One of our family's very favorite Japanese recipes is an adaptation of Tonkatsu (pork cutlets), which we make with Chicken. I first had these while I was living in Japan, and after that, had them several times a week!

It is a very easy recipe, and is so very tasty!

If you only have time for one small-town festival this summer and you want it to be filled with enough silliness to make you forget all the serious stuff going on in your life, consider the Annual "Cheeseburger in Caseville"  Festival. It is too big for a weekend and runs every year in August. As you reach the city limits, you’ll be greeted by more pink flamingos than flock anywhere else north of Miami as the small beach town of Caseville morphs into Key North.

Vacation. What a wonderful thing. Family. What a blessing. Vacationing with family? It should be wonderful blessing. It’s a time to relax with your loves ones. So why am I suddenly thinking I don’t want to vacation with them? 

Everyone on the boat – Check. Enough life jackets – After a minor delay, Check. Gas – Check. Already completed half the trip – Check.

Recently, articles have been popping up about whether you should vacation with your extended family, and the answer is a big, fat YES! Whether your family is close and already does it, or you barely know your cousins and think of them as strangers. You should vacation with your extended family, because something special happens when you do.

During college, I worked for a year at an international exchange company in Japan. I was lucky enough to live with host families, and learned about Japanese culture – and myself.

A friend once mocked me with the caustic observation that: “We’re going to rename you Paciencia [patience].” The friend, my husband and I had returned to Seville after an afternoon in the countryside to find that the radiator in the car we had borrowed from my in-laws was hemorrhaging coolant.

Sevillanos love tradition. Most are dedicated to keeping their beloved city as it always has been. Nevertheless, despite the tenacity of Sevillanos in retaining their traditions, even Sevilla, like all cultures and the places that embody them, is changing. In one of those amazing contradictions that I continually discover here, it is in the celebration of two very traditional holidays that this change is most apparent: Christmas and Three Kings’ Day.