The Migraine Relief Plan

When I posted a link to The Migraine Relief Plan by Stephanie Weaver on my Facebook page, a lot of people commented that there's no one-size-fits-all diet that can eliminate migraines.

While I agree, as a former migraine sufferer, I have to say that if someone had offered me any sort of plan, I would have followed along.

That said, I don't know if I could have followed a super-strict diet to combat the migraines. I think I might have slipped a lot. But then again, the point is to find out what our own personal triggers are, so you can eliminate those and continue eating other foods that aren't triggers.

While this book does have recipes, I think the most important part, for migraine sufferers, is the plan itself. It's a very structured way to figure out which foods are triggers and which ones are safe. There are some foods that affect a lot of people, and some foods that affect fewer people. So it's kind of important to know what your personal triggers are. And to be honest, I was surprise at how many foods are possible triggers. I knew a few of them, but ... wow, there are a lot! This book talks about all of those foods as possible triggers, but I'll bet that most folks aren't triggered by all of them.

My personal relationship with migraines started when I was very young. So young that I don't remember a time when I didn't occasionally have headaches once in a while. I was probably four years old, or even younger, when I first started getting migraines, so I lived with them for a looooong time.

Now, I can't really remember the last migraine I had. It's been a while. Many years. Two of my triggers were not food-related. One was hormonal swings, and I've outgrown those. The other was stress, and I've learned how to handle that a lot better.

My major food trigger, which might or might not still exist as a trigger, is red wine. While not all red wines affected me, I found it was pretty simple to just stick to white wines. I still avoid red wines, but it's not a big sacrifice. I've had some red wine over the years - a small glass at a tasting, or a sip here or there. But you won't find me splitting a bottle of merlot at dinner. Nope.

I suppose that at the height of my migraine episodes, there might have been other foods that were mild triggers, but I guess I'll never know. And I don't want to.

As far as the recipes in the book, I've looked through them, but I haven't made any of them, mostly because I don't stock a lot of the ingredients that are used for substitutes for migraine-trigger food. The recipes look good, but I think I'll leave them for someone else to try.

If you're a migraine sufferer and you want to figure out what your triggers are and you want to see some recipes that might work for you, take a look at this book. If you don't get migraines ... well, consider yourself lucky. Migraines are awful.

Cinnamon Girl

I've been making time for doing more reading these days ... and not just reading cookbooks.
But I still have a bit of a soft spot for books that have a food or cooking theme. So, I picked up a copy of Cinnamon Girl by Valerie Horowitz. And, by "picked up" I mean that I ordered it from Amazon.

Cinnamon Girl is a murder mystery, and the main character, Bonnie Emerson, owns a store that sells cookware, cooking gadgets, and cookbooks. Some of the chapters start with recipes from cookbooks, and the recipes are mentioned in the stories. There are also cookbooks and cooking items mentioned in the text, as Bonnie interacts with customers and other folks at her store.

But those are just window dressing. The real story is the dead body that Bonnie and her husband found in their back yard. Opps. I hate when that happens.

And then it gets more complicated from there. Another murder, a book signing and cooking contest at the store, and the Secret Service people lurking about, since Bonnie is the daughter of an ex-President and he's still got pull with the White House.

The characters are likable ... even the murderer, and the story is fun. Fairly light reading, but engaging enough to keep me turning pages.

If you like mysteries and food and cookbooks (there's one that was mentioned that I actually stopped reading so I could slip it into my Amazon cart) I think you'll like this one. Oh - and although this isn't really a cookbook, the recipes chosen are winners. So you just might end up cooking from it.

Oh, and this is billed a Book 1, so it looks like there will be more to come.

The Washington Post - Digital Deal

I don't usually post about deals, but I found this, and thought it would be worth passing along since I had a little difficulty figuring out how to sign up to get the better price. And I do love a bargain.

I'll admit it's been a while since I subscribed to a print newspaper - I mostly read online and I tend to bounce around to different publications. Sometimes I run into a paywall when I've read more stories for free than the paper allows, and that's been happening a lot more often with the current political climate. So, I started looking into subscribing to a paper that carried a good range of national news.  And of course, interesting food articles and features are nice. Crosswords are a bonus. Sports, meh. Sorry.

After looking at all the deals, I settled on the Washington Post. Digitally, because the last thing I need is more paper to recycle. If I had an endless supply of money, I would have liked the Wall Street Journal, too, but that's out of my price range for now. And I can still selectively read articles from them online. I've seen ads for the New York Times lately, but at $3.75 per week, that's $195 per year. Not horrible, but definitely not the best price.

The best deal I found was that if you have Amazon Prime, you can get six months of the Washington Post FREE, followed by $3.99 per month. Cancel any time. This is the digital online issue and not the Kindle one, but still you can read it on any device that can go online. Which I think is better than being restricted to Kindle reading.

Amazon Prime Membership is currently $99 for a year (you can also get shorter memberships) and comes with other benefits. So you do need that first before you get the newspaper deal. If you never ever use any prime benefits, it might not be as wonderful. But I've found that Prime has been pretty good to me.

To get the deal from the Washington Post (this is a little convoluted, and it took me a while to find it myself) you have to start with the Washington Post rather than Amazon. From the Post site, you sign in to your Amazon account to verify that you have prime. If you start with Amazon, you'll see other offers, but not this one. Weird, I know.

Here's the right page on the Washington Post site to get started. It should be easy to find your way from there.

You can also get a free trial of Prime. I'm not sure if the subscription to the Washington Post would be affected if you didn't renew the Prime subscription, but some free prime time is a good thing, even if you don't want to subscribe to the newspaper. Try Amazon Prime 30-Day Free Trial.