Miami, The Morning After

There's the lovely Ariella -- finally! Next time we all get together I will need to be more mindful of who my camera is missing. Here we have, from left to right, Ariella, Liana, me, Andres, Wynne, Hans and Sabrina. We were enjoying the beach at our hotel one last time before a casual dinner at Pizza Rustica on Lincoln Road. Then the girls were off to one last late night party before going back to school the next morning (ahhh, youth!) and we were off to our room to get a few hours of shut-eye before the LONG drive home the next day.

In between the New Year's Eve party and this last photo there were a couple of busy extended-family oriented days which I failed, inadvertently, to document in photos, as my focus was divided amongst many people with whom I wanted to catch up. Others were taking photos, so I don't know why I didn't remember to.

On New Years day we had moved out of the girls' home and into our hotel, and Andres' brother, Max, his wife Lisa and son, Eric, moved in for a night. The next day we all gathered together on Lincoln Road along with Andres' and Max's other brother, Sol, and his fiance, Heather, who I was meeting for the first time. Heather got a lot of good photos of the whole gang, fifteen of us total. My favorite photo was of all the siblings, three brothers and three sisters. It had been a very long time since they had all been together, eight years ago, I believe, when we had all gathered in Nicaragua to lay their father to rest. It's shocking how quickly the years pass as we live with a bit of tunnel vision, focused on our respective little worlds. It's a good idea to poke one's head up out of the tunnel from time to time to notice what is going on with the rest of the world, and with those who are near and dear to our hearts, despite being geographically dispersed.

On the road again, I longed for my vegan airport pecans, indeed for vegan anything. All fast food restaurants officially have cheese on every salad now (what happened to the oriental chicken salad, Wendy's?) I had high hopes for McDonald's fruit and nut salad, but the yogurt dip was not quite separate from the good stuff, and the fruit was actually not quite good stuff -- mushy and squishy -- probably full of some kind of botulism, as my system was not quite right for a couple of days afterward.  Starving and sitting perfectly still for 13 hours (yeah, I know, it shouldn't have taken so long -- a horrible accident had 75 shut down for two hours) took a bit of a toll on me, so I am fixing myself with food like this:

This smoothie contains a couple of raw  collard leaves, an apple, a splash of apple cider and a small splash of almond milk. It was fine, not my favorite flavor-wise, but that wasn't the point of it.

This is Sweet Curried Collards from "Plate+Simple", Rustic White Beans and Mushrooms from Veganomicon and brown rice.  This was all delicious, and just what this vegan body was craving!

Miami was a fabulous chapter for all of us, and we will miss it and our wonderful family members. Now it's time to embrace routine, balance and good health.