A Migraine For The Ages

Headaches come and headaches go but a migraine is forever. Catchy little phrase, eh? After two days of continual ice-pick-stabbing-pain-behind-the-eyes it seems only too true. Self-diagnosed the problem as partly due to stress (duh!) and partly due to that wonderful time we women euphemistically call mid-life but is really just agonizing-years-of-hot-flashes-insomnia-and-crazy-mood-swings with the occasional migraine thrown in for good measure.

I'm also blaming the excessive use of the en dash on those things.

But hey, the sun is shining, a chocolate cake is cooling on the kitchen counter, and I just watched the most recent episode of NCIS and got my Leroy Jethro Gibbs, a.k.a. Mark Harmon fix for the week.

Have I mentioned what a wonderful thing the internet is? It allows me to download favorite shows like NCIS, skype with my kids, talk with them and others in the U.S. on the Vonage phone, look up the correct spelling for euphemistically, locate the recipe for Darn Good Chocolate Cake, and be a part of Bloggyville.

The internet has made the ice-pick-stabbing-pain-behind-the-eyes bearable. Well, that and the Ghirardelli chocolate chips. Which is why I made the Darn Good Chocolate Cake. The cake is merely a vehicle for the chocolate chips. So is the chocolate ganache that will be used to frost the cake. One cannot come up with too many uses for the Ghirardelli.

As I learned from the pro, Mama Daisy. That woman single-handedly went through 10 pounds of chocolate chips in less than a year. The first five in about three months. Mama Daisy didn't start helping me until we'd been in Uganda for a month. She loved to bake [and we loved to eat what she baked!] so every day we could count on not only fresh bread but also some kind of treat. She was making a lot of chocolate chip cookies -- don't worry, wasn't eating all of them myself but sharing with others in our little community -- so I suggested she make peanut butter cookies one day.

She made peanut butter chocolate chip cookies.

So then I suggested she make chocolate cake which uses cocoa instead of chips.

She dutifully made the cake. And then melted chocolate chips to make the frosting. Hey, who do you think I got the ganache recipe from?

Granted, she didn't quite get the concept that chocolate chips were a precious commodity, only available from the U.S. She, being from the bush and making only rare trips into Kampala, thought everything could be found in the capital.

But she finally 'got it' when we ran out the end of October and had to wait until January for the second 5 lb. bag that friends brought when they came to visit. But to be on the safe side I began portioning out the chips, filling a small jar each Sunday night for use that week, and hiding the rest beneath my underwear. A girl's gotta do what a girl's gotta do. And no one, not even the venerable Mama Daisy, was going to make me run out of chocolate chips again.

'Cause when the stress is high and the migraine lays you low, ain't nothin' like a good ole handful of Ghirardelli. And don't you forget it, ice-pick-stabbing-pain-behind-the-eyes!