Many around the office are planning to celebrate the incoming of the New Year, and saying Asta Lavesta Baby to the old.  That in mind, Tina was asking for a good hangover remedy, (just in case), so that put me in mind for todays post.

 first of all, try not to let your drinking get out of hand like this guy...

Premised on the quaint notion that the best thing for what ails you is more of what ails you, "hair-of-the-dog-that-bit-you" nostrums have been popular since the time of Shakespeare (before that, etymologists tell us, the phrase referred quite literally to a method of treating dog bites).

The Bloody Mary, invented during the Roaring Twenties, is still touted as the ideal morning-after pick-me-up. Another evil-sounding but reputedly effective concoction popularly believed to relieve the symptoms of a hangover is called "Black Velvet" and consists of equal parts champagne and flat Guinness. Hemingway, it is said, relied on a morning-after tonic of tomato juice and beer.

Deep-fried canaries

I have a friend of Mexican descent (Tony Gonzalez) who swears by menudo (boiled tripe) first thing in the morning. Fatty, high-calorie foods like menudo have long figured among the most popular homespun hangover cures. The ancient Romans ate deep-fried canaries, we're told. The Greeks, on the other hand, found relief by eating sheep's lungs. Among the ancients generally, eating boiled cabbage before a binge was widely thought to be the best preventative. One prescription from the Medieval period touts the combination of eel and bitter almonds. How's your appetite holding up?

Caveat potor ('drinker beware')

Fast-forwarding to modern times, peruse the list below for a sampling of the most popular hangover nostrums reported by members of the Urban Legends and Folklore Forum:

• Tomato juice, aspirin and a long, hot shower
• Coffee made with tonic water, orange juice and honey
• Water, water, and more water
• Water and vitamin C (also, water and calcium)
• Water and vitamin B complex
• Vitamin E
• Buttermilk
• A "Red-Eye" - whiskey, coffee, Tabasco sauce, a raw egg, pepper and orange juice blended together
• Alternating between Pepto-Bismol and water
• Lots of icy-cold Coca Cola (not Diet Coke!)
• "Coating your stomach" before drinking with milk and/or bread and butter
• Vegemite on toast
• Vomiting before bedtime

    But I think the best cure is the one Great, Great Grandmother Schrute invented: 1 large glass of beet juice (freshly squeezed) equal parts of Vodka and Gin with a lemon twist ! 

  Bottoms up !!