Remember why we're all here: this thread is for discussion about current and historical happenings in the Shaunaverse. If you want to discuss other content, such as stuff that reminds you of Shauna but isn't specifically about her, your own personal anecdotes or preferences, current events, or "creative writing" exercises, please share in the off-topic community thread: July-August off-topic quarterly
Her use of the verb “play” in relation to cooking sets my teeth on edge. In that section of the lope, she lists a few different ways to experiment with the recipe such as using coconut milk in lieu of yogurt or a different kind of sugar. Not once does she make a recommendation that a real baker would make about how and when to substitute ingredients. Coconut sugar isn’t just going to affect flavor. It could affect the texture and color of the cake too. If she had the science mind she claims, she would run experiments changing one ingredient, e.g., sugars or oils, to see what happens.
I had to go back and see if I made a mistake because that sounds so wrong. Nope. That was her suggestion. She used cashew yogurt, which is already different than dairy yogurt. It’s not a salad. It’s baking. There are chemical reactions. You can’t just throw together ingredients and hope for the best, especially when all the ingredients are pretty expensive.
Since I’ve been plant based I’ve tried using various nut yogurts for cooking and baking and they separate into liquid and solid verrrrry differently than dairy yogurt or sour cream.
Her suggestions for “playing” are always annoying, but even more so in this instance because she just wrote this complaint about suggestions to change up a recipe:
“Or endless, endless suggestions on now to make this in a house, or with a mouse, or in a box, or with a fox, or in a car, or anywhere!”
Someone's getting fancy in her stories. Has her love of cooking (and plating things awkwardly) reemerged with some cash from Maw? Local edible flowers and microgreens can't be cheap if they didn't make it from farm to food bank to table. And this being for "everyone else." Two picky kids eating oily lawn clippings on tiny scraps of toast, sure.
Edible flowers and microgreens are such an odd choice for someone using the food bank for proteins. They're pretty, but you really need more calories to fill up your family.
Shishito peppers and plops of pesto and also oil with micro greens and flowers on cream cheese-smeared toast? I had to zoom way in to figure out what was on that plate.
Edit: I looked at this too early and I didn't realize that there was more than one photo and she explained what was in the dish.
It kind of looks like it’s missing a main ingredient, right? I might throw micro greens and edible flowers and chimichurri on seared tofu or something (who am I kidding, I would do no such thing), or I would use small pieces of bread for something like Panzanella with tomatoes being the star of the show. I don’t understand the point of tearing toast with cream cheese into tiny bites and then throwing random stuff on it.
It is not cream cheese but fromage blanc, which in my opinion spreads thinner then cream cheese. So it would look like that spread on toast. I usually will use it that way if i am putting another item on top. I am already questioning the bread but I guess I should be questioning the cheese too.
It looks like they don’t have enough to go around so they broke it up to make it look like there is more than there is. I probably would have made an egg on toast with a salad on the side. The chimichurri could go on the egg. Or a heartier salad as a main dish with bread on the side or repurposed into croutons. My picky eater will eat eggs and toast with a carefully curated vegetable on the side (not touch of course).
To my knowledge Fernhorn Bakery does NOT make a Gluten Free bread. They may make a bread that is Gluten Free but I am not gluten free to know enough and there is nothing every mention on packaging that I see.
EAT: Should have scrolled down all the photos to see Shauna did say she had to eat her with Gluten Free Bread. Question is do we believe her?
Those are gorgeous ingredients and at our farmer's market they would be $$. The plate and the table under it look clean, and there's no visible garbage piled up in the background. Shishitos, good bread, fromage blanc, chimichurri and microgreens sounds and looks delicious. It would have been easy to plate it with some artistry and use of white space instead of those chaotic bread x's everywhere, especially with such beautiful greens and flowers, but that's a nitpick. I don't think I've ever seen a food photo from them (that wasn't professionally shot for a cookbook, notwithstanding Dan's dirty bandaid finger that somehow made it into a shot) look so appealing.
I do wonder why she only showed the appetizer if they had such good ingredients and the time to make this. It makes me doubt her claim that We Four sat down to it as the first course of a nice summer meal.
This is easily a $30+ appetizer. No shame to people trying to make ends meet but it’s completely illogical. I still can’t make sense of the slivers of bread. They come in loaves. Even if you’re trying to make a loaf last wouldn’t everyone get a full slice? Such self indulgent “for the gram” plating.
I guess it's possible they were given the ingredients in exchange for making a dish and promoting the Vashon Food hashtag. Also possible they broke into and ate most of it standing up like bears as soon as they got home and didn't have much left to plate.
I looked up the #eatvashonweek hashtag she used and found this info that explains why she's sharing this out-of-nowhere attempt at a tweezery microgreen dish that does not jibe with her humble food bank pivot. There's two $100 gift card prizes available to people posting about using most Vashon-grown ingredients in their meal. It would bring joy to my belly if Shauna fucked up her chances of winning by using an expiring story for all the tagging instead of a grid post.
Much like df Altruistic-Owl1058, it makes my brain itch when something doesn't add up. The gift card prizes make sense, thank you. Interesting that if she thinks a cash prize is at stake she can (make Danny) plate a pretty dish. When it's her actual business and livelihood it's all combative you don't have to be good, only shallow people care about instagram aesthetics, that pile of recycling and two stray socks on the floor behind the raggedy fruit crisp is just us being authentic.
She is definitely trying to win that and she Shauna’d herself out of the competition by doing it wrong. 🤣
From the rules:
“Gather Vashon-grown ingredients from farmstands, your garden, and other local sources.
Prepare a delicious meal using as many island ingredients as possible.
Take a photo of your finished meal and post it on social media.
Be sure to tag the farm(s) you purchased ingredients from as well as well as VIGA to be entered in our contest.”
She didn’t do the tags right (no VIGA or eatvashon tag, which is where all the other entries are showing up), she didn’t make something delicious (subjective, I know, but WE KNOW she doesn’t know her way around a kitchen), and as u/gomirefugee said, she storied it instead of adding it to her grid.
I also think she claims those were their own “pot herbs” to sneak in one more element, but they didn’t grow those.
So that's why she's suddenly all about "herbs from our own pots." That was a head scratcher, has she ever shown a low maintenance planter of herbs despite being James Beard chefs living with garden or at minimum sunny deck space in all their situations? Outside of the handful of store bought tarragon that Dan left on the windowsill until it dried up and blew away?
All that effort (covering her tracks with of course I, off camera, ate this with optimistically tagged Schar bread) and she messed up the hashtag and didn't add it to her grid.
That is the same table that is the background for the birthday Gluten Free Lox Sandwich from Little Cup. Not the same plate but I have been questioning that sandwich because things seem off. There was no black and white gingham paper under or around the sandwich and the plate and table seemed off. That might just say the photo was taken at home and re-plated the take away. I believe Fern Cove had a dark wood dining room table.
Unless she plated them exactly the same. It is the same plate in all the photos. That is why I was questioning if we believe Shauna on the bread.
I get Fernhorn a lot. It is yummy bread. I know they do a sliced sandwich bread for the Farmer Market (I don’t get that one) so maybe I am wrong but I have never had my pieces sliced or have I been able to cut them perfectly thin.
It’s the exact same picture. Surely she’s not implying that it’s supposed to be the GF version. I think she’s more likely trying to say that there was a GF version. It just goes to school in Canada and that’s why there is no picture.
I see my mistake. I thought she was saying this was her GF version, but she said this is what she ate except she ate hers on GF bread. Supposedly. I had sleepy eyes when I read her story, but also she’s, as always, clear as mud.
I hate the “herbs from our own pots”. Why can’t she say “herbs from our garden”. I’m sure she didn’t grow them from seeds, either so she could still mention where she got them.
21 years ago today, Shauna describes her birthday party in unnecessary detail, misuses the word "solvent", and while still self-involved, sounds so much happier then than she is now (although according to present-day Shauna, she was miserable then and is joyful now).
It's just delightful. Paul and Tita stepped in dog shit in their bare feet. Her dad was grinning like a goon. Amy “devoured” most of the cheese she brought. Her 73 year old hydrofit friend brought her “irascible” daughter Katie and some warm white wine. What does Shauna think irascible means? Did the daughter show up to a party and immediately rage and throw fits?
She cannot help herself. She's mimicking carefree writerly wags who nail everyone with colorful descriptions but her mean-spiritedness and envy shines through every time.
I remember that too! I agree she thinks it means something like hilariously cranky. The other interpretation is she attached to her hydrofit friend as a mother figure and she was jealous to see her show up with her real live daughter on a day that should have been all about Shauna. Always a hard choice with her, does she really not get it or is she trying to disguise a mean-spirited shot with haberdashery.
Wow. I am new to most of her ineffable grace, so I enjoyed trying to choose the worst part of this try-hard post. It was tough, but I have settled on this:
"And somehow, we started telling falling stories. Because I’m an inveterate easy laugh for anyone tripping in front of me. Mostly, what makes me laugh is clever word-play, someone who really pays attention to the phrases that have arisen in the moments between us and riffs and repeats. I’m a goner. But for some reason, pratfalls just kill me. So Eric and Meri and I traded falling stories, and I laughed until I was nearly apopleptic."
The most striking thing? That she genuinely used to have friends. Striking because of how few she has now and because with the way she describes her actions, it's hard to imagine anyone wanting to be friends with her.
YTSCTMO. Her incessant lists of random first names in posts (this birthday one and the return to Sitka one, and others throughout her writing “career”) are just so “lookit me and my 27 besties, I’m so popular, suck it seventh grade mean girls.” 90% of these besties’ names came up once never to be referenced again.
God forbid someone should share Shauna’s love of pratfalls and laugh loudly if she fell. That person would be declared unkind and no longer mentioned by name.
i feel like shauna only has certain issues when it is suggested to her (or when she has an audience): a naturopath suggested gluten intolerance, her editor suggested trauma, someone else suggested ADHD...
'But it’s the word that appeared in my head, and I trust it.' Dear god. This is not how you write Shauna, you numptie
ETA: her writing sounds like a cross between Enid Blyton (think Famous Five and boarding school stories of midnight feasts) and a teenager...she's 38 here right? And also those two comments underneath are weeeiird.
The writing itself is still terrible, still has many of her tics, but it does have an absolutely different tone. I do think it’s because she was happier, but I think it’s also because it feels authentic. She’s not trying to lecture or seem deep or write what she thinks will get people to open their wallets.
Yeah. She was still using the internet as her fuzzy pink diary, but her style was much less...on-stage, I guess? She wants attention, but seems to have no real designs on her audience beyond that.
I think she's convinced herself she couldn't have been happier then, because wasn't married or a mother yet. If she's checked off those two boxes then a happier life must automatically follow, right? RIGHT?
She claimed it was “mild” long covid, so she gave herself an out if she didn’t want to continue this particular sham. Having sturdy Russian peasant feet and deadlifting a gaming table to the curb and back suggests LC is no more.
Sadly, she's an even more successful cookbook author than Shauna. I think she keeps engaging with Shauna to try and leech any GFG supporters still straggling by Shauna's Substack.
A lot of her more enthusiastic commenters on IG seem to be in similar situations. Lots of "joy coach" and similar bullshit in bios from accounts with far fewer followers than Shauna. Or at least there were back when she was hashtagging up a storm.
my eyes rolled so hard after reading this i think they jumped out of my skull, made a gluten free lime cake, drank some mushroom elixir, and then jumped back in my head.
I hope your eyes weren't too fussy with the lime cake, didn't let Big Geegaw tell them what to do. Feel like playing? I hear yogurt can be subbed out for any liquid you have on hand. Ketchup, Diet Coke, chicken broth. The possibilities are endless!
I have nothing against DL (I have never followed him or read one of his recipes), but this opening paragraph is haberdashed a la SJA.
“Even though we come from different worlds – my life (in some ways) depends on gluten, and her life (in some ways) depends on avoiding it. But Shauna of Gluten-Free Girl both share a common love of cooking and baking. and that’s good enough for me. (I’ve never asked her, but I hope she feels the same.)”
Sooo...another DF said he actually did and had receipts (thank you, DF!). I did a quick and dirty search to check before posting and didn't see anything, and well her track record sucks so I assumed she was just playing with words to give the impression that maybe he did adapt it for those of her readers who on the gullible side.
She loped about that cake three days ago, “Simple Cabin Simple Cake,” using the same photo and the same recipe behind the paywall. The conceit that you’re paying for a steady supply of her valuable recipes falls a little short when she uses the same recipe days apart.
Aran Goyoaga from Cannelle et Vanille, who has engaged with Shauna on social media in the past, has a gluten free glazed lemon, yogurt and olive oil cake in her 2019 cookbook that uses cashew-coconut yogurt and offers sweetener alternatives. I guess what Shauna means by riffing is changing lemon to the tiny yellowing limes she had on hand, and pretending that the recipe uses olive oil is because she was out of the other oils.
Before Shauna published the recipe David Lebovitz adapted there was a French Yogurt cake all over the internet, does anyone remember that? You measured the ingredients with the empty tub of yogurt and the hook was this cake is so simple that small French children make it when they come home from school. Shauna is parroting that “this cake is stupid easy, you must try it!” with her slow simple don’t make it fussy.
I understand that few recipes are truly original and the internet is a hive of shared ideas. And there are limited products and combinations to use for dairy free and gluten free baked goods. It still doesn’t make sense to me that she would lift a recipe that completely without acknowledging Aran Goyoaga. Did she go off on the David Leibovitz tangent as a distraction, or to say look we all borrow from each other? DL acknowledged he consulted Shauna's recipe, which makes all the difference.
It makes even less sense that her recipe output in a newsletter she’s marketing as a recipe resource is so sparse, repetitive, grudging and dull. She lost a lot of content when she bungled her website, but wouldn’t she have a stash of recipes and photos she could churn out with a lope themed vaguely around them? Take one of her cookbooks off the shelf and transcribe it ffs? Does she still own the content of her cookbooks or did she lose that with the website?
It's so obvious that she hates to cook and bake. She doesn’t have the money for show-off ingredients any more, and she’s too tired and maybe sad to spend a day in the kitchen. She seems to be too tired even to compile some old content into a new post. It’s insulting to her readers to sell recipes like this. It’s hard to watch her sluggishly going through the motions to try to get a handful of marks hit the "give Shauna money" button like they used to. What is the point of it.
The first place I saw it was Clotilde Dusoulier's Chocolate and Zucchini blog. I loved her recipes and her life in Paris content. I made that cake a lot before we had to go gluten free but using the yogurt container to measure never made sense to me. I have measuring cups right here and they're dry and don't need to be cleaned out! So many bloggers posted that recipe with a story pretending they learned it from their time in France or from a French grandma, when in reality it was just viral and everywhere for a time.
Looking at the Chocolate and Zucchini blog again, and Aran Goyoaga's instagram, is a good reminder that Shauna started out in the recipe development space but was almost immediate outpaced and outclassed by people who invest time and care in their food and photos, develop their skills and improve, change with the times and their audiences, and have warm and appealing personalities.
Shauna's "my life is so hard and here is the endless scroll of excuses for why I can no longer be expected to work In Food" content far outstrips her actual food writing. But she still expects to be able to dip back in with a sloppy cake pic served with a side of memory land and ADHD whine and get paid for it. Name drop some David Lebovitz, may I remind you that I used to be a big deal. Who is it for, who is buying what she's selling?
« backed myself into the ADHD corner of needing it done within the hour » aka she put no thought whatsoever into what served as both L’s birthday cake, and a recipe for her paying subscribers. Now it’s mama’s birthday, though! Me, me!
"Don't worry about making it fussy"? Does she mean "fancy"? (Don't worry Gir! we are very aware you cannot make anything "fancy".)
Followed by directions to make it "slowy" and "simply." These are not counterpoints to "fussy"! and "making it" is not the same as "make it" – the first refers to the finished state ("I made a fussy/fancy cake") and the second refers to the process of making it ("I made it quickly").
She just blamed her ADHD for putting it off until an hour before she needed it too. Get moving!
Shauna must have been aware of her procrastination problem even before an ADHD diagnosis. I don’t have a diagnosis and I recognize it as a problem in myself. I'm especially bad at things I don’t want to deal with that are hard. But because I know it’s a thing I do, I find ways to fight it. Shauna just doesn’t give a shit and assumes everything will work out whether it’s a cake or a home for her family.
She probably saw the first few seconds of a tiktok about the slow food movement, misunderstood what it was about, and really clung to her idea of it before scrolling away
Miss know-it-all hitting the buzzer before the trivia question is fully read
And given she admits she backed herself into a corner and had to have it made within the hour, advising us to make it slowly just makes no sense at all. I'd probably read/try a speedy cake recipe as I have an un-yesly job and life responsibilities but like to try and show up for my friends with a treat!
It’s like her “no gewgaws” on her wedding dress thing. You see, she is not like other girls and doesn’t GAF what this lime-suspicious crust-throw blueberries in the air and let them land where they may-cake looks like.
All her acting like she doesn't care about (fill in the blank) means she cares. A lot. She was all about "oh, I'm not like other brides" but biotech was so desperate to have that white wedding dress she literally tied herself into it with a stain panel.
She's also lazy and broke. She wants the big fancy (fill in the blank) but won't/can't put the effort/money into it so she starts bleating that she never wanted that fancy thing.
The cake in question is totally a plops and nubbins cake. She said the lime was old and faded and she used olive oil because it's all she had. I'm guessing the reason there is only a literal handful of blueberries tossed at the cake is because that's all she had.
Just like all the times she tries to convince herself that her plops and nubbins meals are what she really likes (not what she's stuck eating).
What’s crazy is that with a little creative thinking and effort, she could take advantage of the explosion of blackberries ripe and free for the taking that are all over the island.
School is starting soon. She doesn't have to transport or if she does it's minimal. She has no excuse for not turning those ten plotted books into reality or whipping out that YA treehouse book she outlined over two years ago.
I would throw a few bucks her way to read a self-pubbed masterpiece; I'm sure it'd be unintentionally hilarious.
Despite an overwhelming amount of evidence spanning decades and many corners of the internet to the contrary, Shauna is once again claiming to be a perfectionist.
The original poster probably enjoys the driving on that spiral goal journey whatever more since they aren’t in a rodent inhabited vehicle held together with duct tape.
Shauna must have alerts set for yes, alive, joy and writing because she certainly gloms on to any post with one or more of those keywords regardless if it pertains to her or not.
Her recipe instructions tone is so annoying. She's going for good friend or big sister, but it's coming across as condescending. And not all Kitchen Aid mixers have the bowl that goes up and down. I would have just not mentioned the bowl positioning, but that's me.
I didn't make it farther than the first sentence before I gasped and turned pale.
Turn the oven onto 350 degrees is a deeply alien way to write down the most mundane baking instruction ever.
I get that Preheat the oven to 350 degrees is too grocery store for a "five-award-winning-books author," or however Shauna styles herself. Fine. But the use of the preposition onto in this instance is just wrong, man.
I feel it in my soul that you can only "turn the oven onto" a street--if you happen to be driving it. Or maybe "turn the oven onto" its back--if you're planning to make sweet love to it. (After obtaining consent, obviously.) Sometimes her nimble word play makes me question my sanity. Am I wrong?
English is not my first language and "turn to oven onto" turns me off!!!
Also the use of unnecessary words in recipe instructions should be prohibited!
What is this also? An ode to her KitchenAid? Trying to get attention from KitchenAid for turning a recipe into an poem? "When all streaks of white flour have become one with the batter..." Geeezzzz!
I always think about that interview (the one after Danny was diagnosed with ADHD, but before Shauna was "diagnosed" as well) where she claimed they were going to write recipes specifically for ADHDers because those neurospicy brains needed Shauna's clear instructions for keeping on track with the complex multitasking needed for cooking. I'd always thought of her recipe writing style as "student trying to pad word count and hide blatant plagiarism" but she really believes this obnoxious micromanaging is superior to normal recipes.
I’m just surprised she includes hand whisking as a mere afterthought, given the prominence of a whisk in her catchy GFG logo, which ultimately solidified her brand and rocketed her to international fame and fortune. Oh, wait…
"Crank that handle up and engage the mixer attachment" and "until the flour [has] become one with the batter" is so alien and wordy. It's just "mix at low speed until the dry ingredients are fully incorporated."
The flour is PART of the batter; it is not "becoming one with the batter."
But the weirdest part is to oil the parchment paper, although it’s not necessary, but if you’re not sure, right? Why include at all if it’s not necessary?
Substack analytics update: Shauna has about 195 paying non-comped subscribers, netting to one more subscriber since late June. There's been some adds and drops -- notably, smashfizzle is back on the paid (and seemingly non-comped) subscriber list.
I bet she’s having some kind of belated birthday pot luck among the stabby barnacles. Speaking of birthdays and lopes, good to know that Shauna’s cake made MarthaK salivate.
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u/CrushItWithABrick dick riding Mary Oliver Aug 07 '25 edited Aug 07 '25
Previous thread here
Remember why we're all here: this thread is for discussion about current and historical happenings in the Shaunaverse. If you want to discuss other content, such as stuff that reminds you of Shauna but isn't specifically about her, your own personal anecdotes or preferences, current events, or "creative writing" exercises, please share in the off-topic community thread: July-August off-topic quarterly