Report from Quito

9,350 feet high, to be precise.

This was to be the first of possibly several disquisitions on trying to stay connected to the old Robbinsdale “foodways” in a new country where you — I — can’t find a quart of buttermilk, four-ounce cans of mild green chiles (ANY cans of chiles), or a cheese worthy of the name. I intended to skim the surface of baking at high altitude which, even with purpose-written cookbooks, can be darned disappointing. (The challah pictured below was over-inflated after baking and lost its shape.)

Instead of Cooking while high, which I’ll get back to eventually, let’s call today’s post Wherever you go, there you are.

Naturally, I had entertained vague hopes that the “geographic cure” would have a salubrious effect on all my Minnesota maladies. Allergies would clear forever, five decades of depression would ease, and chronic insomnia would come to feel like a bad dream. 

This week I was reminded my mucus membranes immigrated with me. So did my depression – and this last may be related to my having cut my antidepressant dose in half a few weeks back, at the insistence of my Minnesota doctor. 

As those with and possibly without depression know, sometimes nothing looks good. The unceasing stimulation of our new culture, language and environment was too much, a consummation devoutly to be pissed at. The drone of Today in Pedophilia was, and is, physically sickening. I wished for nothing more than to be able to shut all the windows and retire to my cool Minnesota bedroom, having downed a Benadryl or two, to fall asleep breathing treated air.

Then I felt a little better. We’re going to a production of Carmen at La Casa de la Musica. I remembered and found last fall’s award-winning chile recipe (not mine) from work and made an edible facsimile, canned chiles be damned. A new reality begins in hours, when Charlie – who has been here for two months – returns to the U.S. to begin his first full-time job. This may have been the last extended period of time we’ll spend with our boy, who’s going back to a country we saw fit to leave.

I’ve been told more than once that immigrating can be hard, hard, hard, even without the threat of ICE agents and imminent deportation. I need to share those parts here, too.