By Chris Kridler

Now, when tourists think of Florida, they tend to think of the Mouse. But there was a time when they thought of oranges, Southern belles and pretty girls on water skis at Cypress Gardens.

The Winter Haven attraction, now closed as it becomes Legoland Florida, was the brainchild of Dick Pope, a real-estate guy, daredevil water sportsman and marketing genius.

“I think he did sell that image of Florida as a sunny, kind of beautiful place,” says Lu Vickers, author of “Cypress Gardens, America’s Tropical Wonderland: How Dick Pope Invented Florida.” Read the full story

Feliz Navidad. Joyeux Noel. Buon Natale. Frohe Weihnachten.

How many ways can you say merry Christmas?

At Disney’s Epcot center, performers in the World Showcase are not only telling you how to pronounce the end-of-year holidays in each of the park’s featured countries, they’re giving you a bit of a back story.

Held daily through Dec. 30, Holidays Around The World allows visitors to share in the cultural celebrations of Mexico, Norway, China, Germany, Italy, Morocco, Japan, France, Canada, the United Kingdom and the United States. Read the full story

As Loretta Lynn rushes from interview to interview, promoting a new tribute album and concert tour on her 50th anniversary as a country recording artist, she says she always felt confident this coal miner’s daughter would make it to the big time.

“I figured I would, because I was working for it,” says Lynn, 76, who’s had 16 No. 1 hits and will perform at the King Center in Melbourne on Sunday. “I worked hard.”

Last week, the Country Music Association honored her at its awards ceremony, when Sheryl Crow and Miranda Lambert sang “Coal Miner’s Daughter” with her, reprising their title recording from the new album.

Lynn has good things to say about Crow, Lambert and Gretchen Wilson, who performs her hit “Don’t Come Home A-Drinkin’ (With Lovin’ On Your Mind)” on the album. “We spent the day together doing the video. We had a good time,” she says.

But she’s hard-pressed to name other country singers who follow in her tradition.

“There’s not a lot of country artists singing right now, is there?” she points out. She says she was never a crossover artist, and when asked what the theme would be for her next album, she says with a laugh, “Country. I’m country.”

“Honey, I’ve cut so many,” she adds of the songs she’s recorded recently. “I think there’s 50-some that I’ve cut in the last couple of months or so.”

She told reporters at the CMA Awards she’s already recorded tracks for a religious album and a Christmas album.

For the tribute album, The White Stripes also recorded one of her hits, “Rated X.” The duo’s Jack White, a fan since he saw the film adaptation of her autobiography, “Coal Miner’s Daughter,” when he was a kid, produced her 2004 album “Van Lear Rose.” It earned the 2005 Grammy for best country album, and this year, she won the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award.

“I think it’s one of the countriest records I’ve ever done,” Lynn says of “Van Lear Rose,” with its sometimes simple, sometimes rocking arrangements of songs she wrote or co-wrote. In a TV interview, White summed up the sound: “real.”

“It was great,” Lynn says of the experience. “Jack White is a good guy. He really is a good guy.”

Amid recording more than 50 studio albums and touring almost constantly, she’s somehow even had time to write cookbooks.

“With all the kids that I’ve had, yeah, I had to be big into cooking, or they’d have starved,” she says. ” ‘Cause the housekeeper I had couldn’t cook worth a nothing when I first got her, so I had to teach her how to cook.”

Lynn, who grew up in Butcher Hollow, Ky., and was married with four children (twins came later) before she started performing, is still delivering her strong woman’s point of view in such classic hits as “One’s On the Way,” “The Pill” and “You Ain’t Woman Enough To Take My Man.”

“I’ve always done it,” she says, “and I ain’t figuring on changin’ now.”

Phil Simpson looks into the heart of horror and sees ourselves.

The provost and dean of faculty at Brevard Community College in Cocoa is an avid horror fan and the author of “Psycho Paths: Tracking the Serial Killer Through Contemporary American Film and Fiction” and, most recently, “Making Murder: The Fiction of Thomas Harris.”

Harris wrote “Red Dragon,” “The Silence of the Lambs” and the “Hannibal” novels, which starred serial killer Hannibal Lecter and inspired blockbuster movies. Simpson says Harris’ tales have something in common with other horror stories: a monster. Read the full story

By MEGAN K. SCOTT

Susie Fricker loves to eat squash in the fall. She purees butternut squash for soup. She uses a can of pumpkin for muffins.

She has even cut up a pumpkin and used it in a casserole. It was labor-intensive but worth it, she said.

“To me, it just represents this time of year, the harvest,” said Fricker, 49, of Cocoa Beach, a cooking instructor for The Cancer Project, of her love for squash. “Because we don’t really have fall in Florida, it reminds me of it.”

Taking a trip down the produce aisle of any grocery store can be confusing, especially when it comes to squash. Besides the obvious pumpkin, zucchini and yellow squash, there’s hubbard, kabocha, ghetti, calabaza and buttercup.

Squash is one of those vegetables that people look at and then walk on by, said Chef Deborah Lindsay, a culinary instructor at Keiser University Melbourne.
Read the full story

By Dave Berman

For Rockledge High senior Annie Rein, being an intern on the set of “Transformers 3″ was like being in Wonderland.

Rein helped Mandi Dillin, a “Transformers 3″ locations manager, as the crew filmed scenes at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station on Friday, the first day of Brevard County shooting for the sci-fi action movie. Filming is scheduled to continue through this week at Kennedy Space Center.

A number of local residents, mostly employees of Kennedy Space Center and its contractors, as well as military personnel, were hired as extras for the local shooting. About 60 were on the set last week. Read the full story

Mexican cheese usually gets little press, but it’s a vital ingredient of any good South-of-the-Border recipe.

Cacique, or “Chief” in Spanish, is a line of upscale Mexican cheeses that carries the blessing of Food Network Chef Aaron Sanchez.

You can find them at Publix, Winn-Dixie and Walmart, particularly if some of your neighbors are Latinos. Of course, if your closest grocery doesn’t stock it, you can always ask the manager to find you some of these Los Angeles-made cheeses. Read the full story

BY CHRIS KRIDLER

There’s a lot to look at, sniff and taste at the Florida Restaurant and Lodging Show, which ended Tuesday in Orlando.

Candymakers in one booth dip marshmallows and pretzels in chocolate and sprinkles and Reese’s Pieces. Booths serve tastes of fish, wings and pizza. Experts share strategies in seminars, while student chefs whip up dishes, and a table of dazzling desserts is dominated by a towering dragon.

Vendors hawk gleaming fridges, taco holders, fancy plates, Stable Table levelers, and a blinking faux wine bottle called Au Garcon that diners can use to summon a server. Read the full story

BY CHRIS KRIDLER

Nicholas Sparks has a passionate following, almost as passionate as the love-struck characters in his books.

The 16th of his novels, “Safe Haven,” follows a raft of best sellers, many of which have been made into films — including “Dear John,” “Message in a Bottle,” “Nights in Rodanthe” and his first published novel, “The Notebook,” which received a stunning $1 million advance in 1995.

Fans can look deeply into his eyes when he comes to Vero Beach Book Center at 2 p.m. Sunday, but only briefly. While his book tour for “The Notebook” was Warner Books’ longest, these days they are shorter, with bigger crowds. Read the full story

By MEGAN K. SCOTT

Like most moms, Monica Schumacher’s mornings are a bit busy; she has less than an hour to get herself and her daughter out the door. So breakfast for her 6-year-old has to be simple: frozen waffles or pancakes, a yogurt and fruit, some instant cream of wheat. She herself grabs a granola bar and a banana on her way to the car.

“You are always feeling rushed as a mom,” said Schumacher of Rockledge, a third-grade teacher at Tropical Elementary on Merritt Island. With her husband’s help, she pulls out of the drive with her daughter in tow at 6:50 a.m. “You always feel like you are on the go.”

We’ve all been told breakfast is the most important meal of the day, what we need after a night of fasting to get us going in the morning. An ongoing study of people who have maintained weight loss of at least 30 pounds for more than a year (National Weight Control Registry) shows eating breakfast helps control weight. Breakfast eaters tend to consume fewer calories and less saturated fat and cholesterol than skippers. Read the full story