane and the team championed my work, and I wrote for AJPT more than ten times this past year. Suddenly, because I was now an air-quotes published writer validated by one of the most recognizable editors in the world, I felt something new: legitimacy.

So I shot my shot.

I emailed the production house behind La Pitchoune:

Would you be interested in having me attend Cook Camp as Press and write about my week-long experience?

Readers: they bit. This was a biggie. A real dream come true.

Self-control left my mortal coil. This is how it starts. Next slide I own a goat.

France, At Last

Cut to September, when I buckled into my flight to Aix-en-Provence to begin my recipe-free cooking adventure.

I landed outside the tiny village of Valbonne to a spread of charcuterie, marbled stinky cheeses, pitchers of wine, and about fifteen other attendees who I was pretty sure were all richer than me. But I was there as a writer — the creative mascot, undercover, pretending I was Gloria Steinem going incognito as a Playboy Bunny

Charcuterie, but make it like a Goddard film with the babushka.

.

That week, I lived my best artsy-fartsy chef life: shopping at the Cannes farmers’ market, flipping crêpes, butchering a chicken (with a very French level of drama), making quiche, and even crafting my own perfume in Grasse. Imagine a kind of punk-rock Eat Pray Love with gorgeous table-scapes, overseen by badass feminist women chefs acting as camp counselors.

Julia Child may be a cultural obsession (she’s had more biopics than Batman), but the women carrying her legacy forward today are Makenna and Kendall. They quit everything, moved to France with their families, and built a life teaching people to cook freely.

Makenna — a Smith graduate like Julia, and tall like Julia — is a force majeure. With sparkling blue eyes, you can practically see her brain firing as she explains single-origin spices while the sun sets over the saltwater pool.

Kendall, a Michelin-star-trained chef, commands a room with the same calm authority she brings to the kitchen. She’s the kind of person you’d want beside you both on Survivor and at Sunday dinner.

Portlandia warned me. France confirmed it: this chicken had a serial number, an A+ grade and a resume.

Getting Exactly What I Wanted

People love to say that when dreams come true, it’s anticlimactic. That you reach the summit and feel… nothing. Maybe that’s true for Jim Carrey. But for me?

I love getting what I want.

Walking into Julia Child’s tiny kitchen — pegboard walls lined with copper pots and funky 1950s contraptions, shelves stacked with tiny glass jars of single-origin spices labeled in punch-embossed black tape — it smelled like chicken stock, vintage cookbooks, and possibility.

By Day Two, we were handed our dossiers: quiches, crêpes, French omelets, sauces, salads, BBQ, and yes — how to French-butcher a chicken. My most glorious moment came when Makenna and I created a dish together from farmers’ market remnants: mushrooms and radicchio. I suggested chanterelle lettuce cups nestled in radicchio leaves, topped with shiso. Reader — it was a hit.

I swam in the compound’s saltwater pools, ate my weight in cheese and carbs, and let time slow down. Anthony Bourdain’s words rang in my head: Your body is not a temple, it’s an amusement park. Enjoy the ride.

My only mishap? The fat French mosquitos. They ate me alive. Apparently my blood tastes like Dom Pérignon.

Worth it.

The Aftermath (and the Point)

Before La Peetch, I was a decent home cook for just me and my husband, James. Boeuf bourguignon once a year for his November birthday; otherwise, Trader Joe’s heat-and-serve royalty.

After one week in France, something shifted.

I trust myself now. I don’t Google “salad recipes.” If I’ve got napa cabbage, fennel, tarragon, and an orange, I know I can make something good. (A salad recipe featured in Makenna’s gorgeous new cookbook, Mostly French!)

Travel changes you. Dreams change you. You come back different — more capable, more awake, more willing.

These squash blossoms definitely grant wishes.

Introducing: Make an Adult Wish

This is where you come in.

Make an Adult Wish is a new column about helping grown-ass women make dreams happen — the ones we quietly decided were too indulgent, too late, or too unrealistic.

Your wish doesn’t have to be grand. Maybe you want to learn guitar and finally master Smoke on the Water. Maybe you’ve never been on a sailboat, and we connect you with someone nearby who’s been dying to take their Catalina out for a spin.

This La Peetch experience is the maiden voyage. Proof that adult wishes are allowed. That intuition counts as a plan. And that sometimes, saying what you want out loud is the bravest — and most effective — first step.

So tell us:

What’s your wish? Send it to Jane@AnotherJanePrattThing.com with a subject line like, “I deserve this, Genevieve” or “Genevieve, it’s my turn” or something with my name in it. Alternately or in addition, leave your wish here in the comments so Genevieve can get to work on it right away and so we can all compare and contrast our biggest dreams. [Maybe yours is the exact same as Genevieve’s and she can help hook you up there. Mine will not be involving cooking but I have a couple of asks (as the businesspeople say) that I will leave in the comments too. Yay! -Jane]