Fearless (Shauna and Dan's Version): New Versions of 13 Years of Recipes
Marinated flank steak
“It’s always the light I notice first.
We left Seattle in the middle of a February rainstorm, the only time that Seattle looks the way you imagine Seattle to look. It was drippy dark grey gloomy, the sky seemingly a ceiling only 100 feet above our heads. Seattle light, even in the best of conditions, is tinted toward blue. In July, when the sky spreads wide and high, that blue is radiant, like liquid, the best kind of light I know. In February, that blue light can feel oppressive, like depression or muffled sounds in the middle of a dark wood.
When we landed in San Francisco, I saw it again. Golden light. That northern California light is like looking through a jar of golden honey.
The next morning, when we woke up at a friend’s home in Oakland, we walked into the kitchen to find this light streaming through the door.
We were clearly no longer in Seattle in February.”
When my husband Dan and I first imagined creating Our Kind Kitchen, we knew what we wanted to do.
For 13 years, we created this site called Gluten-Free Girl together. (Okay, I started it and didn’t know him for most of the first year, but I always think of it as ours now.) You may have heard of it. So many of you here have been reading what I have written since 2005. Or 2010. Or 2014. That’s way back there, so I’m perpetually humbled and happy about this.
We wanted to go back to making food together. For 4 years, he lingered in the swirling dark mists of depression. We couldn’t connect through our food. I wrote about this in greater detail in this piece called Dan and the Bear.
However, there was a little hitch in our giddyup.
Back in March, we discovered — the hard way — that we no longer had access to our own content on Gluten-Free Girl.
Since 2018, we’ve had our 13 years of content behind a password. Technically, the website no longer existed on the internet.
It had been a few months since I looked at it when I went to the site in the first week of March to put in our password and begin collecting the recipes we would share here. That’s when I discovered something lousy. Someone — a scalper — swiped up the domain name for gluten-free girl when it was up for its 10-year renewal. I no longer check the email associated with that purchase I made a decade ago. I missed it.
So, if you go to the url, you’ll find the website says Gluten-Free Girl. It uses the same font and colors we used before we left it. It uses our last logo. It uses my name. But it’s not us.
And I can longer get into the back-end. We could no longer access our content. Thirteen years of our lives. Gone.
Poof.
I grew upset for a day or so. And then our kiddo started showing signs of cracks, which turned into fissures, in their mental health. I let this go.
It’s still the light I notice first.
We have more light now. Giggles and calm decisions are coming back online.
That’s all I need.
And then, today, someone showed me a behind-the-scenes way to find my old content.
We’re back.
And we’re excited about feeding you.
The same way that Taylor Swift re-recorded all her old albums when Scooter Braun purchased the rights to all of her previous albums, we’re going to be bringing back the best of our food and stories on Gluten-Free Girl, 2 recipes per week, here.
Here.
Welcome to the Eras Tour!
We’re changing the recipes, of course. We know so much more now. And our food is simpler now, with 2 growing kids with particular tastes and no need to impress. Generally, we’ll be sharing new stories from today with the remade recipes of years ago.
But today? This recipe doesn’t need changing.
Have some flank steak this weekend. We think you’ll love it.
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