Our Tasty Test Kitchen

I don't usually post about supplements or other health related stuff but when I run across something that has truly changed my life, I have to tell everyone about it.  

A little background information.  I've suffered from horrible migraines since my teens.  I've tried many drugs & none of them really made a difference.  The only thing I found was if I took Excedrin at the first sign of a possible migraine, I could sometimes keep it down to headache status.  I seriously was taking Excedrin everyday of my life.  After I got pregnant I had to stop taking the Excedrin & started taking Tylenol.  Tylenol helped about as much as a "Smartie" would have.  Over the last few years, it got to the point that I was averaging 2 severe migraines per week & a painful headache every single day.  The migraines would leave me extremely light sensitive, my face would droop slightly on the side the migraine was on, I was sick to my stomach, & unable to function as a mother.  

My husband was watching a lecture by Dr Stasha Gominak, about sleep disorders & vitamin D3.  While watching it, she mentioned that it could help migraines so I decided to give it a try.

I started taking 5000IU per day.  It took about 3 or 4 days before I started noticing that the headaches were lessening.  I was pretty skeptical, at first, but after the 1st month I looked back & realized that I hadn't had a single migraine.  The headaches weren't as frequent & when I did get them, they were significantly less painful & I could treat them with a single dose of Tylenol.  

It has now been over 1 year since I started taking vitamin D3 & I haven't had a single migraine!  Some days I'll forget to take my vitamin & I won't even realize it til I start to feel that old familiar tingle, telling me that a migraine will be coming in the next 24 hours.  When that happens, I take 10,000IUs & then start back onto my daily 5000IUs.  

Now I'm not telling you to blindly follow me & I know this won't help everyone but for me this is what I needed to get rid of my migraines.  Hopefully someone will read this & be able to benefit from it like I have.

For anyone interested, here are the links to Dr. Stasha Gominak's lecture.  It's pretty long so it's in multiple parts.  I confess that I haven't even watched the whole thing (even though it is very interesting).  I let my husband watch it then show me the parts relating to migraines.

Dr. Stasha Gominak Discusses Sleep and Vitamin D Pt. 1

Dr. Stasha Gominak Discusses Sleep and Vitamin D Pt. 2

Dr. Stasha Gominak Discusses Sleep and Vitamin D Pt. 3

Dr. Stasha Gominak Discusses Sleep and Vitamin D Pt. 4

Dr. Stasha Gominak Discusses Sleep and Vitamin D Pt. 5

Moist & delicious & a perfect crockpot meal.

The shredded beef recipe is from Cooking Classy & you can find the recipe for my Homemade Taco Shells here.  

This shredded beef is great in tacos but you could also use if in so many other dishes.  I think it would taste great in taquitos or as a "Cafe Rio" style salad.

I love mixing my own seasonings.  They taste a lot better than just buying the pre-assembled packets from the store.  You can also control the sodium levels which are ridiculously high in those packets.

When I was younger, I used to think that vegetarians were "crazy" for giving up meat.  I always thought that the main dish on your plate had to be the meat & the veggies were just the colorful decoration that mom  made me eat.  Now that I'm older, I've realized that even though I'm not vegetarian, it is nice to have a meal or two, each week, that doesn't have any meat in it.  I've also grow to love the same vegetables that I used to hide in my lap & sneak to the trash when mom wasn't looking.

This recipe is from Gina's Skinny Recipes which is a site that I love to cook from.  I've made quite a few of her recipes & have yet to find one that I didn't like.  I also really like how she includes the nutritional information for each recipe.  

Servings: 4 • Size: divide in 4 equal servings • Old Points: 5 • Points+: 7 pts
Calories: 254.4 • Fat: 5.7 g • Protein: 7.4 g • Carb: 51.0 g • Fiber: 7.8 g • Sugar: 2.6

Lots of onions & garlic.  Yummm!!!

The grocery store was out of fresh parsley so I substituted dried parsley.  It worked but I'm positive that the dish would have tasted even better if I had used the fresh stuff.

Lots of zucchini sticks.  

Doesn't this look wonderful.  I love how bright & colorful it is.

I have her approval.

This was a wonderful, fresh dinner for summer.  Even the kids liked it (although they wouldn't try the shrimp).  It was also easy, which is always a big plus in my book.  

The only thing I did differently from the original recipe was that I used precooked shrimp.  My reasoning?  I HATE deveining shrimp & even when I buy the ones that are already deveined, they still have "stuff" that I have to clean out.  With the precooked ones, all I had to do was pop the tails off & throw them in the pan.  If you do use the precooked shrimp, cook them for a little less time than you would if you were using the raw shrimp.

You can find this recipe at eCurry.  

Enjoy!