Raised on a diet of Chef Boyardee

La Femme Follette takes time out in her nattering about whatever to write a few pointed paragraphs about la Gluten Free Girl.

Anyhow, the point is that whenever I read an allergen-free food weblog, the person will -- Shauna Ahern is a great example of this -- go into the narrative history and detail the process of the adaptation, the misses, the fails, the rest, and never mind that her recipes do not work, anyhow, but she will every single time have at least 15% of her comments be from weaklings who are all, Well, that sure looks good, but I am allergic to eggs and do you think that I could use an egg substitute and have it turn out just as delicious as this, blah, blah, blah.

No, it will not, because when you substitute ingredients, you compromise or sacrifice or completely re-engineer quality and mouth feel and stop being such a weakling, you can not have everything, shut up.

That is exactly what it would look like at this weblog if ever I hosted accidentally-on-purpose a bunch of free-ranging, desperate, allergic people. It seems like it would be bad behavior to post adapted recipes, thus passively inviting people to read here when all they would do is irritate me to death. Ahern once wrote about how she gets emails from people wanting to know how they can still eat factory-produced, trade-named garbage foods, and what is the substitute f0r that. I would burn the internet to the ground if I got that email. Sorry, internets. I would apologize at my sentencing to all of you who lost the internet to arson, I would, but still.

So, anyhow. Ahern's recipes never work for me, anyway. They might work for you. Go with God & good luck. It helps, I guess, if you were raised on a diet of Lipton soup mixes, Chef Boyardee, and Oreo cookies.

I have been intrigued by Elana Amsterdam for a long time. First of all, her recipe text lacks hysteria and gluttonous slavering.

Amateur Hour

Saveur recently posted a glowing review of Pork, Knife & Spoon, the blog that the Pork Board pays Shauna to write. Saveur adores the blog. But apparently Shauna hasn't always adored Saveur. From the comments:

by demiglace on 2009-11-18
I'm sorry, but what? Shauna called Saveur "total amateur hour" on twitter just last month: glutenfreegirl @userealbutter I try to remember it. (it's actually a really practical help.) Saveur? Total amateur hour. Using their name to steal our work Sat, 17 Oct 2009 04:53:51 Nice to know that Saveur can rise above. Though I still don't agree that theirs is a blog to be profiled by such a well-respected magazine.

by glutenfreegirl on 2009-11-19
Thank you to Jessica and Joshua for this lovely piece. We were surprised and honored to find this here. We love writing Pork Knife and Spoon, and we love knowing that other people are appreciating it. As for the other comments, I would ask everyone reading to ignore them. I certainly did not slam Saveur on Twitter, nor would I. I have subscribed to Saveur for years and adore the magazine. That's part of why this piece meant so much to me and Danny. Unfortunately, we have people trying to imitate us on Twitter, as do many bloggers. That must be where the comment (which no one can find) must have come from originally. Thank you, Saveur.

by cooker girl on 2009-11-19
Shauna, you could've said something like, "Yes, in a fit of anger over what I perceived to be content theft, I said a not-very-nice thing about Saveur. When I came to my senses and realized I was being unfair, I deleted that Tweet. I am so honored, etc.," but you didn't do that. You chose to lie. YOU know you lied; several (perhaps several hundred?) people read that Tweet before you deleted it. Other professional food writers read that Tweet before you deleted it. Now you must stick to your guns because instead of choosing to come clean and appeal to people's better natures, you chose to lie. Again. What's that old adage? Oh what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive!

by demiglace on 2009-11-19
This isn't made up- that's ridiculous, and who has time for that anyway? A group of Saveur-loving food bloggers and I sent it around to each other and commented on it privately when we saw it, because it was so surprising- we love Saveur's blog aggregation function (and it appears that now, you do, too). We've still got it in our e-mails. I'm glad you deleted it, though, Shauna- and that you now see the usefulness of this feature of saveur.com. It's really a great way for us to find new food blogs over which to drool. Incidentally, thank you, Saveur, for sticking out this economy AND giving us fab new features while other magazines hit the great recycling bin in the sky!

Tangled web, indeed.

"Touchy-feely chicklit"

Ah, I love this review from petite treat on Amazon.

It's been done before
I had come across the gluten free girl's blog and was intrigued by her recipes. It's easy to skip the fluff in her blog, just use the scroll button and it doesn't cost you any money. The book is another story. Although it's easy to skip the fluff with a page turn, I'm left wondering where all the recipes are? There are some, yes, but I was hoping for something the tried and true recipes of someone who endured all the hardships of gluten free, a self proclaimed foodie, married to "The Chef" who apparently owned a gluten free restaurant.

The book is very touchy feely, more of a chicklit fantasy novel of how magical her life is than anything else.

Oh, petite treat. The book is not about recipes, silly, it's about Shauna and how her life is full of the loveliest love that ever loved.

Chow.com: When personas attack

Chow.com asks, If any of your favorite food bloggers now have books, have you noticed changes on their sites, for better or worse? and uses Gluten-Free Girl as a specific example.

sfumato comments

I think that Gluten-Free Girl's writing HAS changed, unfortunately. I was hoping that she'd grow and develop her own style... but she just seems to be parroting other famous food bloggers and cookbook writers. She had a lot of room to grow when she started out, and in my opinion she's gotten worse.