Turn Off the Stew!
Everyone knows what stew is. It's the meat-and-vegetable dish you put in a pot, simmer in a slow boil, and then eat. Yet Webster's Encyclopedic Dictionary offers another definition. It describes stew as "a state of being agitated, disturbed." This same definition also includes the phrase "stewing in one's own juices" - meaning, "to allow trouble and agitation to simmer; to continue in a disturbed state of mind."
We Americans tend to overlap these two meanings of the word "stew." Whenever we want to describe our troubled emotions, for instance, we use cooking terms. For example: