What To Eat After A Bad Date

Dating can be as thrilling as a roller coaster ride, giving you butterflies in your stomach and so much excitement that you briefly lose your sanity, but it can also make your stomach turn in a less pleasant way if your date turns out to be a rotten egg. In Heather Whaley's book, Eat Your Feelings: Recipes for Self-Loathing, she explores the idea of cooking for life's not-so-kind moments.

"Treat yourself right, with delicious, succulent, home-cooked comfort food," Whaley says. The next time you go on a date with a nutty cheese ball, what you need is the recipe to actually make one. Voila.

Worst-Date-Ever Nutty Cheese Ball

2 8 oz. packages cream cheese
1 6 1/2 oz. can crushed pineapple, drained
1 1/2 cups walnuts
1/4 cup finely chopped green pepper
1Tbs. chopped celery

You should have known that it wasn't going to go well when he arrived to pick you up for dinner on his Segway. As if it wasn't awkward enough having to walk briskly along beside him, craning your neck to make eye contact as he rolled down the sidewalk, there was the added talking point of his jaunty little straw boater. What was he thinking? What were you? Dating Background Check

Now you are starving because he took you to a raw food restaurant and then announced that everything was, "Real expensive so don't go crazy." You were totally not prepared for him to whip out the calculator to determine, to the penny, what you ate. Once safely back in your own apartment—alone!—make yourself a nutty cheese ball because that's exactly what that clown was. Mix together cream cheese and pineapple. Cheap Date Idea: Cook From Scratch (You Can Do It)

Take a quick peek out the window to make sure he's gone. What? Is that him, lurking beneath the lamppost? Oh great, not only was he a lousy date, but now he wants to stalk you? Why is it always the losers that you can't get rid of? Wonder, "Why can't the really good-looking and successful guys be the stalkers?" as you put walnuts in a ziplock bag and crush them with a hammer, pounding them like he kept pounding his fist on the table as he ranted endlessly about how nobody listens to him at work. Dating A Rich Guy: More Important Than You Think

Add diced green pepper and celery to the cheese. Roll cheese mixture into a ball. Try not to think about how he kept adjusting his balls during dinner, saying, "Damn, boys, sit still!" And especially don't think about the several times he actually reached down inside his pants and then with the same hand reached over to your plate to fish a piece of zucchini out of your raw lasagna.

Roll cheese ball in walnuts and vow not to ever, ever again go out with a man you met at the ninety-nine-cent store.

Excerpted from EAT YOUR FEELINGS: Recipes For Self-Loathing by Heather Whaley. Published by arrangement with Hudson Street Press, a member of Penguin Group (USA), Inc. Copyright © Heather Whaley, 2009.