Headache

I had a headache for four days straight. It was the kind that felt like your brain was too big for your head. When I'd move my head, it took a minute for the pain to follow but then it would crash against my skull-wall, threatening to slosh out of my ear. But it never sloshed anywhere out, just back and forth, mainly on the right side where all my headaches live. I had a week-long headache after Max was born. There may be some hormones involved so to cure it, I took my birth control pill a day early. Then, I added an estrogen patch that my OBGYN had prescribed for my last round of headaches. Neither of these helped. I took two Aleves. Another day, four ibuprofen. I thought I was dehydrated so I drank and drank water. My other OBGYN said it's almost impossible to drink too much water in Flagstaff, what with the elevation and the desert-like conditions. I drank 10 of my 32-ounce-jars of water. We did go hiking in the heat of the day and it is 90 here which is unheard of for Flag, but still, two and a half gallons of water should have rehydrated even a mummy.
Erik said maybe I was drinking too much water, which I couldn't believe. Especially since I have cured headaches by drinking 48 ounces in a row. But when I slept fitfully Saturday night, waking up to still pounding headaches, I thought maybe I should give the water thing a rest. In the morning, I took a sudafed and 4 aspirin and then went to the gas station where I drank 20 ounces of blue Gatorade. And thus, my headache was cured. I'm now thinking it low potassium was the culprit but there's always a chance with the headache that the analgesics finally worked or the water was finally enough or the hormones righted themselves or the sun went down or the allergies abated. I won't know until the next headache but just in case I'm right, I bought a flotilla of Gatorade as quick cure.

I cooked a lot this weekend but nothing too amazing, possibly owing to the non-stop headache. My in-laws were down for Erik's mom's birthday. They were going to come the whole of June but now just came for the weekend. My vegetarian culinary skills will not be put to the test as much as I had hoped. For her birthday, I made salmon tacos with apple/cucumber salsa and mango/tomato salsa and lime mayonnaise. The recipe was from Food and Wine and it was a little too healthy for my taste and a little too sweet but pretty OK. I also grilled steaks and portobellos one night and made blender Bearnaise sauce. Almost perfect but a little too vinegary. I'm working on it. And yesterday, we went to Criollo for lunch/dinner after our hike to Kelsey Springs. I ordered the pork belly tacos. Rick had the tamales. Everyone liked the chicken skewers peanut dipping sauce. It is delicious there.

What should I make for dinner tonight? If I don't come up with something relatively soonish, the default will be tacos and I've had tacos two of the last three days. Although there's a recipe in food and wine for braised turkey tacos that sounds intriguing....apparently, this year tacos have replaced last year's pizza, which replaced the previous year's hamburger as the culinary adventure of the cooking class. Or at least the Food and Wine magazine writers. My headache is for now gone. Perhaps I should try something complicated.