More Food Adventures: Knowing When Enough is Enough

Shop at More Food Adventures

People have different opinions about what drinks go best with what dish. A good beer or wine can pair with all kinds of food in a really swell way, and a nice cocktail is a lovely way to prepare for a good meal. Still, one dining adventure you want to avoid is a meeting with a policeman and his trusty breathalyzer or, much worse, a deadly car accident that would be, morally and legally, your fault. Drinking and driving really do not pair at all. The best way to handle the issue is to go the "designated driver" route and have someone in your party strictly assigned to do the driving and be an alcohol-eschewing teetotaler for the duration. Still, the reality is that, very often, the designated driver route is simply not in the cards. The trick is to time things out very carefully so that, by the time we're hitting the road, whatever alcohol we've consumed has mostly left our system and won't register badly on a breathalyzer. This should involve giving ourselves plenty of time, limiting our intake (two or three drinks -- not "doubles" but the equivalent of a glass of wine or beer or a 1.5-2 ounce shot of liquor) especially after dinner, and then giving ourselves plenty of time to metabolize all the alcohol we've drunk. (It also helps if we've eaten a good amount of food with our beverages.). If you're still not sure -- and it's often kind of hard to judge -- one way to get some piece of mind is to buy one the brands of breathalyzer that are being offered to consumers and keep it in your car. Using them can be fun and it is the only drinking game we know that actually prevent a tragedy.