Hangover Cure

Here is something that I found and co-opted with a few updates.

My addition is to drink V8 the night before and drink a whole bunch of water, Vitamin B is suppose to help in some way.

Uh oh, you did it again? We know how you feel. The day after our companywide holiday party, somebody stuck a box of Dunkin' Donuts Munchkins in the office kitchen with a note reading "Perfect for Hangovers." Doughnuts do cover several of the food groups—fat, sugar, and carbs—deemed crucial to hangover recovery, according to our informal poll of Epicurious editors and contributors, as well as our booziest friends. Other cures center around salt, liquid, protein, caffeine, eggs, organ meats, more alcohol, and specially formulated combos of all of the above. Read on for our favorite remedies—one of them is bound to get the cotton wool out of your head.
Bacon, Egg, and Cheese—On a biscuit, roll, or English muffin, this cholesterol bomb is an all-time favorite for curing hangovers (while likely causing myriad other health problems).

Bagel and Cream Cheese—This one covers your carb, fat, and protein groups. "My sister claims that the idea of eating something greasy and carb-heavy like french fries is a myth—it's really protein that helps," relates an Epi editor.
Chocolate Milk—"Back in the day, my favorite hangover remedy was drinking one of those small cartons of Nestlé's Chocolate Quik," says an employee who's more likely to be using milk to soothe her daughter than her own stomach these days. "A massive sugar rush temporarily eased the pain and provided an illusion of being able to function. It's along the lines of drinking a Coke but a little smoother on the belly."
Coffee—It can be hard on a queasy stomach, but coffee can really cure a hangover headache. We've read it has something to do with constricting the blood vessels—plus, it helps any painkillers you've taken reach your bloodstream quicker.
Crescent City Cure—"There's a traditional, but not well known, New Orleans hangover cure called Yaka Mein. It's a beef and soy broth-based soup nicknamed Old Sober for it's purported hangover-healing properties and consists of noodles (often spaghetti), meat (often beef or pork chops), and boiled eggs," says our editor from New Orleans. "Generally it's sold in bodegas and corner stores in traditionally black neighborhoods. Since most of those neighborhoods were wiped out by Katrina, it has really become an endangered dish."
Fry-Up—The full English breakfast or the "fry-up" of eggs, toast, sausages, broiled tomato, baked beans, and sometimes, if you're lucky, blood pudding, is the perfect cure for a few too many pints of bitter.
Hair of the Dog that Bit You—Some say you need to drink exactly what you drank the night before for a true "hair of the dog" remedy, while for others any form of alcohol will do. In The South American Gentleman's Companion, published in 1951, Charles H. Baker, Jr., writes that "when it comes to Picker-Uppers... the old Hair-o'-the-Dog principle is just about the only thing that will rebuild a man who has not time or patience to let nature's cure of rest, quiet and time get-in its licks." He lists 27 recipes for such cures, including the Buenos Aires "Man-of-the-Port" Reviver: "Take 1 10-ouncer can of Campbell's Consomme or Beef Bouillon, add 2-ouncer tot of good French brandy. Stir and put in deep-freeze or freezer compartment of your refrigerator. Leave it till it's a chilled and sippable liquid; or chilled until it almost jells, and eat it with a spoon."
While a beefy brandy gel seems more than a bit repulsive, some of us have been known to seek a nice bubbly beer late in the afternoon after a hangover, particularly if the hangover came from something other than beer.
Mystery Pills—One editor takes a Chinese herbal digestive aid that is rumored to prevent hangovers. Another person we polled shared this scary story: "One time at a New Year's Eve party where I knew almost no one, I rashly stuck my hand into a large bowl of pills and took a few after being told they were homemade hangover preventive pills. I think the party hosts may have been chemistry grad students. Still have no idea what was in those. Seemed to work though." Many of us would like to get our hands on a pill we read about in the The New York Times Style Magazine on December 3, 2006: "Berocca is a fizzy tablet, like Alka-Seltzer with multivitamins, commonly available in more than 40 countries—not including the United States."
Pizza—"The ideal topping is clearly pepperoni, which helps satisfies the hangover cure grease requirement," says one editor.
Prairie Oyster—"The one my grandfather, who claimed to not drink, swore by was two raw eggs with Tabasco and Worchestershire sauce," says an Epicurious contributor. "He said he didn't know if it cured the hangover, but it tasted so bad it took your mind off it." We thought "prairie oyster" meant something else entirely, but it is indeed a drink, and you'll find several versions (with and without alcohol) in our database.
Slushies and Slurpees—The same curative caffeine, sugar, and carbonation as colas, plus lots of rehydrating ice. Especially good for summer hangovers.
Soda—"Ginger ale is essential," says one editor. Another shares this story: "I once had a killer hangover but still showed up (queasy, head pounding) to wait with friends in the mammoth line for brunch at Prune in New York. A sympathetic host gave me one of those tiny glass bottles of Coca-Cola. I was instantly cured. The caffeine and sugar fixed my head and the bubbles quelled my nausea—plus, I swear it tastes better in those glass bottles! I will always be grateful to that man and his magical Coca-Cola."
Smoothies—Parents will love this one: "Ever since I was a teenager and first learning to drink I've made smoothies to get over bad hangovers," one now of-age drinker relates. "When a blender is not available I run to Jamba Juice for their Peenya Kowlada smoothie—a proven hangover remedy, and it fights colds." Our database has plenty of smoothie recipes. May we suggest draping a kitchen towel over the blender to muffle its brain-splitting sound?
Soups of the World—Forget the egg sandwich! When it comes to curing hangovers, many wish we could teleport ourselves to far-flung countries for giant bowls of rehydrating broth, easy-to-digest noodles or rice, protein-packed eggs and meat, and—for a few of us—supposedly curative tripe. Some of our favorites are Mexican menudo, Korean sul long tang, Vietnamese pho, and Japanese udon and miso. One editor swears by the ramen at New York's Momofuku, while another will drag himself to Queens to eat duck soup at the Thai restaurant Sripraphai. "With its intensely ducky mahogany-colored broth, chunks of fat-on bird, and a mess of slippery noodles, fresh cilantro, and scallions, it's somehow really flavorful, but not in the ways that agitate the old gag reflex," he says. "God, how I want some now, and I'm not even hungover!"
Sugar in Any Form—'Nuff said.
Toast with Mashed Avocado—This is what one contributor craves when she has a hangover—seems like a good, healthy alternative to the bacon, egg, and cheese.
Water, Water, Everywhere—Many swear that simply drinking tons of water along with your poison of choice is enough to ward off a hangover. If that doesn't work, it's prescribed by our panel in many fortified forms, including Smart Water, Vitamin Water Revive Fruit Punch, Pedialyte, and Gatorade, as well as in juice and decaffeinated tea.

I love to cook

I love to cook. This surprises people at first when I tell them, apparently most people my age aren't interested in cooking and especially males and even more so straight ones. But I do and almost to the downfall of my pocket book because I cook for eight people even though its just me and my fiancee. I didnt think that I would grow up this way but I blame my mother. She is a great cook and always showed us the importance of cooking even if it was just mac and cheese.

I feel that cooking is a lost art and people disassociate themselves from this necessary part of life. Most people view cooking as a chore, in this blogger's opinion and I have set out to change that.

Cheesy Bread

In the previous receipe for the Epic Steak Roll I had some left over Gorganzola so a great way to take care of left over cheese is to bake it into your home made bread. It will give it an extra kick that is great for a snack and to eat with some wine. I have only tried it with my plain all purpose flour but I am interested in what it would do with other kinds of bread.

Update: Gorgonzola is a bit to strong of a cheese, unless you love Gorgonzola. I found that if you don't knead the bread well enough you get concentrated pockets of pure Gorgonzola. Not as good in practice.

Lunch for the Broke

What you need:
Rice
Can of Red Beans
Andouille Sausage
Garlic Powder
Louisiana Hot Sauce
In my cupboard I always have some staples. These include a bag of flour for bread, a bag of rice for lunch and canned vegetables and beans. By the time I get to the Wednesday before payday I am usually pretty low on cash so I like to make these lunches.

Step one: Cook rice. Hopefully we all can cook rice and I don't need to explain it. If I do and people are actually reading this, email me and I'll explain
Step two: pick something to mix in it. This week i have a feeling its going to be red beans.
Step three: Season the hell out of it. I like to add garlic and hot sauce for this one.
Step four: Eat. Its cheap filling and tasty, if the store has a good deal on sausage or you know someone who doesn't want their pig anymore, you can add some to it.

Total Cost: .50 cents per serving, maybe.

Cooking During the Recession

Now I have over heard people at work complaining about how badly they have to eat because of this economy or how expensive certain things have become. Take for example bread, sometimes you can get lucky and catch a 2 for $5 special, thats $2.50 a loaf. Now lets say you your family goes through 4 loafs of bread a week. We are up to $10 a week of cheap on sale bread and thats on sale! Lets say one week the store doesn't have a sale on bread and the price jumps to $3.50 now the cost of bread alone for the month is $56. For about a tenth of that you can have all the bread you can ever eat. Now I am sure you are asking "How in the hell can i get bread for 50 cents?" or "This probably involves dumpster diving or buying stale bread by the pound from a baker" but no its an age old secret that very few people think of today. You won't see it on CNN you won't read about it in Suzie Orman's book nor will Jim Cramer give you this hot tip. Are you ready gentle reader...

It's called buying a bag of flour and some yeast and making it yourself!

Now in our busy days of buying everything that we barely have time to pick up the kids, the dry cleaning and the kid's dry cleaning, pay bills so on and so forth how can you have time to make bread. Well its easy to make time because its fast and the time that you are actually doing work is minimal. Hell make the kids do the dirty work, thats what they are there for.
Step 1: Measure the flour, I use 2 cups for a loaf
Step 2: Get hot water, about a 1 1/2 cups, not boiling but about 120 degrees
Step 3: Measure the yeast, I use 1/4 tsp
Step 4: Mix, put the yeast in the flour and add water gradually. This is where it gets messy because you need to mix the flour, with your hands, as you are pouring in water. Stop adding water once it looks like dough, this part takes some experiementing. Also add some salt, I gave some bread to a co-worker without salt and she damn near threw it at me. My method is I let the naked, unadulterated dough rise for an hour before I add in other dry ingredients, try chopped garlic, oregano, cheese, jalepeno slices or really anything.
Step 5: Knead the bread, this helps to get things moving. For those who are new to this kneading is like pounding. I like to get the dough in one hand and punch it with the other. Then flip it over and do it again.
Step 6: Cook. 350-375 for 30 minutes or until it looks like bread.

I know that this isn't exact information and exact measurements because every batch of dough is different so play with it, have fun and all in all each batch of dough takes me about 10 or 15 minutes to make.

Flank Steak Roll

What you will need:
A Flank steak
Gorgonzola cheese
Asparagus
A knife
Meat Tenderizer (a mallet if you don't have one)
Cooking Twine
Your favorite spices
A baking dish

I came up with this bad boy while walking around the store, taking stock of the things on sale. I also don't like just referring it as a roll so i will have to come up with a better name.

I found a beautiful flank steak, kind of like this. I think i paid around $16 for a 4 pound piece of meat, then I got a bundle of asparagus, also on sale and a wedge of Gorgonzola, not on sale. So far i have spent around $24 on this meal, wait forgot the wine, lets say $32. Don't forget to ask the meat department for some cooking twine.

Time to start cooking, i cooked the asparagus first. First things first wash them. Second, line them up on a cutting board make sure the tops of the spears are even, now cut the bottoms so that they are all nice and even. Now I like to cook them in a pan with an inch or so of water, I also like this method because I can use the same pan for cooking the roll, uh there is that word again. Once cooked take the asparagus and cool them by any means necessary, and do it quick.

Once you have the greens cooked take the flank steak and unroll it, mine was around 3 to 4 feet long so make some room. Now that you have this steak unrolled its time to pound it out, one of my favorite things to do in cooking. This is exactly what it sounds like, you are going to work out any aggression that you or the meat has stored up so just go to town. Now that it is pounded out, line the asparagus across the meat with equal spacing between each spear. Take that Gorgonzola and crumble it onto the meat and asparagus, use however much you want to use. I also used some garlic powder and pepper on the inside of the meat.

Now take one end of the meat and start rolling, like a sleeping bag you need to make sure that as you go it is actually rolling on itself nicely. Once you have reached the last spear roll at least another 3 inches, if you have left over steak you can make a nice appetizer. Now trim off any excess steak and set aside, cut the cooking twine into 3 equal parts and tie that bad boy up. This was my product

Now take that pan we cooked the asparagus in and empty out the water, throw some butter in there and set it to high. At the same time preheat the over to 350. Once the butter is all melted sear the our epic creation of cheese and meat. Once seared toss it in the oven and let it cook and you will know its done cooking once the cheese starts to bust from the sides, or after ~30 minutes. Once it looks done slice it and serve with what ever you like, or with my potato recipe.