Ongoing cooking adventures

I feel like I should have some kind of opening sentence before I get into this but nothing brilliant comes to mind.

I've dealt with depression in various forms for pretty much my entire life, certainly entire adult life.  I've talked about this at length before so I won't rehash it too much.  I'll just highlight that almost everything I've done to try to combat it has failed for one reason or another...many of them just the self-fulfilling prophecy that is living with any affected ability.

One ray of hope that has remained for some time is ketamine-assisted psychotherapy, or KAP.  Psychedelics showing promise in the treatment of mental illness isn't new, but it's gaining increasing access as the studies and research and science actually back it up with something resembling hard evidence rather than anecdotes and experiences.  And I say something resembling because when it comes to psychiatry and psychology and mental illness, there isn't a *ton* of hard evidence to be had as everything is kinda twisty.

I'd looked into KAP a handful of years ago, but at the time it was cost-prohibitive.  Being still rather experimental, and of course involving a highly restricted substance, it's rare to get insurance to pay for KAP.  Some providers navigate this by getting insurance to pay for the therapy itself as normal, and direct bill for the drug.  Others just don't bother trying so as to save the time and hassle.  Most, from my admittedly small research, are the latter.

My depression has continued to ramp up over the time I've been out here in the world, quite contrary to my hopes and goals for the life I was striding into.  It's been the right decision and I wouldn't change it (well, most of it), but it does mean that the longer I've been going, the worse I'm doing.  So I decided that I'm going to return to the US, move back home for a while, and try KAP to see if it unlocks something that lets me move forward again.  Every intention is to pick back up in late December.  Assuming the world hasn't burned itself to the ground by then.

In the meantime, however, my limited exploration of Riga continues with this park not far from my apartment featuring a simple but cute sculpture and a dog park.  On the walk back home, I passed this church, one of many in Riga.  It strikes me that when the foliage is in full force, much of it would actually be obscured from the road.  I also saw this in a grocery store and somehow resonate with its difficulty in defining itself.  Also at the store is this different way of packaging ice cream.

The cooking adventures continue.  Last week I attempted to be inspired by Cornish pasties (pronounces with the short a, like past - eez).  Taking the flatbread I've been working with and adding a cooked filling of minced pork, cabbage, and potato, and wrapping it up to fry in a pan.  The result was quite good and is something I'll absolutely continue experimenting with, though no single pastry can hold much filling the way I'm currently making them.  I also tried making the fried chicken I learned in Vietnam, and cooked some flatbread in the same pan afterwards.  Good taste, mixed results otherwise.  And finally, I got some cinnamon and vanilla sugar (which I'd never heard of before, but I couldn't find actual vanilla extract) and attempted to make something akin to cinnamon rolls.  Didn't turn out too well.  But worth the experiment.

Speaking of experiments, my laptop stand arrived and while a little wobbly, it is so far proving to be exactly what I was looking for - namely something that can replace the full big desk that I've always had to either find, or find space for.  As I may have mentioned, this also telescopes up to a height that allows me to use it as a standing desk, which might help some with my core strength and posture and so on.  So far it's still an adjustment, and I've had some jobs this past week where I felt I had to play it safe and stay in my normal desk...but it's extremely promising.

 I leave Latvia in mid May, as originally planned, but with a different destination.  I don't know whether to expect more than one post before then, and definitely can't guess how actively I'll keep this up while in Colorado.  Time will tell.  Until then, I wish you all the best, dear reader. 

Adulting is hard

 When I went to South Africa, where I knew the language barrier wouldn't be a major obstacle, I determined that I'd use the extra spoons to expand my cooking repertoire.

It didn't really work.  Sure, I discovered that mac n cheese could be made with just pasta, milk, and cheese (and anything I was adding to it, broccoli or chicken or what have you) but that recipe didn't work in Vietnam and I haven't tried it since.  I learned that you could do pasta dishes with no sauce whatsoever, just seasonings and oil, and I relied on that for a while.

But in terms of learning actual new things, that didn't happen there.  Certainly nothing foundational.

In Vietnam, I picked up a couple things - spring rolls (which I haven't tried to make on my own), expanded stir fry approaches, and fried chicken wings with fish sauce.  Also a few soups, which I've overthought for most of my life.

So now I'm in Riga and I'm trying to continue to expand.  And this has apparently begun with flatbread.  It's kind of a dream recipe really: three or four ingredients, a quick time in the frying pan, and I have a base or a side for whatever I'm doing.  Best of all, I'll be able to find flour basically anywhere I go, so it's a reliable thing (unlike rice dishes which I haven't been able to make here because rice cookers are exceedingly rare and I only have stainless steel pots that I'm afraid to cook rice in).

Today's experiment didn't exactly go to plan, but it was still educational - I was just taking some store-bought kebab chicken, sauce, and green leaf lettuce, much like this wrap I'd made a few days prior, and trying to make a pocket out of the flatbread.  The other two just became little pizza-like things with the sauce/lettuce/chicken piled on top.  It worked fine.  The biggest success today was frying them in butter instead of oil and adding some minced garlic to the pan.

I'm still learning the ratios, and spending a good 15 minutes just kneading, adding flour, kneading more, adding more flour, over and over.  The general thing I saw online was 2 parts flour, 1 part water, but that's been quite inaccurate so far.  Maybe I'm doing something else wrong.  As I continue practicing, I'll get better at the starting ratios, and the time tweaking it will drop considerably.

I've gone to a shopping center several times in the past couple weeks that's a short bus ride from where I live, and have always been struck by this rather large skate park that I only now got pictures of.  It's an impressive scale given what feels like a relatively low population density, but clearly it's a successful build for how busy it's been every time.  These were all taken on a Monday mid-day or morning, for reference.

I found this long bubble gum stick the other day.  I'm amused that the sour-o-meter that is supposedly the main marketing design takes up most of the box, but the actual dial at the bottom is still only in the middle.  This was accurate, because while the box advertises it as sour (or at least being coated with sour powder), it was barely bitter/tart to me.  Wasn't especially great bubble gum either.  Always good to try new things.

 While my goal in Gqeberha was to expand my cooking, my goal here is to redefine my workstation.  I'm rather tired of being limited only to places with adequate space for a full desk and chair setup.  I've done some experiments with my VR headset essentially serving as a replacement monitor, and those have been quite successful.  It's a little tiring on my neck and the screen clone's size is a touch too large (so that I have to turn my head to see things on the far edges), but I have strong enough muscle memory on my hands that I can type essentially at normal speed, and even use hotkeys and F-keys, without looking.  The important part is that I maintain good ergonomics in my head and neck without needing a desk that sits at a certain height.  It also nudges me to take more breaks, which I'd benefit from anyway.

The next step will be finding a way to have my keyboard and mouse accessible.  For that, I've ordered a tripod stand (not affiliated, just demonstrative), and along with some kind of shelf or board, that will enable me to work both standing and sitting without needing my laptop to be in any particular place.  The monitor will be cloned to my headset, and my keyboard and mouse will be at about the right height (adjustable).  It brings me down to only needing a chair, and even that might be negotiable since I can adjust to standing.

 The tripod is still en route, expected about a week from now.  I'll probably need at least a few weeks, possibly more, to really get used to it, so my next stay is a place that has enough room for a chair and desk just in case.  I'll update once it arrives and I have some time to figure out how it feels.

Speaking of next stay, from Riga I'll be going to Nairobi, Kenya for a couple months before returning to Gqeberha.  From there, I'll be heading to Budva, Montenegro (on the Mediterranean between Italy and Greece), then back to Hanoi in late December.  I don't recall if I've laid that out before, but there it is.

Between cooking experiments, workstation redesigns, and just general continuing to live, I feel consistently torn between pride that I'm making progress, frustration that I didn't learn any of these things before, and fatigue that is just a standard part of my life.  But this is the life I chose, out here in the world, and I'm doing my best.  That counts for a lot.

Cheers!