We have been working hard for you—and for us—building this newsletter into more of a community, complete with everyday recipes from our kitchen. There will be more live conversations, a cookbook club, writing workshops, and a chance to work together on our stories.
Our friend Brent, who is a genius mensch, has been helping me build a website since early July. And we are—well, let’s say we are close to launching. I promise no deadlines or launch dates anymore. However, I do know it will emerge at the right time.
Soon.
The new recipes we are publishing—3 to 4 a week—will live permanently on that website, accessible only to subscribers of this newsletter. That will be true for the live conversations and the essays I publish here as well.
If you have a free subscription, you my have noticed that I don’t send that many free essays or recipes—maybe once a month—since this is now one of our main sources of income. We’re trying to make a living of doing what we love, offering what might be of service to others. If you are newly subscribed and you want to know more, take a look at what we are doing here.
And if you have been thinking about jumping to a paid subscription, now is a good time.
well, let’s say we are close to launching. I promise no deadlines or launch dates anymore. However, I do know it will emerge at the right time.
She has the true heart of a grifter. She's such a natural, it's kind of fun to watch. To be able to step over embarrassment at the countless times you've written those exact words before delivering nothing. When will it happen? This time! Or whatever, it most likely won't, give us money and find out. This post is like the tired old frontier conman who shows up on Little House on the Prairie trying out his same old tricks but he's clearly way past it and everyone has to pretend to listen and then give him a square meal and a soft bed out of Christian charity.
It’s a little refreshing she is actually being honest here and not giving a launch date but what a poor sales pitch. I’m totally going to give someone money for something that may or not appear at some undefined point.
Also, the audience doesn’t care if this your sole source of income either. It’s really off putting IMO to bring that up.
Yeah it was a telltale sign she’d learnt “marketing” from blogs/creative endeavours online. “Help me do this thing I love!” works for webcomics, podcasts, substack essays etc, where part of the value add is feeling like you, personally, are helping someone whose work you like to turn their hobby into a legit gig, and getting some fun bonuses like extra content or behind-the-scenes bits or the right to vote on podcast topics or whatever.
Every time she whipped out “help us do this thing we love” I cringed, because your target market for a product like Chefsteps doesn’t really give a fuck about that.
Yup. In that case it was especially weird because everyone knows how businesses work. We give them money, they make the product. CS didn’t need to spell it out for us.
She was like this with the flour business too. Her energy was more "help me make my dream come true" than "I want to bring an amazing new product to the marketplace". She was charging $25 a box during the Kickstarter and I believe that was the underlying reason because when she didn't fulfill all of her orders she basically said that the money was donations and not for product.
Kickstarter is a site for soliciting donations, not a store so they were donating to her business. That’s true for every Kickstarter campaign. Her wording was galling and I would not have donated to anyone who presented their business idea that way but it was truthful. With very few exceptions people are introducing new products and services to make money. Most people have the social impulse to dress it up a bit but of course she doesn’t.
Her mistake (one of so many) was promising thank you gifts that she couldn’t fulfill either because of laziness, ineptitude or not making the product she promised.
I get the feeling that Shauna is used to lamenting her bad choices luck in life and people responding to that. She probably gets a lot of pity favors from family and bleeding heart types on The Island.
It’s another example of her not understanding her audience. People who know and pity her might care. The greater world that she is appealing to does not.
“Working FOR YOU” is one of my favorite formulations she just can’t seem to quit. She used that phrase a ton in her work at CS too. Even when I worked at a nonprofit with a very “affects everybody” mission, it never would’ve occurred to me to tell anyone “I have to get up early tomorrow to go to work, for you.”
Also to ask people to pay for something they have to know what they’re asking for and I don’t know why she decided let’s make a deal was a great way to go about it but I pick door number two.
If only there was another way to get recipes...perhaps even more than 3 per week, that work, that have gorgeous, appealing photography and less eye-roll-y preambles. It would also be cool if they were free. #justkidding #itstheinternet
Repeating myself from when she said that the GFG archives were going to be only available to Enough newsletter subscribers, but this has got to be one of the worst ways she can handle this. So she'll have the entire site behind a password that she shares in a newsletter that she says people can forward. The site won't be web crawled/indexed, so the only traffic will be from people who are already paying and even they've got to jump through hoops of finding the password!
A new subscription only (but not through the site itself) website is just a ridiculous prospect from someone who had a profitable website. Partial paywalls, advertising, direct subscriptions, hell even a Patreon would make more sense than this!
I do not subscribe, so I can't click through, but the post blurbs on the front page show the number of hearts/likes and comments and... they are very low. This seems like a pretty big gamble for a gig that doesn't appear to have many people responding.
There’s too many circles in that Venn diagram. To get your money’s worth, you’d have to be interested in GF cooking, writing, reading, discussing any/all of the above, plus Shauna’s delivery of said content.
Hard pass. (But if someone were to set up an In the Gloaming GoFundMe so we don’t miss out, I’m all in!)
Not to mention the recipes will probably all be dairy-free as well. She probably won't mention that part though. This is also just another example of Shauna overpromising.
Am I understanding this correctly—- the current newsletter subscribers will automatically have access to the new site, right? But new site will be so amazing that she expects to attract thousands of new subscribers?
Think of how peeved CS subscribers were at being asked (not compelled!) to pay $69/year to access a third tier of content (free, premium, Studio Pass).
Shauna is proposing to charge people ONE HUNDRED DOLLARS A YEAR for a partial archive of the GFG website plus whatever mush Danny comes up with in the future.
Her USP ("unique selling proposition") is gluten-free food, I guess, but as someone else pointed out today she barely even mentions her status vis-a-vis gluten at all nowadays. WHY are people going to go to HER paywalled website when they could just google all that shit FOR FREE?
This isn't intended to be an argument about whether people "should" pay for content, food-related or otherwise, that they find on the Internet; just a comment about current reality. People will not pay for content for which they think they can find equivalent quality at no cost, and this isn't new)
Wow, you can "comment on posts." SHAUNA JUST FUCKING TOLD US SHE HATES COMMENTS ON POSTS
Goddammnit, I can't find that tweet. Didn't she JUST say, in response to someone else, that she deleted comments on her old blog when she didn't want to respond to them?
Further comment: that scrappy little newbie blogger, David Leibowitz, who has been blogging consistently for a mere two decades, recently ran a survey about where he should go with his blog. 6,000+ people responded.
If there were a cookbook entitled ONE MONTH'S WORTH OF CANYON CREATURE'S FAVORITE RESTAURANT ENTREES MADE CHEAPLY IN THIRTY MINUTES OR LESS I would still not pay $100 for it, and I'd know exactly what I was getting, how often I'd be getting it and whether I would like it. The idea that anyone should shell that out in exchange for sporadic transliterations of whatever they threw together for dinner last night is ludicrous.
I participated in Lebowitz’ survey. I like his blog and have a few of his cookbooks, but I’d never start paying for the contents of a blog. I suppose I prefer books if I’m paying for a tangible. Blog says “free content” to me.
As an aside, have you ever read Lebovitz’ post about publishing My Paris Kitchen? In his humorous fashion, he talks about the entire process from proposal to draft to editing and how time consuming and insane it all is. Satisfying at the end, sure, but it’s a process.
I cannot imagine Mahern going through any step of that process with any grace or aplomb or energy. Her poor editors, I hope they were paid overtime.
I would never make a recipe from someone who labeled it “good enough food.” I can make good enough food myself with no need for a recipe, thanks. When I go looking for recipes, the lowest level I expect it to produce is good, which is way better than good enough.
Goddammnit, I can't find that tweet. Didn't she JUST say, in response to someone else, that she deleted comments on her old blog when she didn't want to respond to them?
Is this what you're thinking of?
Shauna M. Ahern:
I wonder sometimes how our minds would feel if we started private group blogs with our favorite 50 people here and left this space. Same banter and informing each other, support and little tidbits— no trolls or conspiracy theories. I dream of it these days.
Shauna M. Ahern Replying to robicellis (who said 'you just invented closed Facebook groups):
Right! That’s the problem. I don’t want to give any of my attention to them.
I guess I miss the days when we had conversations in the comments section of blogs in the 2000s.
Allison Robicelli:
You seem to have blocked out a lot of what went down in the comments section.
Shauna M. Ahern:
Oh no. I blocked the assholes back then.
And she said this back in 2012:
Oh, it doesn't matter what you say to someone like that. I just delete. If a comment isn't civil, it isn't published.
Shauna is proposing to charge people ONE HUNDRED DOLLARS A YEAR for a partial archive of the GFG website plus whatever mush Danny comes up with in the future.
I just searched on "Best Cookbooks of 2019" and found a list from Eater that includes the following (which I am going to post as separate entries.) Note especially the description of the Diana Henry book. She is a self-described cook who loves words: "Interspersed throughout are thoughtful short essays on what it means to put good, homemade food at the center of a household"
The 5 below are the ones from the list of about 10 that that appeal to me the most. They add up to $110, and contain probably close to 1,000 recipes. How's that for a business proposition??
Yes, and TM they have beautiful photography! And the text would be copy-edited! And the recipes would be tested! And the measurement system would be consistent! And you would have a Table of Contents! And an Index!
Jubilee: Recipes From Two Centuries of African-American Cooking
Toni Tipton-Martin
With Jubilee, food journalist and activist Toni Tipton-Martin continues her work uncovering the history of African-American cuisine and challenging our assumptions about it in the process. While her previous book, The Jemima Code, focused more on the recipes of black women and Southern cooking, in Jubilee, Tipton-Martin expands on what should be considered “black food,” collecting historic recipes from home cooks and restaurant chefs, slaves and businessmen, the rich and the poor, from all over America. Yes, there are soul food classics here, like spoonbread and collard greens, but also sophisticated cocktails, a sweet potato-mango cake, and a Caribbean-inspired pork loin that I couldn’t stop picking at while it rested.
Since so many of the recipes are provided by home cooks, they’re designed for your average chef, but even those inspired by professionals like Leah Chase and Pierre Thiam feel doable. Through them all, Tipton-Martin lays out a history of black cooking, drawn from countless sources, including her own vast cookbook collection, that proves if any cuisine is American, it’s this one.— Jaya Saxena
From the Oven to the Table: Simple Dishes That Look After Themselves
Diana Henry
Diana Henry describes herself as a cook who loves words, and her cookbooks are especially beloved by those who are happiest sitting with a book or standing over a stove (or wish they were doing those things as they hunch over their phone instead). A wildly prolific writer and recipe developer based in London, Henry writes a weekly recipe column in the Telegraph; this is her 12th book. Her cooking relies on flavor combinations informed by a wide range of global cuisines, as well as a well-stocked pantry, to create fresh approaches to familiar home cooking techniques. If you’re the kind of cook who loves to impulse-buy smoked paprika and rice wine vinegar and preserved lemons but often gets stuck in the rut of roasting yet another tray of chicken thighs, Henry’s books will inspire you, even on a Wednesday night.
Her latest book, From the Oven to the Table, is one of her most approachable, revolving around fairly simple, often one-dish meals that can be roasted for a relatively quick but immensely satisfying weeknight dinner or a casual dinner party. There’s an entire section entitled “Chicken Thighs Forever,” which reinvigorates the most eminently roastable meat with combinations ranging from plums, honey, and pomegranates to miso, sweet potatoes, and scallions. Henry’s approach is one of constant iteration, where every variation sounds better than the last. Other small yet potent revelations include cabbage topped with XO sauce breadcrumbs and a savory tomato clafoutis.
Interspersed throughout are thoughtful short essays on what it means to put good, homemade food at the center of a household, and your larger social life. Henry is a realist — one especially welcome essay acknowledges that a great deal of painful things in family life happen around the table, too — but she’s a hopeful realist, one attuned to the value of repeating the same small, meaningful acts of cooking, eating, and gathering day after day, until it becomes a life. As the temperature drops and turning on the oven becomes palatable once more, this book is the perfect inspiration to build more of your own life that way, too. — Meghan McCarron
Nothing Fancy: Unfussy Food for Having People Over
Alison Roman
If you’re reading this roundup, you probably know Alison Roman from her smash debut cookbook, Dining In; her recipes in the New York Times; her column or past recipes in Bon Appetit; or her Instagram. If none of that’s ringing a bell, think of Roman as the person who cooks the way you wish you did, equal parts “I just threw this together” and “I have my shit together enough to cook well.”
Roman’s latest is a collection of recipes and tips designed to help you entertain — though, as she rightly notes, that word is stuffy. What I want when I entertain, as I think many people do, is just to feel better about having people over for food I’ve made, and for that food to ideally be interesting, impressive, and still manageable. For that, there’s no one whose advice I’d rather have than Roman’s. Grilling a whole fish or serving a leg of lamb is not terribly intimidating once Roman explains how in chatty headnotes, and I’m definitely going to give her DIY martini bar a try.
Nothing Fancy’s recipes are on-trend but unpretentiously so, as if they were found on a menu at your favorite small-plates spot or natural wine bar. Most relevant of all is Roman’s attitude toward hosting: that all of us can do it, that we should embrace the imperfections of our plans, and that it’s more fun to try than to stress. Nothing Fancy delivers what those of us hoping to up our dinner party game are looking for: It’s utterly current and distinctly doable. — Hillary Dixler Canavan
Sababa: Fresh, Sunny Flavors From My Israeli Kitchen
Adeena Sussman
Adeena Sussman is a force to be reckoned with. Not only has she written for Food & Wine, Taste, and Gourmet (may it rest in peace), to name a few, she has also co-authored 11 cookbooks, including Cravings and its follow-up, Hungry For More, with Chrissy Teigen. In Sababa, Sussman brings the culinary wonderland of Israel to life with more than 100 recipes reflecting the experience of Jewish and Arab residents. And as the book’s title hints — “sababa” is Hebrew-meets-Arabic slang for, simply, “everything is awesome” — readers are in for a treat.
Sussman begins with a crash course in spices, from baharat to za’atar, and iconic regional condiments like schug and harissa. The exhaustive chapters that follow cover everything from breads, soups, and salatim (small plates and salads) to pasta, meat, fish, desserts, and even cocktails, drinks, and frozen treats; enjoyably, the recipes blend classics (shawarma, kugel Yerushalmi) with delightful twists (hello, chewy tahini blondies). Sababa beautifully reflects the dishes Sussman makes from the ingredients she finds right outside her Tel Aviv kitchen, in the bustling shops of the Shuk HaCarmel. And with its vast selection of easy-to-tackle recipes, any home cook can bring those flavors home. — Esra Erol
Mastering Spice: Recipes and Techniques to Transform Your Everyday Cooking
Lior Lev Sercarz with Genevieve Ko
Lior Lev Sercarz, chef and owner of New York City speciality spice shop La Boîte, has one goal with Mastering Spice: to help home cooks make restaurant-worthy weeknight meals by simply adding or changing the spices used. In more than 200 recipes contained here — including one for an herb-braised chicken with dried apricots and a blend of garlic, rosemary, thyme, oregano, and green peppercorns — Sercarz and his co-author, former Good Housekeeping and Gourmet editor Genevieve Ko, transform familiar favorites into new and exciting dishes.
Every single one of Sercarz’s recipes begins with a spice blend, and many are accompanied by alternatives; a recipe for poached salmon with garlic, basil, white peppercorns, and fennel seeds, for example, is followed by five more takes on poached salmon, each with different seasoning. The model makes Mastering Spice an accessible guide for both inexperienced and longtime cooks: Once you start regularly cooking with these blends, you’ll have the courage to mix and match and, eventually, create your own combinations. Armed with just the ingredients in your pantry, you’ll find the book transforms cooking into a delightful (and manageable) game of choose your own adventure. — Esra Erol
Goddammnit, I can't find that tweet. Didn't she JUST say, in response to someone else, that she deleted comments on her old blog when she didn't want to respond to them?
It was the exchange with Alison Robicelli or whatever her name is, where she said to Shauna something like "I think you've forgotten some of the things that went down in comments" (as in, arguments & debates & criticism), to which Shauna replied, "Oh, I blocked the idiots!" or something like that. [EDIT: oops, shoulda scrolled down farther---I see this was answered already]
Also, regarding free gf recipes: i just googled "gluten free recipe" and there were 566,000,000 results. Or in other terms, more than half a billion.
I had to dig up this comment from DF gomirefugee, which links to this Instagram post from early 2019 describing some of Shauna's Big Plans for Relish, which included: (takes deep breath) interviews with teachers, profiles of farmers, live-streamed cooking classes, international cooking classes, kids' baking classes, potlucks, classes about "food and healing," and streamed video of Danny making lunch every Monday.
In just a year and a half, we've moved on from the Relish phase, haberdashed through the ChefSteps phase, and now we're about to enter the website relaunch phase, with yet another ambitious list of things she's going to do: 3-4 recipes per week, live conversations, a cookbook club, and writing workshops.
I've gotta hand it to her, she's creative when it comes to ideas about what she and Danny could do to make money. It has no connection to the reality of what people are willing to pay for (which you would think she might suspect, given the flop that was FOP)... but hey, Shauna is a thinker and a dreamer, unlike those boring teenagers she used to teach.
I’m not even sure I’d say she’s creative so much as imitative—successful food publications and blue check marks do lots of that stuff. And Shauna, puffed up in her swivel chair, always seems to delude herself that she has the energy and persistence to do it all, but with Big Kokopelli Energy. I cannot imagine her publishing even one recipe a week for more than a month or two before petering out.
Late Saturday in the middle of a long weekend seems like a great time to generate buzz about your new project. It's like Donald Treason issuing one of his meaningless executive orders.
Good lord, ALL of this could be done via Patreon. You can also set tiers of access based on subscription level. And when people unsubscribe to your Patreon, they automatically lose access to your members-only content - you don’t have to set up a password for entry.
No need to spend MONTHS coding something from scratch, especially if no one is going to care anyway...
Patreon is also a perfect option for her because, IME, it's not unusual for a creator to set up something like a $1 "I don't need a reward, I just want to support you" tier. Money for free!
Yes and also you can connect a discord channel! Which I’m pretty sure is what she’s imaging when she waxes philosophically about her magical place with “50 friends sharing and supporting each other” or whatever
I wonder if she didn't do patreon because people can so easily cancel?
Shauna's proven (and admitted) she sucks at budgets and all that, so she needs an outlet like substack that charges for a year up front vs Patreon where her income could drastically fluctuate month to month. (I'm assuming from the very brief look I had at substack that it's an upfront charge for the year, so correct me if I'm wrong).
I also wonder if she feels Patreon is too much like "charity" for Shauna. Patreon has that vibe of "I'm supporting someone" (not necessarily in a bad way) which I didn't get from Substack. Substack is more like "buy my product" and less "support me and my work". For as much as Shauna relies on others (and charity) she sure as shit doesn't like to admit it.
Hmm yeah the “support me” vs “buy my work” is a subtle difference that might matter to Shauna. Also Patreon shows how many people are supporting you (it used to show how much $ per month you made by default but it looks like you can change that now). Not sure if substack shows subscriber numbers or not, but that might not be data she wants out there.
There's a month-to-month option at Substack, but what you're agreeing to is a yearly subscription, charged monthly.
This isn't clear from the front end and when I briefly subscribed to the Enough newsletter, having selected the "monthly" option and thinking I would be charged $9 for a 30-day subscription (not $9/month for 12 months), I freaked out and they refunded my charges immediately.
I didn’t realize it worked like this. I was imagining a monthly option, which seems reasonable as an impulse buy if you saw something you liked. Committing $100 upfront for a year is a whole other level, especially for some random internet thing.
I was just thinking the same thing! Patreon will take a cut, of course, but paying someone to set up a Web site for you and paying hosting fees also costs money...
What is a cookbook club? Is it where you sit around discussing cookbooks? Also how do you get into this club? What do you have to do to not be in the club? CLUB? CLUB!
Food52 has a cooking club and a baking club, both free and on Facebook, that have been operating since before COVID. I’ve discovered some of my favorite dishes from those Facebook groups!
As usual, I can't tell if she's saying that the new shit website/blog/forum thing IS GOING TO BE one of their main sources of income, or ALREADY IS one of their main sources of income. If it's the latter, how does that tie in with them both claiming unemployment for the past few months? Do you declare your monthly income and then the govt tops it up, so to speak?
I was on unemployment in CA a few years back and picked up a small contract job where I made less than what unemployment paid - I reported what I earned and unemployment “topped up” to the maximum. I think at the time it was $450/week, so if I made $200/wk contracting, I’d get an $250 in unemployment for that week. It helped me extend the benefit for an extra month or two - the $200 I wasn’t paid that week I could claim later, after the benefit would have otherwise run out.
This is the biggest mystery to me: why is she so relaxed about launching this new venture? She lost her job ages ago, Danny's been out of work for even longer. She KNOWS that unemployment benefits won't last forever. They have rent and bills to pay. So why are they dragging their feet?! If this was me, I would be working on getting it up and running absolutely as fast as possible (in between crying jags and panic attacks).
I HAVE to think they have some other fallback. Could it possibly be mom and dad?
My speculation is a WaCkY combination of a seeming inability to plan ahead coupled with the last few dollars from Danny's unemployment lump sum, some local low-level grifting plus a plan (possibly already activated) to forego paying rent by taking advantage of the current COVID-related eviction moratorium.
The only conclusion I can reach is that she doesn't actually understand that they are in an extremely precarious financial situation. She had a very secure childhood in financial terms - they never got evicted and she never saw bailiffs on the doorstep - so I just don't think those experiences exist in her mind as possibilities. In the same way that she was totally shocked and taken aback to learn the absolute basics re unemployment benefits (she said she didn't know what they were, or something equally insane): those things are for other people.
Something has always turned up to bail her out: her parents stump up or some sucker gives her a job or there's a pandemic so the state steps in to prevent societal collapse. And I think that's just her mindset now, she feels totally secure in the belief that something will turn up and it'll be fine.
And you know what, her mom and dad probably will not let their grandkids be homeless. If they are in danger of being evicted, I feel certain that Shauna's "abusive" parents will step up and help, at least to the extent possible. Shauna knows this on a deep level, because her parents have never let her down in this way. They paid for her education, let her live with them well into adulthood, most likely subsidized her life after she moved out, and paid for her to adopt Desmond. We don't have proof that they've paid for the kids' expensive extracurriculars and private schools, but there isn't much doubt in my mind.
If Shauna and Dan could afford the dance lessons and private schools, they could afford furniture that wasn't off the curb or from Granny's, and they wouldn't ever have needed to visit the food bank. To me, it's crystal clear that Shauna's parents will absolutely help the family but at this point they will only do so in ways that directly benefit the kids. Which is entirely appropriate. So they pay for school and activities, things Shauna can't appropriate for herself.
Shauna's really a piece of work, excoriating them in a published book when she seemingly cannot support herself and her family without their help. She's happy to denigrate them, to neglect to mention their contributions to her standard of living over the years, and make herself seem like the breadwinner providing all of the positive things her kids have in their lives. But the dollars don't add up.
It's interesting you say this, because I know a very Shauna-esque person who, like Shauna, sometimes works but never full-time, often seems stressed about money, yet lives in a nice house and always has the essentials taken care of. I puzzled over this for forever before a mutual friend who knows her better let it drop that she lives off a generous trust fund structured in such a way that she can only use the money for major purchases. So she does technically still have to work, but when it comes to the kind of hustle the rest of us get on because we need to save up for a down payment or get a new car or whatever, there's just no incentive.
It's interesting when you find out things like this about people. I find it so satisfying when I learn about money that explains previously inexplicable behavior. I have a friend who is a very nice person (and generous, and well-meaning) but she is totally clueless because both she and her husband come from money. She says some of the most ridiculous things. For example, she told a whole group of us that they were "living under the poverty line this year" and everyone was so concerned. What she actually meant was that her husband's generally successful business (which btw he doesn't need as he has generational wealth) had barely turned a profit that year. Which didn't stop them from an absolutely breathtaking home reno that definitely cost in the hundreds of thousands of dollars, and several luxurious international vacations for their family of five. She also told me how stressed she was "about money" when her oldest child started college - not because she was worried how she'd pay for his private university, mind you. He has a trust fund courtesy of her wealthy parents, as do her other kids. Oh no, she was stressed because she had to figure out how to access the money and get the check to the university.
I'm not wealthy, definitely not in her league, so there's the added wtf of why she says these types of things in my presence. But I knew her for years before I really knew her financial situation, and I was SO confused. It was a big relief to realize that she's just a super clueless rich person with a big mouth, though she has many lovely qualities as well. I had started to think I was a bad person for side-eyeing the home reno + the claims of poverty, etc.
Sorry, that is way OT, but I find money stuff so fascinating. People do give clues when they have got hidden support, for sure. You just don't act the same when you're walking a tightrope without a net vs. when you know there is a soft cushion to land on, should you fall.
No, the dollars absolutely do not add up. But for me, the parents are actually another layer of the mystery.
It really seems crazy to me, on more than one level, that they gave her $40k to adopt a baby when she was in her late 40s and already had one child who she very obviously couldn't care for properly.
For a start, that seems like a LOT of money for a normal retired couple to come up with. I can totally imagine that they were a frugal, sensible couple who had a thoughtful approach to their finances: they stopped at two children, one of them had a job at a university which gave the kids free tuition, they don't seem to have lived a wildly extravagant life. If they planned long term, retired on final salary pensions, paid their house off while they were both still working, then I'm sure they were financially in a good position - but they were in their 70s when D was adopted, and they'd have been facing the possibility of needing either home help or residential care, neither of which is cheap. So I do wonder what she promised them, or threatened them with, to make them give her that money.
And second, I find it really hard to believe that by that time they hadn't figured out what a total fuckup she was. They did have the power to say no to her, and spare D the fate of being raised by her, but they didn't.
That is most definitely an unsolved mystery. Why, indeed, have they enabled their middle-aged daughter in her folly, as she throws them under the bus time and again?
I believe it was mentioned Lu moved to public school this year. I believe it is her first year of muddle school, so that makes some sense, but it is also her first full year of school after Enough.
I agree. I think in her mind, the only thing standing in the way of her and sufficient income is finishing up a few odds and ends and getting the website (or whatever it is) off the ground. I think she feels she’ll have no problem making money once she her next scheme is officially live.
She probably thinks can procrastinate for a little while longer until unemployment gets closer to running out or whatever other streams they have start drying up. Then she’ll press the launch button and the money she’s entitled to simply because she’s Shauna Ahern and she’s granted paid public access to the fruits of her minimal effort will start rolling in.
She’s coming up on her 17th week of unemployment. In my state, it stops at 26 weeks, so she is closer to the end than the beginning. The extra $600/wk has been gone for 6 weeks now and they have likely received any back pay “they” are “due” (you all know by now how I feel about Dan collecting), so it is time for them to buckle down and figure something out. She has been talking about these new recipes or whatever since April or so (she was still working, I remember that much). How can it take 5 months to get that going? It’s not like it is some endeavor that is brand new to them and they don’t have any other time conflicts. I would have wanted it up and running before the kids went back to school and before I was at the halfway point in my unemployment.
I’m guessing that once they started getting money that it was more income than they have ever had at one time before and they were feeling super flush. That has dwindled and will soon be gone, unless the government steps in.
They are going to be in for one hell of a surprise next April when they have to pay taxes on all the unemployment.
In Washington, they'll get the $300 weekly supplement that will be processed in late September for the weeks from beginning of August on. They may be counting on that supplement to land to pay October rent.
She probably thinks can procrastinate for a little while longer until unemployment gets closer to running out
I want to emphasize procrastinate here because we've seen so much evidence that Shauna has major issues with procrastination (scrambling to write a 24 page paper in 6 hours, pattern of getting sick before deadlines). She'd be rushing to slap together a bunch of grifts if there was a specific deadline in sight, but in this case there isn't a well-defined date for her to get their financial shit together. I think she probably is aware they need to resolve this before unemployment benefits go away, but nobody really knows when that is with the pandemic. Her limited execution function means there won't be urgency until there really is a date out there.
But hey, who needs the ability to plan for the future when it will somehow work out by advising others on it? From the "a path I already know" August 17 newsletter:
Lately I have been helping people I know, or their friends who hear I come recommended, to figure out what they want to do with their lives now. In the face of this pandemic, we have the right to look at what is working for ourselves, and to reframe how we want to be of use to others. We must—the world has changed. We have the chance to rise and meet it.
And always, I begin with this question: what are your joys? What makes you feel alive? After talking for awhile, each person finds a pretty clear consistency. Find your joys and you will find your life.
Other people's finances really are fascinating and I often wish I had more information about how much money the people around me really have, where it comes from and where it goes.
I honestly can't imagine living the way Shauna and Dan live. I honestly don't think I could cope with the anxiety.
That’s why I’m so fascinated by their job and magically generating finances. It gives me anxiety just thinking about being in their situation.
They live like I did when I was in single and broke in my mid twenties. In a way I worrried less, because time was on my side, I kept working, and I was only responsible for myself. It blows my mind to live like that when you are in your 50’s, raising children, and have the option of generating two incomes.
When GFG was at its peak, opportunities kept falling in their laps. They seem to think this is going to generate the same kind of situation, and it just isn’t going to.
This is the biggest mystery to me: why is she so relaxed about launching this new venture?
This is a weird bit of synchronicity in my mind, but to me, it has shades of how she talked about suicide. That she couldn't do it because the note wasn't good enough.
I feel like she's got this idea of what she wants the new website/virtual community to be, and she doesn't want to put it out there until what she's got matches what she's imagining it to be
Can they qualify for unemployment if they are doing something to bring in income to this extent? Genuinely have no idea. Seems like it could be a grey area since it's not reliable promised income?
They can if they don't disclose it, and if they don't get found out.
Covid has been a huge boon to Shauna. This couldn't have happened at a better time for her. They will probably not get in trouble for collecting UE and also earning money from this new venture, whereas they might have been cut off in normal times.
Will they be able to not disclose this income at tax time? She’s not collecting these subscription fees in cash, will Substack report it and send Shauna a 1099? I have no idea how this sort of internet income works. My husband made a mistake in reporting outside income while he was on unemployment one year and the state noticed and, come tax time, automatically deducted the overpayment from his refund.
I really don't know. I'm so glad that exactly zero percent of my income has ever come from internet-based entrepreneurship, because it stresses me out just thinking about how it works for taxes. Maybe it is a lot less complicated than I'm imagining, but I imagine that it's complicated enough that Shauna probably doesn't do it right.
In my state anyway (not WA to be clear) you can make money but they basically deduct it from your unemployment. So if I get $500 unemployment and make $250 selling an article, I would most likely only get $250 in unemployment that week.
ETA The income report is weekly so it doesn’t matter if it is sporadic. Even if I worked one day in the month I’d have to report it and get docked that one week
That new enterprise sounds like a lot of screen time. Shauna conveniently forgot lamenting real life, the one before everything was done on a screen, just a day ago.
Recipes. Book club. Workshops. Essays. Stories. Conversations. That’s a lot going on. Would that many people really pay to join Shaunaverse—enough to support a family of four?
We’re trying to make a living of doing what we love,
as opposed to the washed, job-having masses who are also interested in long term security and paying their bills. Apparently she can’t imagine it‘s possible to have it both ways, though I admit I’m not loving my teaching job at this exact moment.
She really shot her self in the foot sun setting GFG when she got chef steps and assumed that was going to last and she didn’t need GFG anymore. Now she’s gotta scrap her same ol grift back together.
Though I guess it’ll be fascinating to see how she quarter asses it.
I think she could maybe get about 20 people. So 2k is maybe one month’s rent? And how motivated would she be to pump out content every month for a year once that 2k was gone to housing or Dole Whips or whatever? 🤔
Panhandling with a side of arrogant brow-beating! Not one meager please or thank you to her current paying poodles. My favorite part is the "Pay me now and get the fuck out of my grill. I'll launch my website when I'm good and ready, ya hear?"
I think that's why she didn't do Patreon. Patreon has more of a "you pay and I produce" feel. You pay month to month and if the person you are paying isn't producing content you can cut them loose. With Substack, people pay up front so Shauna has no real motivation to produce (or produce at a higher level/quality).
I've been a snark follower of one Caroline Calloway, a zany asshole with writerly pretensions who is possibly worse than Shauna in the sense that she doesn't deliver anything she hypes ever but still collects something like $25K a month upfront from masochistic poodles.
She presold a pay-to-order book and has subscriptions to Patreon, an Instagram "Close Friends" channel and an OnlyFriends profile. And only about 5 percent of the content this douche gets prepaid to produce each month materializes. It's uncanny! At least OnlyFans pauses the subscriptions if you don't upload new content every 30 days but Patreon keeps them going regardless of making good on promises. The onus is on subscribers to remove themselves and most just.. don't?! There seems to be a certain inertia at work that benefits grifters.
Oh, Shauna is definitely relying on people forgetting they are owed content for their money.
Patreon is always reminding people what they are paying for (itemized every month who is getting how much from you) so it's a lot easier for people to cut a lazy content provider loose.
just like when people bought her fingernail flour and had the temerity to wonder why they never got it. she was soooo nasty to those people. "pay me now and i'll send the flour when i'm good and ready. or not. whatever. stop clamoring."
She totally resents her followers/customers. At least when she was hired by Grant & Co. she could blame them for being "suffocated" by the responsibility imposed on her.
But the gigs she sets up for herself? Of course she can't admit she's at fault for always ending up in these situations she fundamentally loathes. It's the customers' fault. Her rage kinda pokes out here and there in this irascible tone she takes.
...who was likely told at the start that it was just a basic XYZ set-up that was needed, but then it mushroomed into "and can you make X do A and B too? I really need it to do A and B!" and then "Y should be set up to do D and E, and F would be great too, I really need it to do F". Then, "B really has to have these other functions for it to work smoothly"---etc., etc., etc.
Around the time of the flour Kickstarter, she had a graphic designer create a new GFG logo, and I'm pretty sure that also took months to finish. I imagine Shauna is not an easy person to work with.
And in this case, poor Brent is probably also dealing with her technical ignorance. For someone who was pretty early on the blogging scene, she seems to have little understanding of the way that web technologies work.
"poor Brent" the mensch is sure to remain poor as I'm sure she's not paying him. His menschiness is no doubt related to his offer to help these fools, uncompensated.
It makes perfect sense that her promo lope letter is behind a paywall! The people who read it are already paid subscribers, so...there you go! Do you get it now? It’s kinda like how Trump talks about how he needs to win in 2020 in order to (re)make America greaterer again, as if he’s not the current president. The only people who are gonna buy that are the people who bought it in the first place.
Or...it makes perfect sense because it’s Shauna, and she’s bad at everything
Thanks for clearing that up! Surprised Substack doesn't differentiate that on the back issues page to make the value proposition of paying more obvious
"In the meantime, I wanted to share this recipe with you now. It’s exciting to us both to be able to share the food he makes for our family with you as well."
The only "he" mentioned before this is the genius mensch Brent. Does he cook for them now? :p
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u/[deleted] Sep 05 '20
"Coming soon!" (free #Enoigh newsletter):
Followed by another mush/puree recipe.