Food flubs
1. An Israeli woman was hospitalised after mistaking wasabi for avocado, according to a report in a medical journal. While attending a wedding, the woman in her late 60s ate a "large amount" of what she thought was avocado dip, only to realise it was actually wasabi paste.
She felt a "sudden pressure" in her chest before the feeling moved down to her arms.
2. A chef is suing the Michelin guide, saying that his restaurant lost its three-star status after being wrongly accused of using cheddar cheese in a classic French dish. Marc Veyrat's La Maison des Bois, near Grenoble in the French Alps, was demoted to two stars in January. "It's worse than a wound. It's profoundly offensive. It gave me a depression," said the chef.
Ruff way to cure a hangover
The expression the hair of the dog, for an alcoholic drink taken to cure a hangover, is a shortening of "a hair of the dog that bit you". It comes from an old belief that someone bitten by a rabid dog could be cured of rabies by taking a potion containing some of the dog's hair. The correlation suggests that, although alcohol may be to blame for the hangover (as the dog is for the attack), a smaller portion of the same will, paradoxically, act as a cure. There is, it should be added, no scientific evidence that the cure for either a hangover or rabies actually works.
