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"  Champagne recommendations?  Chad Carns, New York City Here&amp;#039;s my recommendation: Skip it. Champagne is expensive and so burdened with the weight of forced festivity that it&amp;#039;s almost impossible not to be let down when you remember you don&amp;#039;t even like it. If you had a champagne you were that crazy about, you wouldn&amp;#039;t be asking me this. Just drink something you love that you can&amp;#039;t usually afford. That said, if you want to drink champagne, I would say get Bollinger Special Cuvee. It&amp;#039;s cheap enough to get a few bottles (typically around $50) and it gives you a legit sense of the Bollinger style. Which is the best, IMO.  Champagne alternative for those who reject champagne?  Elizabeth Fauerso, San Antonio, TX I know I&amp;#039;m supposed to say Cava or Prosecco or something, but to me, those are just off-brand champagnes and a depressing means to celebrate the New Year. Ushering in 2014 with Prosecco is like blowing your bonus on a Citizen watch. I say get something you are absolutely crazy about and drink it in profusion. If you have to have something bubbly that pops, maybe try one of the really good sparkling sakes, like Okunomatsu Formula Nippon Junmai Daiginjo Sparkling, which is expensive, or Chikurin Hana Hou Hou Shu Sparkling Junmai, which is cheaper. Both are good and exotic enough to feel special.  Do you recommend going out to a restaurant for a special New Year&amp;#039;s Eve menu? My wife and I have the chance to go to arguably the best restaurant in town with another couple, but it&amp;#039;s not cheap, and I have never done New Year&amp;#039;s Eve at a restaurant. Is it worth it?  Bill Cutting, Address Withheld No. It&amp;#039;s not. New Year&amp;#039;s Eve dinners are a stone waste of time and fun. Basically, you are paying twice as much for the same food, plus a few glasses of cut-rate champagne. What&amp;#039;s fun about that? Who wants to sit immobile for four hours on New Year&amp;#039;s Eve? New Year&amp;#039;s Eve is about drinking, carousing, and making a jerk of yourself. You can&amp;#039;t do any of those things at a restaurant. So no.   What&amp;#039;s the tastiest, quickest soup that I can make as a hangover cure on New Year&amp;#039;s Day?  Sam Hiersteiner, Washington DC There are no quick soups. Trust me. The last thing you want to do with a hangover is cut up aromatics for soup. Make your favorite ahead of time, so all you have to do is warm it up with your trembling hands. As for what kind, you might not have the stomach for creamy bisques; just the sight of one might make you want to ralph. My go-to restorative is mushroom barley, which is nourishing, salty, and it goes down easy. Salty is key. You need to retain every bit of water you can.  Can you please tell me what to look for when buying lobster tails and how to perfectly cook them? I don&amp;#039;t want to deal with whole lobsters.  Ray &amp;quot;Dr. BBQ&amp;quot; Lampe, St. Petersburg, FL A question from Dr. BBQ! I&amp;#039;m honored. But the question is hard one. Lobster tails are by definition dead, so they won&amp;#039;t be as fresh as a tail from a live lobster that somebody just killed. Note that I say somebody \u2014 it doesn&amp;#039;t have to be you. Some stores will kill the lobster for you right then and there; you can take the tails and the claws and consign the rest to Davy Jones&amp;#039; locker. Grill the tails shell-side down, over hardwood embers, with a big piece of maitre d butter over the meat. It will melt, absorb the smoke, and bathe the meat as it cooks. At the very end, flip the meat over and quickly brown the surface. Then butter it again. Then eat it. The claws can cook straight up over the heat; the shell protects them from dehydrating. And if you have to get frozen tails, you won&amp;#039;t get better value than at Costco. I hate to admit it, but it&amp;#039;s true.   I hurt myself in an awkward twerking accident. So no NYE-NYD parties, just supine splendor &amp;amp;amp; Netflix. Any suggestions for foods eaten horizontally?  BBQ Guy, Boston MA Anything you can eat sitting up can be eaten lying down, BBQ Guy; you must have learned that by now. The only exceptions I can think of offhand are fondue, hot soup, and spaghetti. When stretched out and unwilling to exert myself even to the extent of sitting up \u2014 a state that happens with increasing frequency, by the way \u2014 I usually settle in with a pepperoni and my Al Mar pocketknife. Other high-gravity options include arancini, shakes taken through hospital straws, spring rolls, cevape, leftover cocktail franks, chow mein noodles, your children&amp;#039;s juice boxes, and whatever else is in easy reach.  Why do we eat black eyed peas or pork and sour kraut or mochi on New Year&amp;#039;s Day? Lucky NYD foods?  Harold Moore, Parsippany, NJ Harold here is referring not to black-eyed peas per se, but the lowcountry dish known as Hoppin&amp;#039; John \u2014 a.k.a. peas and rice \u2014 and the traditional southern New Year&amp;#039;s Day dish par excellence. I think people eat it because it&amp;#039;s easy to make and easy to swallow and easy to digest; but there is a luck aspect as well. Hoppin&amp;#039; John looks like money. The greens represent dollars and the peas represent coins. So I&amp;#039;m told by my southern friends, anyway. To me, it just looks like a bowl of soul food. I never heard of anybody eating kraut or mochi, but no doubt they symbolize something as well \u2014 maybe pessimism, because they are so bad.   Ham hock in lucky black-eyed peas, no?  Cynthia Tyler, Golden, CO Always. Absolutely. Otherwise what&amp;#039;s the point? There&amp;#039;s nothing lucky about smoked turkey wings.  What was the most overused word in food writing this past year?  Deborah Fenker, New York City How do I pick just one? There are the reflexively hyperbolic superlatives \u2014 awesome, epic, mind-blowing, white-hot, genius (used as an adjective), and so on. Then comes their equally overblown but more-pretentious cousins, e.g. mouthwatering, seductive, sublime, transcendent, etc. But if I had to pick just one word I guess it would have to be &amp;quot;yummy,&amp;quot; since even a single use qualifies it as overused.  I have a hot date for New Year&amp;#039;s Eve. Though I would like to get her in the sack, I have trouble performing when I am full. Problem is, I also have reservations for dinner at a great restaurant. So what would you advise me to choose, a great meal or great sex?  Steve Plotnicki, New York City That&amp;#039;s an easy one! Sex. Because you can always get great food. Have a question? Write askeatlikeaman@esquire.com. I try to answer every question or comment that is sent to me, although it may take a week or two to get to it. 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