What a Migraine!

While you may assume that the title of this post has to do with some headaches I have been dealing with around Yozgat, you are wrong J Unfortunately, I am talking about the real deal! I am a long-time sufferer of really strong migraines. I can regulate the frequency by avoiding certain smells and flavors like garlic, vanilla and ALL perfume –including that stinky stuff girls are always spraying to name a few triggers. Tragically, some of my favorite things are also occasional triggers: wine, dried fruit, nuts, flavored coffee, wine again. I am pretty good at avoiding too much of any of these things and thus able to avoid the debilitation that only fellow migraine sufferers know!

BUT, I washed my sheets. Normally this isn’t something that would give me a migraine, but the soap is so heavily scented, it filled my room and because it was too cold to open a window, I was poisoned by the smell of clean! How terrible. I quickly popped two of the prescription migraine pills I had in my wallet at the very onset of the migraine… the onset is the evil aura in vision that causes you to not be able to read or sometimes even see at all! I turned off the lights, too bad it was daytime, and put on Dexter to listen to as I tried to fall asleep.

I woke up an hour later with the headache that comes and lasts for about two and a half days but no getting sick to my stomach! So the medicine only half worked. It’s ok, I only had those two pills from that particular brand of meds. I have some other stuff that I will try when the next migraine comes! I fear the day.

That was on Friday. On Saturday, I went to the grocery store to gather some ingredients for making a variation of beef stroganoff. Thanks again to Martha, who gave me the idea and recipe to make it! It seems somewhat customary for someone to cook on the weekends and expect to make enough to share with whomever happens to be in the house at the time. So I bought a lot. Despite the fact that meat here is very expensive, the whole dish, which ended up feeding 5 people and me for 3 days, only cost around $17.

I had never made this before and was flying without a real recipe since the internet was down. Then I had even more anticipation because one of the guests in the house right now is a medical doctor and he joined us! Not to mention I was cooking for 2 friends around my age and my Afghani friend, who is a history prof. here.

Although I think I might have let the yogurt part of the whole thing get too hot, the dish actually ended up tasting great! I love cooking and I love hosting J It was a good time, despite the migraine that was very strong from the night before.