The Uses Of Anger

[crockpotcauldron]

Sometimes, self care is sanding the shit out of a dowel, violently peeling a butternut squash, slashing two large cardboard boxes into strips to make cat scratching boards, and angrily scrubbing the car. I have not run out of anger, but I have accomplished some useful things and tapped off a lot of the restless energy. My cat appreciates the scratcher. Tomorrow holds many thrilling possibilities, such as kneading bread dough, beating the carpets, and using polishing compound on the car. It is a pity I don't live in a climate where I can chop firewood.

Comments

[harpers_child]

Did you use a big knife to chop up the squash? Making bread is always therapeutic.

[crockpotcauldron]

Butternut squash has that awful tough rind, so I used to just slam a chef's knife through the squash to turn it into discs, then cut the rind off wedge by wedge with the knife. But my dad discovered that a vegetable peeler (one of the ones with spinning blade bits) can silkily peel the rind off with no strain, so all you have to do is shred the rind off by petting the squash as fiercely as you want, and then bring out the knife to turn it into inch thick discs. Sometimes you have to rock the knife into the squash and then once it is wedged in there lift up the squash using the knife as a handle, and just slam it down on the cutting board a few times until it goes all the way through. Remove the seeds.
From there, arrange flat in a large pot, cover with sugar, snap up a cinnamon stick or two, add a bit of water if the squash wasn't juicy, and cook until soft, resulting in kabak tatlısı, a delicious dessert that can be eaten with milk and crushed walnuts.
I have made milk bread dough, and I completely agree about its therapeutic properties. Soon, the dough will turn into caramel rolls, which is also therapeutic.

[which_chick]

Depending on what you are doing with your butternut squash, there is a less-theraputic but easier way to mess with it.

For soups, I do them like this but obviously that won't work if you want chunks for some purpose. If you pre-bake, they get really soft and won't hold a nice chunk very well. But if you're looking for a puree-structure, by all means give the pre-bake thing a whirl.

Chopping firewood (I use a chainsaw for the cutting parts but frequently wedges and a maul for the splitting part) is very theraputic though one does tend to lose enthusiasm for the project well before heating season is truly complete. The last month or so of splitting a couple of quarter-logs down to stovewood kindling sizes every evening is kind of a slog. And it's typically during the steel cold rains of March, which doesn't help with the 'slog' aspect of it.

[crockpotcauldron]

Last time I lived in wood stove territory I was a middle schooler, so it is possible I am vastly underestimating the amount of chopping that must be done.

Bread dough was a smashing success, though. I currently have cinnamon rolls.

[vashnoi]

Sorry things are so rough at the moment. I'm glad you have been able to channel your anger into at things. It is such a body feeling sometimes and doing physical things can help the staying-awake-because-angry tense energy feeling.

Chopping wood can be great for that at the start of the process, but there is a point where it gets to be about precision with splitting the wood down small and that can be just even more frustrating when you keep missing etc.

In coal burning areas, I hundred percent recommend breaking coal in a coal bunker because that's just hitting coal pieces the size of your head with a hammer really hard until you have fire-sized pieces. It's very therapeutic. Polishing and scrubbing thing are my next best things as I am mostly not at my parents' place with the coal bunker. Aggressive cleaning of the bathroom etc.

[crockpotcauldron]

Breaking coal sounds great. The other day I saw a giant slab of candy being sold with a tiny hammer packaged in the box. I didn't buy it, but making caramel rolls is basically the same mixture of violence and sweetness.

I gotta do something, or I just clench my jaw all day and wind up with an awful headache and toothache, and more of a headache on top from not sleeping. It's easier to just have sore biceps.