Courage (Florida, Here I Go)

“Courage, it would seem, is nothing less than the power to overcome danger, misfortune, fear, injustice, while continuing to affirm inwardly that life with all its sorrows is good; that everything is meaningful even if in a sense beyond our understanding; and that there is always tomorrow.”

This Dorothy Thompson quote summarizes the way I feel while embracing a new journey that will take us from sunny Southern California to sunny South Florida.

Yes, we are moving and during the last couple of weeks I have been packing and packing and packing. My kitchen is already in U-Haul boxes. I miss my knives, my Kitchen Aid mixer and food processor, my Peugeot pepper grinder and my kitchen towels, perfectly ironed and folded…

Hopefully, you won’t miss my recipes because I have a bunch of photos and my plan is to keep posting at least once a week during these next 25 days to go! I just need time to sit down and blog (believe it or not, I still sit everyday and do my job as a writer in this jungle of cardboard boxes that my house has been transformed.)

I can’t wait to be there, meeting with all my friends who made the Great Miami area home. I’m devoting at least two hours a day on the phone just networking and the feedback and the feeling of being so welcome is just a-ma-zing!

Look at today’s beautiful pictures: I just told my friend journalist and photographer Lyng-Hou Ramírez that I needed some photos to illustrate this post and she generously let me choose all these wonders from her Flickr photostream.

I called Vanessa Guillén-Drija, also a journalist dedicated to capture the beauty in the simplest things with her camera, and she sent me a “glorious” portfolio (as my son Tomás called it), for me to have choices.

Andrés Ignacio (10) and Tomás Eugenio (8) dream about seeing NBA Miami Heat play. I see myself going to the Marlins Park to see the Miami Marlins, whose manager is Venezuelan former big leaguer Ozzie Guillén who in 2005, while managing the Chicago White Sox, became the first Latino manager in major league history to win a World Series.

We already have reservations to travel from Miami to Orlando with my girlfriend Gisela for our kids’ summer vacation and I must confess: I can’t wait for us to have the time of our lives!

From a more personal perspective, as a foodie, food writer and photographer, I’m excited about the colors, the light, the Atlantic and being so close to the beach, the new ingredients, the food and the places to go and eat. I will start a modest herb garden in terracotta planters and since initially I won’t have a kitchen garden, my plan is to be a farmers market explorer and shopper, so I keep myself as the locavore I became during these five past wonderful years in Southern California.

Can you believe I’m already dreaming about all the things I’m  going to cook and write in Florida? Can you imagine the mojitos and all the tropical Ron de Venezuela cocktails that I’m going to mix? Life is beautiful and, as Thompson said, “there is always tomorrow,” and I’m sure there is a bright future for us down there!

To see Lyng-Hou Ramírez Flickr photostream click here.

To see Vanessa Guillén-Drija portfolio visit www.vdimages.com

To listen to the music I listened while writing this post, click here.