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.
(Source: Oxford Dictionary of Word Origins)
Ghost riders
Cheesed off with ink
A man has used a cheese-grater to remove a tattoo, a week after having it inked. The 21-year-old, from Mendoza, Argentina, said: "It hurt and bled a lot. I had to bandage it a lot and apply disinfectant. A week later I went to the hospital and I had a tetanus vaccination." As the Daily Mail says, "Not a grate idea."
Eureka moment in compost
Fancy pyramid-shaped teabags use plastic mesh rather than paper to house their tea. Robin shared her own discovery from her compost ... "I had wondered if the billions of these would turn up in plastic pollution. They emerge recognisable and apparently intact if empty, after more than six months in the compost bin."