Your eyes roll open. It feels like your brain is violently
thumping to the music from the night before. And your tummy is either growling
for your favourite pick-me-up or is in utter repulsion at the idea of food.
You, my dear, have a hangover.
Now every drinker has a hangover recipe up their smoke
soiled sleeve. Liquids are usually priority one. While some boozers choose a
handful of Panado and water, others choose coffee or Coke with the die-hards
hitting the hair of the dog before the hangover actually gets the chance to
worm its way in.
The Hungover Cookbook
Milton Crawford the author of The Hungover Cookbook says we
should embrace our post inebriation through taste. He says a hangover “is
an opportunity to see and taste the world in a new way”. And although a full
English fry-up is a hit, this is obvious by the swarms of bloodshot- eyed
students at the Wimpy, Milton says you should match your choice of grub with
the type of hangover you have.
The Guardian says Crawford based his book on “PG Wodehouse‘s 1949 novel The
Mating Season, in which upper-class twit Bertie Wooster identifies six
varieties of hangover: the Broken Compass, the Sewing Machine, the Comet, the
Atomic, the Cement Mixer and the Gremlin Boogie.”
Crawford has modified the recipes suggesting “spicy comfort
food to reignite your passion for life” to cure a Broken Compass and more
gentle nosh, like cardamom porridge with spicy apple sauce, to nurse an Atomic.
And although Crawford’s book will make an excellent novelty
gift, most hangover zombies won’t be able to read the recipes let alone scratch
together the ingredients and assemble them correctly.
This is why the Wimpy is so popular.
Other people swear by two boiled eggs before you go out –
apparently they line your stomach and absorb the sauce. Bottles of ginger ale,
packets of bacon and boxes of cigarettes are also deemed miracle workers.
Although I still rely on good old paracetemol, buckets of water and a
roll-with-everything when my appetite eventually returns.
Do you need a recipe book to cure your hangover? Or do you
have a tried and tested cure?