Eat Your Feelings_Recipes for Self-Loathing

by Heather Whaley

2 cups red wine

  1 bay leaf

  Salt and pepper

  8 hours

  Open 8 oz. can Red Bull. Cut stew beef into chunks. Wake sixteen-year-old Trevor. This can only be accomplished through screaming and threats to take away cell phone and Wii. Hide Trevor’s reptilian contact lenses and encourage him not to wear so much white pancake makeup for one day.

  Check on twelve-year-old Lisa, who has been up since 5:30 a.m. straightening her hair. Make her remove excessive eyeliner. Sign note from her teacher telling her you are aware of her plummeting math grades.

  Time to wake one-year-old Oscar. Give in to urge to crawl into crib for a quick snuggle. Fall asleep and have brief dream about being twenty-two and having sex with your college boyfriend. Wake in a cold sweat when Oscar sticks finger up your nose.

  Throw freezer waffles into family-size toaster to take care of breakfast. Open one more Red Bull. Drink.

  Peel and chop carrots. Place all ingredients in a Crock-Pot set to “slow cook” while waiting for babysitter to arrive. As horrid realization that the sitter isn’t going to show sets in, open another Red Bull, resisting urge to add vodka. Breathe deeply as you call every disgruntled former babysitter and offer them exorbitant amounts of money, all to no avail.

  Put older kids on school bus and bring baby to work. Smuggle baby into office in backpack. Place him under your desk with toys. The following office supplies make suitable toys: tape, Post-its, nonlead pencils. The following do not make suitable toys: X-Acto knives, letter openers, staplers, ink cartridges, box cutters, the mailroom guy.

  Have one medium-size workplace tantrum. It is important to let everyone know just how hard life is for you at the moment: It will elicit sympathy or, at the very least, keep people from bothering you with more work. It may also help drown out the noise of the baby.

  After work, take baby to Lisa’s soccer game. Embarrass Lisa with your excessive cheering as you try and avoid idle chitchat with other “happily” married mothers who only want to set you up with their fathers.

  At home, the stew should be done. Remove bay leaf. Call down to basement to tell Trevor dinner is ready and that his friend Toby can stay. Doesn’t Toby have his own home? Serve over rice or noodles.

  DEAD BROKE DUMPLINGS

  You will need:

  ½ package noodles, any variety

  Cabbage

  Carrots

  6 packs soy sauce

  Handful of bean sprouts

  Perhaps you majored in art history and have unable to fine a suitable position as an art historian. Perhaps your custom-ribbon watch company went belly up. Perhaps corporations have not been as eager to advertise on your blog as you had anticipated. Or perhaps you are just lazy and unmotivated. Whatever the case, if you are dead broke this one is for you! While not traditional dumplings, you will find that if you close your eyes and think of dumplings while you are eating, the taste will be the same.

  Boil noodles according to package directions. This may be done on a traditional stove or over an open fire, hobo style, if things are that bad. Slice cabbage into thin strips. If no knife is available, just rip it up.

  Julienne carrots into matchsticks. Again this may be accomplished with a sharp knife, a bumpy rock, or by nibbling the carrots into the desired shape.

  Sauté cabbage and carrots in soy sauce packs taken from sushi bar or Japanese restaurant, about 2 minutes or until soft. Add sprouts and noodles along with additional soy sauce to taste.

  Eat while thinking of Asian things.

  HE’S BETTER OFF WITHOUT YOU LINGUINI WITH SUN-DRIED TOMATO CREAM SAUCE

  You will need:

  1 lb. linguini

  2 Tbs. butter

  1 clove garlic

  1 cup vegetable broth

  ½ cup sun-dried tomatoes, cut into quarters

  1 cup heavy cream

  Melt butter in a heavy saucepan over medium-high heat. Add garlic, broth, and tomatoes and bring to a boil. Simmer for 10 minutes. In mirror, take a good long look at yourself. Note the puffy eyes, bloodshot from all the screaming and nagging you do. Note the clumps of hair you have torn out in frustration when he has not called you back immediately . And note your shabby, unfashionable clothes. It’s really amazing that he ever went out with you at all.

  Prepare pasta according to package directions. You should be good at following directions, because you sure expect people to follow yours. Remember the time that you ridiculed your ex in front of his whole family by barking at him for folding your clothes the wrong way? You look like a donkey when you’re shouting. And like a warthog when you’re not.

  Add cream and bring to boil, simmering until cream is thick enough to coat the back of a spoon or as thick as your appalling Boston accent. Look at photos of ex-boyfriend. Note how handsome he is but how he looks so sad. See how you are clinging to him in every photo, grimacing and tight lipped?

  Now look at recent photos: Facebook photos taken at his wedding to the wealthy Italian supermodel turned political activist. See how he’s smiling? See how gorgeous she is? That can never be you. Never. Who were you kidding in the first place?

  Pour sauce over pasta, top with Parmesan cheese, and wait for the next unsuspecting patsy to come along so you can project your self-hatred onto him.

  YOUR DREAMS WILL NEVER COME TRUE HUNGARIAN GOULASH

  You will need:

  2½ lb. stew beef

  2 Tbs. butter

  2 onions, chopped

  2 Tbs. paprika

  2 cups white wine

  2 bay leaves

  4 large potatoes, peeled and chopped

  Backup plan

  TWO WEEKS IN ADVANCE

  Send out cards announcing your farewell performance. Be sure to invite everyone you have ever worked with, either in your failed attempt at a career in musical theater or in the many restaurants, retail, and temporary work situations that have sustained you these past years. Also invite the neighbors and the elderly in the likely event that none of the aforementioned people show up.

  Put together a top-quality cabaret show. Include the songs you sing best, a few comedic pieces, and at least one dramatic monologue set to cello and French horn. Then begin to save your money because your MFA is now exactly that, a master of fuck all, and you will need additional education if you want to begin a career that does not require you to be able to dance (tap, jazz) and do accents (American southern, American mid-Atlantic, standard British, French).

  THE DAY OF

  Melt butter in a large pot over medium heat. Add chopped onions and sauté for 7 minutes until they begin to brown. Add chopped beef, turning to brown all sides. Pour in wine, add bay leaves and chopped potatoes, and simmer for 2 hours.

  As guests arrive be sure to charge admission—the money will come in handy!

  While performing try to keep the emotions to an appropriate level. Remember that if people really cared about your theatrical endeavors, you wouldn’t be a fifty-year-old cater waiter.

  When audience leaves, after the third encore, enjoy goulash over egg noodles with a dollop of sour cream and a bucket of pity, while attempting to pick yourself out of the crowd of blurry extras from that one time you were in a real Hollywood movie.

  YOU DID NOT SIGN UP FOR THIS CRAP CRÊPES SUZETTE FOR WIVES OF FORMER BANKERS

  You will need:

  eBay

  3 eggs

  2 Tbs. flour

  Someone who doesn’t mind your whining

  1 Tbs. water

  1 Tbs. milk

  Pinch of salt

  A job

  Who does he think he is? He has a responsibility to make the kind of money you married him for. It is his duty—otherwise you could sue him for misrepresenting his earning potential. If you wanted to work for a living, you would have married someone cute, or at least interesting. Crack three eggs over his head. On second thought, crack them into a bowl, and make yourself some crêpes suzette like you used to enjoy for brunch (when you could afford brunch)
.

  All the lovely little dresses you bought last season in Paris, before everything went to hell, are on eBay for just anyone to bid on. The thought of some girl in Des Moines wearing your vintage Halston understandably makes you want to puke. Hope someone buys that stuff soon, because you need to buy comfortable shoes—it sure is hard to wait tables in heels! Put flour into eggs with the water and milk and a pinch of salt to represent the tears you shed for yourself.

  All he does is lie around and mope all day. His friends tell you that you need to look out for him, that his depression is bordering on dangerous. Well, excuse you. How is that your fault? You didn’t sign up to be involved with some poor, lazy, depressed guy in an entry-level position at freaking IBM. Ugh! Just listen to him crying! Pathetic.

  Pour a bit of batter into a buttery hot pan, and cook your thin crêpes one at a time. That’s better. When a girl can’t count on her rich husband to be rich, at least she can count on some crêpes. When they are done sprinkle them with sugar and kirsch. Oh . . . no kirsch. Too expensive. THIS IS JUST TOO MUCH. What kind of a life are you supposed to have if you can’t buy kirsch? There he is, crying again. It’s so embarrassing for you. You did not buy a ticket to this show. This show sucks.

  YOUR DAD IS A SCUMBAG MONKEY BREAD

  You will need:

  1 cup white sugar

  1 cup brown sugar

  1 Tbs. cinnamon

  ½ cup of butter

  1 tsp. vanilla

  Butterscotch pudding powder

  3 tubes of refrigerated dinner roll dough

  Preheat oven to 350°F. Mix together cinnamon and white sugar in a large ziplock bag. Be sure the bag is clean and hasn’t been used by your father to transport narcotics or other paraphernalia home from clubs. Grease the bottom of a Bundt pan. The grease should be about as thick as the grease in your father’s hair. Not his chest hair—that would be too greasy.

  Open tubes of dinner rolls, suppressing memory of the last dinner you had with your father, when he started caressing the waitress’s doughy buttock and you were thrown out of your favorite restaurant. Using a knife dipped in water, cut rolls into quarters. Put rolls into ziplock bag and shake, coating each ball like your father coats his with anti-itch medicated foot powder.

  Layer the dough in the Bundt pan, sprinkling each layer with pudding powder as you go. In a saucepan, melt butter. Add brown sugar and boil for 1 minute. Remember the time your father had a huge boil on his neck and made a video of himself popping it and posted it on YouTube. Add vanilla. Pour over dough in pan.

  Bake in oven for 30-40 minutes. To eat, pull apart dough balls with fingers. If sharing with father, make him wash his hands. You don’t know where they’ve been.

  HUMMUS FOR WHEN YOU WANT TO KILL SOMEONE

  You will need:

  1 can chickpeas

  1 clove garlic

  ⅓ cup tahini

  2 Tbs. olive oil

  Lemon

  Salt

  Parsley

  Pita

  There are two ways to make this hummus. The first way is for when you just feel like you want to kill someone. For the second method, please see the following recipe.

  Tear off the top of the can of chickpeas—you’re so angry, this won’t be difficult. Place chickpeas in a food processor, imagining each round bean is the head of your intended victim. Talk to the little heads, saying things like, “Get in there and keep quiet. Serves you right for snooping through my e-mails. Next time you’ll think twice before telling the boss that my work is sloppy. We’ll see who is sloppy now.” Pulse the blade a few times, not to fully puree the beans, but just to make them suffer a little.

  Add garlic, tahini, and boiling olive oil to bowl of processor, imagining the victim’s screams as they are burned alive while you shout, “Why do you always send e-mails at 11:00 p.m. to make it look like you’re still working? Who does that?” Quickly add lemon juice, squeezing hard to get all the juice in their lesions, yelling now, loudly, “This is for the ten thousand times a day I have to hear you quote lines from Fletch in your horrible nasally voice, which reverberates off my cubicle walls and chips away at my very soul.” And then, the pièce de résistance: the salt. Scream, “I don’t care if you did get promoted; you will never be the boss of me! Who’s the boss now, pal?” Really get in there and rub the salt around in the wounds with your fingers if necessary, but watch out that you avoid the blade of the food processor ’cause it could cut your fingers off.

  Now with a loud evil laugh, pulse the processor over and over until the hummus is a thick puree. Sprinkle with chopped parsley and enjoy with pita and deep breaths.

  HUMMUS FOR WHEN YOU HAVE KILLED SOMEONE

  You will need:

  1 can chickpeas

  1 clove garlic

  Rubber gloves

  ⅓ cup tahini

  2 Tbs. olive oil

  Wood chipper

  Squeeze of lemon

  Large plastic tarp

  Body-size container

  Antibacterial cleanser with bleach

  Check to make sure victim is actually dead. Once you are sure, absolutely sure, drag him outside. Set up a large tarp in a secluded area where you have placed wood chipper. This is the easy part. Simply feed him into chipper and catch resultant mulch in container. Once body is fully chipped, clean inside and out with cleanser.

  Shower, being certain to clean off any blood and tissue that may have flown around in the chipping process. In kitchen, place all ingredients into a food processor—exactly the way you did with your victim. Whiz it up and pack into a container with pita. Enjoy hummus as you dump your human mulch into ocean.

  FANNIE MAE AND FREDDIE MAC ’N’ CHEESE

  You will need:

  2 packages government cheese or other cheese

  2 boxes noodles: elbows, shells preferred

  Pinch cayenne

  1 ration powdered milk

  1 Tbs. flour

  1 Tbs. butter, or lard if butter is not available

  Water

  It has been months since the financial world imploded and your 401K is now “worth” negative $250,000. Now you’re stuck with a giant house and no way of paying for it. Time to get resourceful. You’re hungry, but, more important, the people who rent your guest rooms, the people who rent cot space in the upstairs hall, the family that lives in the finished basement, and the gang of ex hedge fund managers turned hoboes—well, they’re hungry too. Someone’s got to feed them.

  Ride your bicycle to the supermarket in town. Never mind about your disheveled appearance, you’re not going in. Instead forage in the dump sters for packages of pasta and any fruits or vegetables you can find. Also keep a lookout for dented cans and moldy cheese. Cheese is essentially a mold-based food, in any case, so any green bits can easily be discarded.

  On the way home, scan the side of the road for wild herbs. Often you can find onions and rosemary, which can be bundled and either used in cooking or sold to people who still have money, if there are any.

  On the Viking range in your McMansion, mix powdered milk with water. Put butter and flour into a small pot, mixing constantly over medium heat (if you still have utilities) to make a roux. Add milk and let simmer.

  Prepare pasta according to package directions. While pasta cooks, get to work on your chores:You need more cots.

  Place clean sheets on all beds in guest rooms and clean towels in the baths for the boarders that will be moving in this afternoon. Pick up laundry from bins outside rooms that have already been let. Start the ironing you have been taking in to help make ends meet. Gather eggs from chicken coop. Check to make sure the “Eggs for Sale” sign at the end of the cul-de-sac is clearly visible.

  Mix cheese with milk sauce until melted. Drain pasta and add to sauce, stirring to coat evenly. If you found any dented cans of peas, open the can and give it a good sniff. If it smells vaguely of botulism, throw it out! If not, add the peas to the macaroni and cheese.

  Bash metal soup
ladle against large iron triangle to let the hedge fund managers know that lunch is on the table. Spoon macaroni into small bowls to make it look more plentiful. Thank the tenants for doing odd jobs for you. Sprinkle a bit too much cayenne pepper on top of each bowl to ensure that they won’t want seconds.

  Dear Reader,

  I have given you the tools to figure out what to eat, but there is so much more to learn! On the following pages you will find some helpful hints on the best environments for eating your feelings. No need to limit yourself just to the darkened kitchen when you’re feeling downtrodden.