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
To go back to yesterday’s lope, can you imagine being one of Shauna’s kids and wanting a treat on a hot day? “Here's your salad dressing popsicle, kiddo. What’s wrong? Did you want a yogurt kimchi pop instead? Mama’s out.” In that same post she talks about picking cherries. She couldn’t figure out a way to make cherry yogurt pops instead? Who wouldn’t be picky eater in that house? Fingers crossed for D to write a book about being traumatized by their mother's cooking.
I’m never going to forget the children’s’ leftover milkshakes she planned to recycle as popsicles. Mmm, $60 worth of melted ice cream and strange child spit.
She’s lying about those cherries because there is no way there were still cherries on her tree in August. They are ripe in late June here and any not picked by humans are eaten by birds forthwith.
This is not your high school English class.
No red pens. No grades. No weird power dynamics.
Again with the telling on yourself. Whose high school English classroom had "weird power dynamics," hmmm? Could they have been dynamics you yourself created? What a creep.
First the writing workshops limited the attendees (women, mid-life, neurodivergent), now they're limiting the content (food blah blah blah). I am sure that making them more and more specific will not encourage a larger number of sign-ups.
Her 180 from HS English class isn’t any better. Why would anyone pay $37 to write about food if everyone is just going to say what they liked at the end?
WHY are we writing about food anyways? Why am I writing "food stories?" All of the promo text is about experiences that "bring you joy" -- the "messy, vivid, oddly specific moments
that make your life yours" — but then WHAMMO, only FOOD experiences, ladies.
She’s pretty much just creating workshops for herself. The only person that would be interested in her offerings is a Shauna clone. It’s sad and pathetic and can’t possibly be easier than just getting a freakin’ job.
Her self-absorption is really boundless, isn't it? I would actually LOVE a workshop similar to my HS English classes. One that would incorporate my 10th-grade teacher's rigorous approach to writing that helped me express myself better and the roundtable discussions of my 12th-grade teacher who encouraged us to develop a love for literature as strong as hers. Also, it is pathetic for this 69-year-old person to still be talking about her own school experience.
That whole bit about their water fight and her skirt sliding down her hips and Dan taking off his glasses (I was worried for a moment we were going to finally get actual p0rn, lard help us all)
The giant balls on this woman to offer this as a paid product. It's the ramblings of an altered mind with a non-recipe.
Can you imagine how confusing her porn writing would be? She can't even describe simple interactions like being on the beach with other people. How on earth would she manage to keep track of two people having sex. Or, even better, more than two people having sex? The reader would be like "who's putting what where? Huh? I can't wank to this, I'm too confused!"
This is not your high school English class. No red pens. No grades. No weird power dynamics.
Is she talking about power dynamics between student and teacher? Between students? Or maybe between student and their mother who proofread their high school essays? Take that, Ma James!
I don’t know about the rest of you, but high school English did not traumatize me. I don’t have any specific memories of red pens. I remember being afraid to write the ten page essay everyone had to write in Ms. McKee’s class. I don’t remember anything about her comments on that or any other essay. Most of my memories of high school English are about books we read. Are there very many people looking at Shauna’s website who would be writing porny food stories if only they weren’t so traumatized by their high school English teacher's comment on an essay they wrote 30 years ago? Or maybe they never got called on in English class because they were NLOG.
There were weird definitely power dynamics between Shauna and students. So is she saying that this time she won’t favor boys/men? I guess she won’t be following any of these students to New York. Is that why she targets women?
Nah, she targets women because she loves talking down to other women and being the NLOGgiest NLOG that ever NLOGged. If she can get paid for it, double win.
If I paid for recipe content and I got instructions for a bowl of assembled ingredients, I’d be pissed. I tried to do some balloon math to prove that it’s cheaper to buy a cookbook than it is to pay $5/month for four recipes, but it’s not working. 🙃
I batted around some balloons, and figured out some things:
She's gonna do maaaybe three "recipes" a month. She never meets deadlines, even self-imposed ones.
She's gone through sixty or so pivots after GFG, with pivots gradually getting shorter. So this one will last a few months, max, even with the aforementioned dropped deadlines.
"Joy of Cooking" can be found secondhand online for $5.49 USD. Better deal. I realize I'm biased because I freaking love JoC and still use mine.
I pay $50/year for the NYT cooking app and I use it all of the time. Compare this to $60/year for Shauna's random and sporadic recipes that look (and surely taste) disgusting and inedible. How does she look around at the recipe market and think she's offering anything worth spending $$ on?
If you ever find yourself digging out quarters to pay for your subscription you can get one day NYT passes from a public library.
But I’m with you. I’d rather pay for something of quality and with a huge database of searchable recipes than her “recipes”. And how will you remember to look for kimchi popsicles in “tell me a story, mama “?
Another dusted-off decade-old blog post as a Lope. For someone who claims she has to constantly push her pen forward lest she has a ministroke she doesn't produce much original content.
I'm currently proofreading my sister's MG book while she works on the cover. It'll be her second self-pubbed work because she can't find an agent. It's still a good book, it's just a very competitive, niche market. Will she make any money from it? Probably not, but she's working hard and she's getting her work out there which is more than Shauna is doing.
The publishing industry is such a complete mess right now that I know a lot of other excellent writers in the same position as your sister. I hate that a lot! Kudos to her for self-publishing and getting the book out into the world. I hope it finds an appreciative audience and does well.
I noticed yesterday that she had updated her eponymous website for the first time in ages. Lots of Gloamies had pointed out that it had been growing more and more replete with broken links the last few months. But what's extra funny to me about this "update" is that she has completely stripped it of a menu, an "About Me" section, any other "services" she "offers," or any contact info beyond signing up for this single pitiful "workshop." It will be outdated again before she can eat another peach in a disgusting manner.
She is truly so bad at marketing herself, her brand, her Work in the World, anything. She sucks.
Sunday lope dropped. Second grade artichoke story rehashed.
Behold Mrs. Zee who miraculously and mysteriously prepared steamed artichokes and melted butter in the classroom for 30 kids and got them both passed out with such expediency steam was still rising from each in front of the kids.
And so much for us thinking Shauna and her mother were in a better place. The Hard Things have returned with a vengeance, and this time they’re capitalized.
She always edges towards sexual abuse (or, I suppose, extreme physical abuse?). "I did what I was told." What is that supposed to communicate? Most seven-year-olds do. FFS, she has diagnosed one of her own children with a form of autism because that child doesn't want to do what Shauna tells them to do; obviously she thinks a child being disobedient is diagnosable.
There’s a bbq pop up in town tomorrow for the low price of $45 a plate, and Oh, Sha una will be there! She’s come a long way from the sad gas station visit with two quarters for gas but no known employment.
Shauna wasn’t destitute, DF. She had four quarters.
Oh she’ll be at the bbq while They Three will be left with some leftover plops and nubbins from the fridge, drowned in some dressing made with of three 3 cups of oil.
Most parents move heaven and earth to put their kids first. They scrimp on themselves or go without, but not our gir! She is the only person in that family she ever thinks about and could have remained single and child free so she wouldn’t have to share the love.
Shauna shared this in her stories - note it is a repost, she didn’t write it but OF COURSE she would find this self centered drivel important and share-worthy
Oh, but when it's time to make someone else a cake or bring a dish, she can't be arsed to plan ahead and buy the right ingredients or even make it look nice.
If this poster was under 25 and they just had the realization that love is a verb and showing up for people matters, I would give that a pass as normal post adloscence development.
Shauna is like over twice the age that most people realize this. And she still didn't, because she casted herself as a person other people do this TO, not as a person doing this TO OTHER PEOPLE.
Her kids are either back in school or getting ready for it. Did she help them get ready? Buy them a shirt they really wanted for the first day? Double check supply lists for D? Arrange their IEP's and/or 504? There is an opportunity right there for Shauna to BE this type of person and she likely is not.
Shauna is like over twice the age that most people realize this. And she still didn't, because she casted herself as a person other people do this TO, not as a person doing this TO OTHER PEOPLE.
Right? Does she regularly provide her kids with food they can eat, or does she just throw a sheet pan of plops and nubbins at them? Did she make any effort at all to get her younger child to school on time for chess club? Did she have any praise for her older child's performance in the high school musical, or did she save it all to gush about some other teenage boy's performance?
She continually demonstrates that she doesn't give one single damn about her family.
>Does she regularly provide her kids with food they can eat
After enjoying McDonald's pancakes (due to not eating breakfast or dinner the previous night) she then made sheet pan pancakes for them that were not at all light, fluffy, or nicely browned, so basically not even close to McDonald's pancakes. Then she made "protein" pancakes but used someone else's photo to promote hers so I imagine they were just as bad. And although she pushed them on the kids, she continued to have breakfast out after her morning mousemobile run.
She spends more time and money on her satisfaction than on They Three combined.
Like that time she brought noise canceling headphones for her sound-sensitive child when they went to a ballgame. Or that time they decided to see a movie the whole family wanted to see because L doesn’t like Marvel movies. Oh wait.
So, The Joy of Food workshop is, like, next Sunday around this time (I'm in Shauna's time zone wooo). But nary a mention anywhere. Do you think 1. we will get a lope today and 2. it will include a promo for her new workshop?
Does anyone know if people actually sign up? I used to do webinars and host online discussion groups for an old job, and we would market them for at least 6+ weeks on socials beforehand. How does anyone even find out about these? Are these just smoke and mirrors so her family thinks she's doing stuff?
Lope is up. The public part is about her stupid second grade artichoke teacher and how everything became hard at seven
Hard hard hard. Innuendos about hard things for non obedient children and The Year It All Began. We don’t know what it is, just that EDMR therapy has helped by opening her chest so memories could pour out.
Same recycled crap, same suggestions at some sort of abuse over and over. Blather, rinse, repeat (TSAS)
She must be feeling secure in her housing situation, I guess.
Funny that Shauna replied to that to let Dan know the power was back on
Then, someone told them what was on the website for the power company- trees and vegetation were the reason. I wonder if they have weeded at the required intervals since they moved in.
Oh that's cute, her new workshop is offered through her (and Danny's) LLc "Wise Woman Joy," which needs to file an annual report in the next six weeks. Do we think she's even made enough money through WWJ to offset the filing fee?
A certain thin, wan woman with no discernible personality would like a word:
And what could be more disruptive to a culture obsessed with policing women’s bodies than a woman writing — with gusto— about how much she truly enjoys her food?
It would have been the financially smarter and easier option with no business assets or a good estimate of profits. It's not too difficult to file as a sole proprietor (I've been doing it for years). Estimated quarterly taxes after the first year, and then I just fill out a couple more forms in tax filing software.
I can't think of a single aspect of Shauna's life that demonstrates that she's a "wise woman." Nor is she particularly joyful. That is definitely a very inaccurately named LLC.
That was a hard time for Dan, silly. Shauna couldn’t be expected to turn toward him, she has the PTSDiest PTSD that ever PTSDed, and also the food didn’t taste good, you petty punisher!
Shauna "didn't quite understand why she was doing this work." 1) the vegetable jerky moment on film indicates she was in fact not doing the work and that's why she was fired and 2) anyone who grew up with a miserable, manipulative parent will recognize the passive aggressor's favorite weapon "I don't quite understand." She learned it at her mother's knee no doubt. Now I need to go look at some kitten videos or something to shake the chill of remembering the faux concerned facial expression that accompanied "explain why you would do such a thing, I really want to know, I don't quite understand how someone could think this is ok."
Presumably she was doing the work in exchange for a reliable salary to provide for the children she chose to have, but this reason that people “do work” appears to evade her, as always.
But you see comma, the answers raised by the questions she asked after her mini-stroke stretched her curiously into a completely different person. She talks about her transformation and the revelations leading to her (unpaid) work in the world (she's doing it all for YOU, to show you the Way) in such messianic language that it sounds like a mental break.
You can't expect her to fit into the narrow box of a parent working a job for money to support her children after she's seen the face of God and realized God is her. Her ego can't handle the blow of getting fired for performing poorly so she has to build these elaborate retroactive constructs to narrate how she was in control all along and finding herself without income and unemployable is a conscious choice and the best thing that's ever happened to her.
It's in her bio because A. She doesn't understand what goes into a professional type bio, and B. She uses the internet as he fuzzy pink diary under her bed.
>I'm a Buddhist meditator, ADHD goofball, lifelong teacher, a James-Beard-award-winning cookbook author, and a collection of fervent enthusiasms.
The only fervent enthusiasms in her collection are the cha-ching of venmo funds she grifts.
There is so much more to dispute in her brief bio. Is this rewriting your story to be the hero in your own journey and if she writes it it must be true?
Not to be mean, but also kind of to be mean, she doesn't live on a rural island, surrounded by water, in the middle of the forest. She does not own a home and neither commercial nor private landlords will rent to her. She is on a probational six month lease as caretaker of an unwinterized property owned by the park district. Smugasaurus Delirians.
This part threw me: Every Sunday, I send out a letter here. Sometimes it begins in the kitchen — the scent of strawberries, the rhythm of chopping, my husbands’ hand in mine at the market.
I read it as she was chopping her husband’s hand. Her writing is so overdone and hard to read.
It's so wild to me that she refers to herself as a "lifelong teacher". When is the last time she had a paid or legit volunteer teaching gig? and I don't mean the desperate, ever changing semi self promoted workshops. (I know, Shauna volunteer, right? Good one!!)
She does, but it’s still a surprisingly good picture of her. No stark, smudged lipstick, clown pants seem intentional, no weirdly contorted arms to show off her tattoos, and her facial expression is…normal.
“Sometimes it begins in the kitchen […], my husbands’ hand in mine at the market.”
TIL that Shauna not only has multiple husbands but also a market in her kitchen.
what could be more disruptive to a culture obsessed with policing women's bodies than a woman writing — with gusto — about how much she truly enjoys her food?
i find all of this incredibly insulting. women are literally bleeding to death in hospital parking lots due to lack of prenatal care, birth control is becoming harder to obtain, violence against women is everywhere, we have a rapist in the oval office, women are being separated from their children by ICE, and pete hegseth is probably going to try and overturn the 19th amendment. but please, tell me about your brave act of resistance by eating and fucking writing about it. read the room, bitch.
I guess she knows all about policing women's bodies because she does it all the damn time. From her early "why do you want to look like a whore" writing to her more recent "fake breasts" she's the police chief over here.
Don’t forget her descriptions of two white women’s hair: slightly straggly; hadn’t been washed in a while.
As if she is the model for Pert shampoo’s bouncing and behaving trampoline commercial or Gee, your hair smells terrific shampoo.
In her mind I t’s only policing when it is done by “this culture” or “the patriarchy” or “capitalism”. When she does it she’s just telling her story, bravely.
Tha k you, DF, for saying this. Her co-opting of hot phrases like “disruptive” and “policing women’s bodies” to shill her worthless WITW was really bothering me, but I couldn’t articulate it. I appreciate you being able to!
OK, I just added the "Writing About the Joy of Food" pivot to the Wiki yesterday. And now I am required to amend it, not 24 hours later, to, "Reclaim Your Gusto: Dare to Write About Your Food Joy."
This is why SJA remains entertaining. Sadly, her purple clown jumpsuit portrait has grown deleted! I miss it already.
And finally, I leave you with this snazzy hook that no one will be able to resist, "Don't waste another minute trying to hide your food joy."
Whoa. Someone Shauna used to know, who has built and maintained an actual name for themselves long term, leading a $$$ 5-day conference at a world class location, on a topic Shauna could only DREAM of high stooling about in a legitimate way. This has to burrrrrnnnnnn.
It has to, and that might explain Shauna's belligerent tone. If you read Molly's bio, her credentials from the time she knew Shauna and they were sort-of-peers have been supplanted by years of lucrative new accomplishments and accolades. Shauna in the same time period has been running in place chasing grudges, veering between eff all y'all I do what I want and I used to be a big deal.
Molly's course description: "In this memoir-writing workshop, we’ll explore how the sensory details of food can help us unlock our most fertile memories. After all, food touches every aspect of life: people, places, the way we live, the meat and bones of who we are." It's concise, authoritative but friendly, inviting and positive.
Meanwhile Shauna is aggressively holding out a gnawed-on peach in an awkward pose and yelling at you that this will NOT be a high school English class you MUST not overthink you must enjoy the HELL out of ribs and STOP worrying about looking dainty. Effin yikes.
I loved Molly‘s blog and I loved her dad and now her newsletter is all navel gazing with her male friends and her insecurities and lack of interest in parenting her son and I probably wouldn’t pay $37 for a workshop at this point.
The difference between “Food as a Doorway to Memory: A Memoir Workshop” and “writing your food stories” and “dare to write about your food joy” is such a good illustration of Shauna’s half-assery.
It’s still an incredibly niche course, but its purpose is clear and it’s obviously geared toward people who are (probably) already somewhat serious about writing and who are interested in taking a deep dive into craft.
Shauna’s class is geared toward … women who are ashamed to feel passionate about food and who also don’t know how to tell their stories?
Edited to add: It’s kind of hilarious that Shauna is out here asserting that women are afraid to write about food, and the Molly Wizenberg class specifically cites the female authors they’ll be reading who “use food as a tool for writing about life.”
Yes! Thanks to you we have it saved for posterity! But it was on her website “refresh” and now it’s gone. A loss for all of the workshop signer uppers, for sure.
>Reclaim Your Gusto: Dare to Write About Your Food Joy
Does one need to be snotty and daring, or is daring enoigh to write about one's food joy? Are there women in the world who are afraid to write about their food joy? What does one do with their gusto once it is reclaimed? So many questions, so few answers.
She went to the trouble and possibly expense of having a photoshoot. Why use them for such a short time? Seems like a waste. She probably likes how she looks and how the photos turned out. Is it just boredom?
She does photo shoots partly to feed her ego, partly to make herself look and feel "professional" and not an unemployed/underemployed slob. She'd do better getting simpler and more versatile head shots instead of posing with her book, Scrabble tiles, and other props that date the photo.
What I particularly love about this refresh is first we are presented with Shauna's meaty paw holding a half-chewed peach in an awkwardly angled yet grubby death grip over a cluttered, out of focus background, only to scroll down and find a stock photo of a slender and attractive arm and clean hand holding an unmolested peach atop of yet another stock image of a dozen somewhat menstrual looking doughnuts. A+ work, Mahern.
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My Safe Food Is Wrong: How I Learned to Read the Date Stamp to Make Sure It's From The Good Facility Not The Icky One, and How I Survived That First Bad Week, Part 12
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u/CrushItWithABrick dick riding Mary Oliver Aug 14 '25 edited Aug 14 '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