Use Milk Thistle April 30, 2008
Posted by Alexander Sawit in Food & Drink.add a comment
By Alex Sawit
30 April 2008
I’ve been putting off writing this lesson for a while now. But in the aftermath of yet another friendly visit by Mr. Shimizu to our wine shop, one that involved some exquisitely good Japanese single malt whisky that had just been flown in, it’s time for me to finally teach Cyrano friends about the benefits of milk thistle. Speaking from personal experience, I can say in all honesty that milk thistle is hands down the most effective natural remedy you can take to prevent a hangover.
But first let’s put things into perspective.
No sane person sets out with the intention of getting a hangover. Yet even the most responsible drinkers – a category to which I belong, I assure you – can misjudge their situation, since a person’s drinking limit at any given time isn’t determined only by the amount of alcohol consumed. Different factors can come into play, such as how tired you are or how much you’ve had to eat or what kind of food you’ve had, if at all. To illustrate my point, my whisky chat with Shimizu-san was actually an exercise in sensibility, as I consciously moderated my sipping and I felt perfectly fine long after my last glass was empty and Mr. Shimizu had left the shop. Then I had dinner and everything turned. Perhaps my choice of meal didn’t agree with what preceded it, but from then on a mild yet distinctly unpleasant, unwelcome heaviness took residence in my head, where it persisted for the next 24 hours.
If only I’d stocked some milk thistle at Cyrano.
It’s something that our wine shop really ought to have a ready supply of. True, there are modern products available at your local pharmacy or health store that promote the same benefits, but I’ve yet to try a modern product that is demonstrably far more effective than this ancient herbal remedy. For me, this stuff always works.
As an experiment, I once actually tested milk thistle to its limits at the wine shop and was impressed with the result. I recall how, after taking just a single capsule one Friday evening, I proceeded to go through about a dozen bottles of wine (with the help of three comrades to share the wine with, that is) over a span of around five hours, only to awake the next day feeling positively clear-headed and hardly experiencing any ill effects. Mind you, as someone who practices moderation I neither advocate nor condone excessive drinking. But this exercise was about personally establishing the efficacy of milk thistle in order to address my own uncertainties. True enough, whatever doubts I may have had were thereafter erased with flying colors.
The Silybum Marianum plant is the species of milk thistle whose extract, silymarin, has been used for centuries as a treatment for liver ailments due to its ability to protect the liver against toxins (its medicinal use in the West goes back some 2,000 years). This includes protecting liver cells from damage due to excessive alcohol intake, which is why silymarin milk thistle is regarded as the classic herbal ingredient for fighting a hangover. Take heed, however, because milk thistle only prevents hangovers and will not cure one that you already have; to enjoy its benefits, you need to take it before you start drinking (also, milk thistle won’t stop alcohol from entering your bloodstream, so it can’t make you immune from getting intoxicated).
Milk thistle is readily available in convenient capsule form at major drugstores and health supplement outlets (the milk thistle I normally use comes in 125 mg capsules). Some recommend taking one capsule prior to consuming alcohol; to be safe, I prefer taking two capsules about ten minutes beforehand, especially when I’m attending a dégustation where generous selections of food and wine are meant to be sampled and enjoyed (to be even safer, periodically take additional capsules as you continue to drink, say, one or two capsules for every 3-4 hours of drinking).
So use milk thistle, Cyrano friends. End of lesson.
X-Factor April 23, 2008
Posted by Alexander Sawit in Stuff in General.3 comments
By Alex Sawit
23 April 2008
According to a famous globe-trotting food traveler, one of the essential elements of a great bar is the presence of what our authority calls a “maniacal bartender.” Unlike the typical bar operator, who merely passes booze around and for whom small talk with customers is an inconvenience that comes with the job, a passionate barkeeper is a fluent, convivial host and iron fisted enforcer all rolled into one. Step out of line and you’re out the door with your tail tucked in. Embrace the ways of camaraderie, on the other hand, and you’ve found yourself a home. Mi casa, su casa.
I have to agree. But allow me to amend this a bit. In light of my recent experience, I have to say that a great bar works even better when the barkeeper also has a mutually maniacal customer as a partner in crime. That’s how I would describe one of our faithful Cyrano friends, whom I shall refer to as X.
For those not acquainted with her, X is a free-spirited character with a predisposition for making herself at home in our wine shop. On any given day, here she is, her classic Italian scooter stylishly parked out front while she uses our premises as her personal living room, pseudo law office and makeshift internet café (the comfy Ottoman couch by the window is her territory, by the way). She’s an Artemis archetype, which explains why she can’t resist hunting down intellectual conversation at our place. Guys beware, however, lest you get fresh talking to her. X may be a carefree spirit, but she’s an opinionated young lady who speaks her mind with an unfair combination of sweet feminine ease and chirpy below-the-belt bluntness. I’ve seen her making fun of the opposite sex on many occasions, so let me just say that it’s entertaining to watch and listen whenever hapless fellows of all ages and nationalities are obliged, as gentlemen, to let her get away with asking them the most outrageously impolite questions about their presumed masculinity. The girl’s got moxie and Cyrano is all the better for it.
But if you ever needed proof of her value to us as a winsomely maniacal patron, you only had to have been here recently to have seen X at her shining best.
Well, actually, it started at the Belgian ambassador’s residence in Forbes Park, where X was attending the official celebration of International Francophonie Week 2008. This big ticket event in the diplomatic calendar drew hundreds of guests from the Belgian, Canadian, French and Swiss expatriate communities, who gathered for an evening of food and wine as a tribute to French culture and language around the world (sadly, the organizers failed to serve Belgian beer, prompting a disappointed X to cheerfully admonish no less than Ambassador Grégoire Vardakis for the omission). Now I rarely skip out of the shop for social events, but X was hoping to interest me in the wines being served. So we agreed to rendezvous.
Wouldn’t you know it, by the time I showed up the best wines and Champagne were all gone? Not to worry, I told X. We proceeded to the beverage table and set up camp, happy to content ourselves with the vin de pays that was left. No sooner had we gotten comfortable when, amazingly, Cyrano friends converged from both sides. On our left, we bumped into the gracious Cathy Siapno and her Belgian hubby, the now bona fide chocolatier Benoit Nicolay, gregarious folks who used to drop by our shop almost daily when they lived across the street. The reunion had barely started when, on our right, we were greeted by our new neighbor, Nicolaos Verghis, who despite the sweat pouring from his brow was upholding his dignity in a fully-buttoned business suit on this sweltering night. As First Secretary of the Greek Embassy, Nicos can not only give Filipino listeners a lyrical perspective of Greek civilization but is also enthusiastic about the Philippines, smitten as he is by the stunning destinations our country has to offer. Soon, Cathy and Ben were introducing us to their Belgian friends and Nicos was doing the same with his diplomat buddies.
I don’t remember exactly how, but it was at this point that something switched on inside of X. Maybe it was the lawyer in her, but she suddenly began fervently lobbying this host of diplomats and other expatriates, who were now listening to her voice intently. Before I knew it, they were all buying into X’s endearing sales pitch.
“What? You’ve never been to Cyrano? It’s just the best place ever! You have to go! You have to go to Cyrano! You have to go to Cyrano tonight!!!”
That was fast. Even I was stunned. Just like that, X was driving traffic to our little wine shop and selling it as the greatest thing since supermarket baguettes and SPAM® (kidding of course). There wasn’t even any debate. For some timely reason, everyone fell into lock step with X, who decided that the group must pack up immediately and drive to Cyrano right now.
Arriving at the wine shop with her expat crowd in tow, my partner in crime instantly felt at home. Instinctively and without hesitation, our de facto co-host leisurely stepped behind the bar, black party dress and pointy-heeled shoes and all, and stationed herself at the cashier’s chair. I opened bottles and poured wine; she entertained guests from behind the counter. Needless to say, X was enjoying herself.
Admittedly, there were a few minor bumps the rest of the way. Ben got a little rowdy, which I’ve learned to expect when he’s had too much of a good thing; at least he stayed within a manageable degree of excess even as he was complaining about me to his Belgian friend, saying, “This guy has the best wines, but he’s #@$&!” His friend, however, was preoccupied with hitting on X, which was why the fellow kept asking her to absolutely verify that she and I were not in any way an item (apparently, the fact that this fellow’s wife was in the room wasn’t a deterrent). In the end, everything turned out just cool. When we all parted at night’s end, we made each other promises to get together again at Cyrano and hopefully more often.
As I closed shop in the wee hours of the morning, I did so with a new found appreciation for X. She had, after all, just reaffirmed my long-standing belief that Cyrano doesn’t actually have customers. We just have friends.
I couldn’t ask for a better ally, right?
Fast-forward just a few hours later. It’s around half-past five on a hot, muggy summer morning and I’m standing on the sidewalk like a clueless lost tourist along Ayala Avenue, staring in front of a brand new Krispy Kreme outlet and bloody crowded by hundreds of call center folks massed in queue, all because of a word-of-mouth promo offering the first customer in line a year’s supply of free donuts. Wouldn’t you know, it was X who suggested… no, insisted, that I be here?
“It’s a whole year’s supply of Krispy Kreme for Cyrano! Please, you can get there ahead of everybody. You have to! You have to win this! You have to win this for Cyrano!”
Ah, well, I guess there are things a wine shop just has to live with when it has a great X-Factor.
