65 versions.
One increasingly serious little Pea.

SET THE TABLE

The free route got a proper welcome.

I added “Set the table” before a mission starts, made the route language human, and pushed “Try three. Free.” without turning Pea into a free-recipe site.

LAUNCH MODE

The next step stopped feeling like a locked door.

Instead of saying “you can’t have this”, Pea now shows what opens next, why it matters, and the simplest way to keep moving.

WELCOME, PROPERLY

The first email finally feels like joining something.

Founding Families now get “Welcome to the beginning”, a clear invitation to reply to me, and a proper explanation of what they have backed.

AIM HIGHER

“Cook higher” became “Aim higher”.

Better. Broader. More Pea. I also made The Pea Table much more direct: I want the honest version, not the polished one.

THE HOOK

Do both... but better.

The opening stopped trying to sound clever and started saying the thing: become a confident cook, join a community and amaze everyone.

THE STORY

Care for the Pea. And the people around it.

I rewrote how Pea started: not just the cooking problem, but my frustration with clickbait parenting and the need for somewhere useful to vent, give, be heard and change the product.

LESS, PLEASE

The homepage lost a lot of words.

The site had started explaining itself to death. I cut it back so the homepage draws you in and the deeper pages do the explaining.

THE PEA TABLE

Not an audience. A table.

Pea got a real member community in D1: wins, failures, questions, ideas and feedback that can actually shape what I build next.

JOIN THE BEGINNING

The Founding Family invitation got louder.

I moved “what you can really be part of” much closer to the front. The point is the beginning, the direction, and having a hand in what Pea becomes.

LOOK LESS GENERATED

The hero image got more human.

Tighter, less glossy, more kitchen, less lifestyle advert. Hands and food over perfect faces and perfect lighting.

MY BIT

I told the actual story.

I knew how to cook. I did not know how to let my daughter into that world without turning it into a kids’ activity. That became the bridge into Pea.

FOUNDING MEANS SOMETHING

“Do both. Be better.” got proper weight.

I also explained what a Founding Family really means: what I want Pea to become, how early families help shape it, what they get from being here, and what I owe them in return.

RECIPES BECAME ROUTES

The recipe stopped being the destination.

Burger, Pasta and Pizza became four-stage progressions. Shape mince today; grind your own blend and bake the buns later. The food stays familiar. The cooks move.

ONE PAGE WAS ENOUGH

Pea became a proper little site.

Home, Why Pea, How You Grow, Missions, Founding Families and From Ed got separate jobs. The homepage stopped trying to be the whole internet.

MINIONS

The line got more honest.

“Bugger off while I cook” was funny but not really the moment. “Let’s go and put Minions on while I cook” was much closer to the ordinary, loving compromise Pea is trying to reinvent.

PARENTHOOD ISN’T A PERSONALITY TRANSPLANT

The grown-up finally became explicit.

Pea started saying out loud that having children does not cancel your curiosity, ambition or desire to get really good at something.

SHOW, DON’T JUST TELL

The missions got more visual.

Big images for appetite. Smaller images for the cue you actually need right now: spacing wedges, shaping patties, sauce texture, crust, assembly.

THE STORY STARTS WORKING

The emotional hook moved to the front.

“Dad, can you come and play?” stopped being buried in the founder story and started doing some work. Joining Pea became a natural continuation of the idea rather than something tacked on at the end.

BACK THE BEGINNING

Pea leaned into being early.

I made the exchange clearer: Pea works now, but joining early helps decide how far it goes. The trust goes both ways.

WHAT ARE YOU ACTUALLY JOINING?

A giant paragraph became four clear ideas.

What you are helping build. Where I want Pea to go. What I want to help change. What you get back. Much easier to scan.

MISSION FIRST

The homepage stopped leading with “course”.

Pea became about getting children into real kitchens, making dinner part of the relationship and helping both cooks improve. “You’re early. That’s the point.” arrived here.

HELLO, GOOGLE

I did the first proper SEO pass.

Titles, descriptions, canonicals, sitemap, robots and structured data. No magic keyword stuffing; just making it obvious what Pea actually is.

ADMIN GREW UP

The admin page became useful.

Search, filters, stats, activity, account health and clearer member records. Less “database with buttons”, more control room.

CAPITAL LETTERS MATTER

The live switch worked after one tiny typo.

Three live references had an uppercase X where I had copied a lowercase one. The system quite reasonably refused to play along. Fixed, tested, lesson learned.

GOING LIVE

The live switch was staged.

The live account, keys and background plumbing were brought together carefully so Pea could leave the sandbox without ending up half-test, half-real.

A REAL BUSINESS

The legal pages got my actual trading details.

No mystery company. Pea On The Table is me, trading as a UK sole trader, with proper correspondence and contact details on the site.

TWO TICKS, NO MYSTERY

The final confirmations became impossible to miss.

If the two confirmations were not ticked, Pea now explained what was needed instead of leaving a button sitting there looking broken.

THE GROWN-UP LEGAL BIT

Pea got launch-ready terms and policies.

Terms, refunds, privacy, cookies and safety all became real pages, with a straightforward 14-day promise and UK-first launch wording.

BACKGROUND PLUMBING THAT DOESN’T PANIC

The account events got hardened.

Repeated events, reversals and awkward edge cases stopped being able to leave Pea guessing. Quietly boring infrastructure — exactly what I wanted.

LET THE ACCOUNT TELL THE TRUTH

Tier changes started syncing properly.

When someone moves between Pea levels, the site now reads the current account state rather than hanging onto an old assumption about where they were.

ADMIN OVERRIDES, CLEANLY

Manual access stopped leaving ghosts behind.

Moving someone between levels now clears the stale flags that used to linger behind. Admin changes became useful without confusing the rest of the account.

NO DOUBLE ACCESS

Pea learned to say “you already have this”.

The account checks got stricter so people cannot accidentally stack overlapping levels or end up with two versions of the same access.

DON’T WIPE YOUR OWN SETTINGS

Cloudflare deployment got safer.

Wrangler had been cheerfully wiping dashboard text variables. I moved non-secrets into config and told it to keep vars. Much less exciting, much more important.

STALE ACCOUNT? FIX IT.

The join flow learned to recover.

An old sandbox reference survived longer than the thing it pointed to. Pea now clears dead account references and retries instead of making the user diagnose the plumbing.

THE DOOR OPENS

Pea membership became real.

Founding, Standard and V I Pea stopped being ideas on a page and became real account levels, with a proper path from “I like this” to “I’m in”.

YOUR PEA

Membership stopped being an invisible database field.

Members got a proper place to see what they have, what opens next and where to manage the practical bits.

MAGIC LINKS

Passwords politely left the building.

Sign-in became a 15-minute, single-use email link. Less password admin, less friction, and it works across devices.

ACCESS MEANS ACCESS

The entitlement rules became explicit.

Free, Founding, Standard and V I Pea stopped being vague labels and became actual permissions the Worker could enforce.

TIERS GOT A DATABASE

D1 learned who gets what.

Access level, expiry, source and admin notes became part of each account. This is where membership stopped being pretend and started behaving like a real system.

THE BURGER SURVIVED CONTACT WITH REALITY

The first 10-step mission got properly tested.

The route worked. The child/adult split worked. The one thing that did not work hard enough was the difference between adult skill levels — which became a running obsession.

THE JOURNEY

Pea stopped thinking in isolated dinners.

I built the first visible path through the programme so a family could see that tonight’s meal is part of somewhere bigger.

NOT EVERYONE LIVES THE SAME WEEK

Pea stopped assuming one family pattern.

The idea widened to include people who cook together every day, only at weekends, or are using food to build connection when time together is limited.

BRING THEM UP TO YOUR LEVEL

Safety got a Pea-shaped principle.

Not just skill — stature. A younger cook needs a stable working height, not a dining chair balanced optimistically near a hot pan.

MESSY IS FINE

Cleanliness became part of competence.

Pea started separating “messy” from “dirty”. Spills happen. Raw chicken hands on the fridge handle do not have to.

WAITING IS A JOB

Dead time became kitchen time.

Oven time, resting time and simmering time became chances to reset, taste, clear down and get ready for the next move.

SAFE DOESN’T MEAN BLAND

The familiar fallback arrived.

Stronger flavours can sit beside something safe using the same ingredients, so trying something new does not turn dinner into a hostage negotiation.

THE QUICK ROUTE

Weeknights were allowed to be weeknights.

“Join in for this bit” became a real route rather than a guilty compromise. If bedtime is looming, ten good minutes still count.

THE FULL ROUTE

And some nights you have time.

Pea also made room for the younger cook to stay for the whole thing when energy and time allow, rather than always capping their involvement.

AT A GLANCE

The useful stuff moved to the top.

Total time, quick route, child job, adult technique, game, safe option, running late and got time — no hunting halfway through a recipe.

THEM: READY TO LEAD

The younger-cook ladder got an end point.

JOIN IN → TAKE MORE ON → READY TO LEAD. The goal stopped being “helping” and became genuine ownership.

YOU: PUSH ME

The adult got a ladder too.

SHOW ME → COOK WITH ME → PUSH ME. Pea should be able to teach, then prompt judgement, then get out of your way.

FOUR STAGES

Progression became the backbone.

Start Together. Take More On. Escape the Reci-Pea. Lead the Kitchen. I wanted a route from “tell me what to do” to “I know what I’m doing”.

ESCAPE THE RECI-PEA

Recipes were officially temporary scaffolding.

Taste, adjust, substitute, recover and eventually cook without needing every gram written down. That became a proper destination.

SKILLS, NOT BADGES

The programme got strands.

Knife skills, heat, seasoning, timing, sauces, dough, safety and communication. The aim is practiced capability, not one-click “mastered”.

SAME DINNER. TWO LESSONS.

The central product idea finally had words.

The child and adult do not need separate recipes. They need different learning inside the same dinner.

YOU / THEM / TOGETHER

The interface found its language.

Adult technique. Younger cook responsibility. Shared dinner. Three little labels that ended up explaining most of Pea.

BURGERS FIRST

The first mission stopped being theoretical.

A burger gave us heat, seasoning, shaping, timing, sauce, assembly and plenty of jobs that actually matter. Useful little test case.

WEEKEND AMBITION

Pea kept a place for the ridiculous bit.

Mostly achievable weeknights, plus the occasional “let’s really cook” mission where both people can stretch.

DINNER, NOT AN ACTIVITY

The rule got stricter.

No separate child project while the adult makes the real meal. The younger cook should contribute to what everybody is actually eating.

THE ADULT MUST GET SOMETHING

Half the product appeared.

If including a child makes every dinner slower, simpler and less interesting forever, the adult will quite reasonably stop doing it. So Pea has to teach them too.

REAL JOBS

The wooden-spoon problem.

“Give them a spoon so they feel involved” was not enough. I started looking for small jobs with consequence: herbs, tasting, shaping, measuring, dough.

STILL COUNTS

Perfection got banned early.

Five minutes of genuine involvement still counts. A wonky burger still counts. A child leaving halfway through still counts. We are building a habit, not filming an advert.

THE QUESTION

Why is cooking the thing that gets in the way of playing?

That little thought changed the direction: perhaps dinner could be part of the time together rather than the reason I kept saying “in a minute”.

THE PROBLEM

I knew how to cook. I didn’t know how to let her in.

The skill was there. Translating it into something safe, useful and actually fun for a younger cook was not. That gap turned out to be the interesting bit.

THE PEA

One small idea landed on the table.

My daughter wanted me. I wanted to cook. I started wondering whether those things really had to compete. Pea began there.

They want you. You want to cook. Do both... but better.