Thought for Food

May 28, 2008

Please help…

I need some hangover solutions ASAP. I feel like crap. Tequilla was involved. So if you have any failsafe ideas, PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE email me, or reblog this. I need serious help here.

Your favorite Hyde,

Hyde

Check out suggestions from Joan Acocella’s entertaining and enormously helpful piece in The New Yorker:

Acocella’s Ukrainian informant described his morning-after protocol for a vodka hangover as follows: “two shots of vodka, then a cigarette, then another shot of vodka.”*
A Japanese source suggested wearing a sake-soaked surgical mask.
A recently favored antidote, both in Asia and in the West, is sports drinks, taken either the morning after or, more commonly, at the party itself.
Koreans drink a bowl of water with honey, presumably to head off the hypoglycemia.
Among the young, one damage-control measure is the ancient Roman method, induced vomiting.
An American philosophy professor: “Have breakfast at Denny’s.” An English teen-ager: “Eat two McDonald’s hamburgers. They have a secret ingredient for hangovers.”
Spicy foods, especially Mexican, are popular, along with eggs, as in the Denny’s breakfast.
Another egg-based cure is the prairie oyster, which involves vinegar, Worcestershire sauce, and a raw egg yolk to be consumed whole.
A reporter at the Times: “Drink a six-pack of Coke.”
In Scotland, there is a soft drink called Irn-Bru, described to me by a local as tasting like melted plastic. Irn-Bru is advertised to the Scots as “Your Other National Drink.”
Many people in Asia and the Near East take strong tea. The Italians and the French prefer strong coffee. (Italian informant: add lemon. French informant: add salt. Alcohol researchers: stay away from coffee—it’s a diuretic and will make you more dehydrated.)
Teen-agers recommend milkshakes and smoothies. My contact in Calcutta said buttermilk. “You can also pour it over your head,” he added. “Very soothing.”
An ex-Soviet ballet dancer told me, “Pickle juice or a shot of vodka or pickle juice with a shot of vodka.”
Many folk cures for hangovers are soups: menudo in Mexico, mondongo in Puerto Rico, işkembe çorbasi in Turkey, patsa in Greece, khashi in Georgia. The fact that all of the above involve tripe may mean something.
The Japanese have traditionally relied on miso soup.

* Note: “[Hair of the dog drinking] will not eliminate the hangover—the methanol (indeed, more of it now) is still waiting for you round the bend—but it delays the worst symptoms. It may also mitigate them somewhat. On the other hand, you are drunk again, which may create difficulty about going to work.”

On a personal note: They keep getting worse and worse, those hangovers, and I have not found a good cure besides bananas, bloody marys, and limited sunshine.

I intend on starting a new food blog in late summer in which I will take on food-related challenges. One will be creating the ultimate hangover-beating recipe. So we will soon be able to drink with abandon! (Oh wait. We already do.)

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