Cooking With a Headache

A headache changes what a kitchen is. The room does not get any bigger or brighter, but every part of it starts making demands — the overhead light, the extractor fan, the smell of anything frying, the clatter of a drawer full of cutlery.

Most cooking advice assumes the problem is effort. On a headache day the problem is input. You are not short of willpower; you are short of tolerance.

So the useful move is not a faster recipe. It is turning the room down before you ask anything of yourself.

Turn the kitchen down first

Do this before you think about food. It takes about a minute and it changes what is possible afterwards.

• Use a lamp or the rangehood light instead of the overhead. Overheads are the single worst offender.
• Shut the door to whatever is noisy — the telly, the washing machine, the street.
• Pick a method with no fan. The extractor is loud and it pulls cooking smell straight past your face.
• Do not fry. Frying is the noisiest, smelliest way to heat anything.

Food that does not fight back

On a headache day, food needs to be warm or cool rather than hot, mild rather than aromatic, and soft rather than work. Nausea and light sensitivity often arrive together, so anything rich tends to be refused before you finish making it.

• Clear broth from a cube or a carton, in a mug rather than a bowl.
• Plain toast, plain rice, plain crackers. Butter if you can face it.
• Yoghurt, tinned peaches or pears, apple sauce — cold, sweet, no preparation.
• A boiled egg, if protein sounds possible.
• Anything from the fridge that needs no heat at all.

This is not a nutritionally complete day and it does not need to be. It is one day. Getting something in is the whole goal.

What to skip entirely

Some things are not worth attempting on a headache day, and knowing that in advance saves you from starting and abandoning them.

• Onion, garlic, fish and anything browning in oil. The smell lingers in the room long after you have stopped.
• Anything that needs watching or timing. Holding a number in your head is harder than usual and the consequence is a burnt pan.
• Anything that produces a lot of washing up, which becomes tomorrow's problem when tomorrow may also be bad.

Coffee is a genuine maybe. For some people it takes the edge off a headache and for others it sharpens it, and the only way to know is what has happened to you before. Do not experiment today.

The microwave earns its place here

It is the quietest way to heat food, it produces almost no airborne smell compared with a pan, it needs no watching, and it makes one thing dirty. On a day when every sense is turned up, that combination is hard to beat.

Break it into smaller pieces than usual

Standing in one spot is often what tips a headache from bad to worse. So do not treat making toast as one task.

Put the bread in. Sit down. Wait for it. Get up, butter it, sit down again to eat. Three short standing periods instead of one long one is a real difference, not a fussy one.

If bending down to a low cupboard makes it throb, move the thing you need to a higher shelf now, while you are thinking about it, so tomorrow-you does not have to bend.

If someone can help

A vague request is hard to answer, especially when you are already struggling to talk. A specific one is easy.

"Could you make me some toast and bring it to the dark room?" is a request someone can complete. "I should probably eat something" is not.

The day after

Headaches tend to leave you a day behind on eating, and the day after is often when hunger comes back all at once. Having one easy thing already in the fridge or freezer for that day is worth more than anything you could cook during the headache itself.

Less deciding, more eating.

Related reading: "When the Smell Is the Problem" and "A Kitchen Setup for Noise-Sensitive Cooking".