Projects for TheBSide

View from the office

I am one of those people who collects ideas and stories all the time.  I used to file away things like pictures, articles, and recipes that made me think of things I wanted to write about, things I wanted to do, or things I wanted to make.  Sadly those files usually just got fatter and fatter until I would be forced to toss them all out.  With the advent of things like Diigo and Evernote, the process got even easier.  And a bit neater.  Even those the ideas existed in the cloud, they just piled up on me.

I've been collecting the digital equivalent for a while, only rarely getting around to doing things with them.  I have about 10 unwritten draft posts or photos at any given time just waiting for me to have the time to think about them enough to properly write something.  Inevitably I look at one of them and can't even remember what I initially found so interesting.  Deleting is easier than filling recycling bins, but I still always end up feeling guilty for some reason.  Like the time I took to assess student work, read a book, or watch a show was somehow unproductive, like I should have been using that time to do or make something brand new.

Since moving to Vancouver and taking a break from full time teaching, I am, step-by-step, starting to do some of those things that have been gathering digital dust in my Evernote and Diigo files.  With a week and a day on TheBSide, I have done two little things that have been kicking around in the back of my head for years.

First on the list was roasting/drying chile peppers.  One of my biggest fears about this year is being able to afford chile peppers.  My wife and I love our chiles in multiple forms - in fish sauce, dried and roasted, crushed, in oil, and, of course, fresh.  On our first visit to a market here, we found a giant package of fresh chiles for ONE CANADIAN DOLLAR.  Now, this was a great deal, but I have no idea if, in the depths of wet Vancouver winters, those same chiles will be TEN dollars.  Or even if we'll be able to find them at all.

I brought the chiles home, shook out a couple of cups worth, sliced them down the middle and roasted them.  Since then, I have used them to make chile oil and to make an incredible chile paste in the mortar and pestle.  I know, I know, this is a boring story, but I haven't had time to do things like this in forever.

The second project was yoghurt.  I always knew, somewhere in my head, that anyone could make their own yoghurt, but I was never really clear on how.  Last year, a friend in Thailand taught me how he learned to make it growing up on a moshav in Israel.  I filed the idea away in my head as something to do and never had the time to do it myself.  Last night, I spent about 45 minutes preparing it and this morning, voilá, I have my own yoghurt.

This move to Vancouver, to TheBSide, is full of opportunities and that's how I plan to use it.  In case you were wondering, I have no plan to make it about self-indulgence and foodie-ism.  These are just the first little forays.  We have been here a week and two days and figure we have about two to three more weeks before we are fully settled.  Our shipment will arrive, our place will be painted, and we won't have to figure out where to put everything.

That is when the fun really begins.  That is when the creative, professional work that we have only been able to dabble in comes.  The prospect of creating something new in education while working with someone creative and passionate about ideas is the real purpose of this year.

Sure, I'm planning on learning to tie knots and identify different trees species, but this is the dream.  Even if it only lasts a year, it's a dream come true.