On Mental Health And Cinnamon Rolls

Woo, so here it is, Friday night and I'm drunk and posting. Get used to it, this is my pattern.

Spent the evening in a catfight with this lovely little drama queen back east. Bitch thinks that it doesn't matter how lovely his mood is, how amazingly wonderful his evening may go, some stupid whore on the bus can ruin it for him just by being fat and scratching her leg the wrong way, that some asshole in line in the grocery store can speak in the wrong tone of voice and then WHOOSH!!! There goes that wonderful state of mind, gone forever, can't recall it, and it's all THAT STUPID ASSHOLE'S fault.

Sorry, I hold a different opinion. We are each responsible for our own state of mind. If I am in a wonderful mood and you are my checker at the grocery store and spend our entire encounter scowling, sneering, and snorting loogeys back into your own hateful face, that's YOUR fucking problem, not mine. If I fail to smile at you and make a joke about boogers, then that means I need to double my dose of anti-depressants and/or get out more.

I FUCKING CHOOSE to respond to you in a pleasant or unpleasant manner, no matter what sort of assholery you present to me. This is a lesson I have learned the MOTHERFUCKING HARD WAY, through years and years of cognitive behavioral therapy and customer service work. It is not YOUR choice as to whether your manner elicits a happy or unhappy mood in me. This may be an extreme reaction to having been beaten, raped, whored out, and generally abused during a few ill-advised careers in my youth, but this is how I've learned to live with what I've done and what I've allowed to be done to me: how you act towards me is not anything that I can control. How I choose to react to your behavior, however, is completely within MY realm of control, and YOU CAN'T TOUCH IT.

So go ahead. Cut me off just before my exit. Shovel your snow onto my walk. Tell me on teh Interwebs that I'm a stupid asshole for having an opinion. You can't make me not smile at you. You can't say I can't laugh at you. You can't make me take you seriously. You can't MAKE me angry at you. You control your actions, and I mine, but I know a secret: I also control my REactions. I bet you haven't had a stint in rehab or crisis counseling to learn THAT little fact of life.

And what the ever-loving hell does any of this have to do with food? Not a damn thing, really. Except that I'm exploiting this blog to divulge a lot more than just recipes.

Except I feel it necessary to give you people SOME sort of nutritional guidance. Shit, if I were to believe my Facebook feed, you all live on nothing but tacos and vodka.

So to make a VERY loose connection between the most generic piece of all-over life-coaching advice I have to give ANYBODY, which is GET OVER YOURSELF, YOU STUPID SELFISH ASSHOLE. EVERYONE HAS PROBLEMS. MAKE SURE THAT YOU'RE NOT ONE OF THEIRS AND THEY'RE NOT ONE OF YOURS, is giving all of you sad saps the Holy Fucking Grail of yeast bread recipes.

Now, I'm not a purist. I like my sourdough all sorts of sour and unpredictable; I like my whiskey cheap; I like my challah eggy and dirty, and I like my whores Puerto Rican and a little scared and I mean what now? Oh. Bread. Yeah.

When you go looking for the *good* recipes, the recipes your withered-up grandma knew by heart, the recipes some terrified Sicillian immigrant got as a bridal shower gift back in '53, they're all so damned SPECIFIC. This is your dinner roll recipe, and this is your cinnamon roll recipe, and this is your bierock recipe, and what are you doing marrying a filthy kike/kraut/wop anyway, you dirty whore?

Um, anyway, the ladies who came before us bore up under A LOT of bullshit that even the meekest of us would call the hotline about. WOULDN'T WE?

Myself, I've played around with yeast breads since I was maybe 10 or so, and what I've learned is that mostly, bread recipes are the same. They want to be treated just right, kneaded up until *just* the right point, and then left the hell alone. Whatever you do with them after that is up to you.

This, my friends, is my all-purpose, go-to, anything-you-want yeast bread recipe. Ball it up into bits and it's dinner rolls. Roll it out and stuff it full of butter and cinnamon and sugar and it's cinnamon rolls. Roll it out thinner and stuff it full of meat and/or what-have-you and it's kick-ass bierocks. Any way you roll it or smoosh it, it's really, really hard to fuck up. which is, I guess, what makes it my favorite metaphor for the female Midwestern spirit. Even a beginner or ham-handed hard-hearted asshole who knows better is going to have a hard time fucking this up. Cheers, ladies, and chins up.

Basic Dough

4 1/2 tsp. yeast

1/2 C warm water

2 C warm milk

6 TBLSP shortening

2 eggs

1/4 C sugar

1 1/2 tsp. salt

7-8 C flour

Proof the first two together. Cream the next two together, too. Add the eggs, and sugar, and the rest. Add enough flour to turn out onto floured surface and knead 'till sticky and elastic. Cover and let rise 'till doubled, about an hour. Divide into rolls or whatever, let rise again. Bake at 350.

This can be easily halved, or doubled. All the best recipes are.

Now go make some cinnamon rolls for your fat cousin, or surprise your skinny-ass momma with some dinner rolls. But if I ever even ONCE catch one of you bitching about how this stupid anorexic WHORE made you feel all FAT because she gave you THAT LOOK while she ate her salad, I will not hesitate to call you out on your issues.

That is all. Go make bread, eat it, be happy. So proclaimeth THE CHUBBY DRUNK!!!