On the banks of Mali's Niger River, Soumana Natomo and his family gather for a communal dinner of millet porridge with tamarind juice.

In the USA, the Ronayne-Caven family enjoys corndogs-on-a-stick with a tossed green salad.

This age-old practice of sitting down to a family meal is undergoing unprecedented change as rising world affluence and trade, along with the spread of global food conglomerates, transform diets worldwide.

Las Vegas was inundated with couples on July 7, 2007, deemed an auspicious day for marital vows.

Little White Wedding Chapel in Las Vegas is known around the world as one of the most Famous places to be married.

Little White Wedding Chapel is the place that many of the Stars choose ... Many generations of the same family from grandparents to the present generation have chosen the Little White Wedding Chapel as their place to be married, or have their vows renewed.

Most traditions have a recognizable cuisine, a specific set of cooking traditions, preferences, and practices, the study of which is known as gastronomy.

Many cultures have diversified their foods by means of preparation, cooking methods and manufacturing. This also includes a complex food trade which helps the cultures to economically survive by-way-of food, not just by consumption.

What's on family dinner tables in fifteen different homes around the globe?

Kaiseki originally meant Onjaku, a rock or a konnyaku heated by an open fire that was wrapped by clothes to warm oneself.

Dishes are beautifully arranged and garnished, often with real leaves and flowers, as well as edible garnishes designed to resemble natural plants and animals.

Growing out of the small dishes served during traditional Japanese tea ceremonies, a kaiseki meal is the highest form of Japanese culinary art.

Chef Yoshihiro Murata is rare among kaiseki's practitioners, Murata has become a Japanese food evangelist. He has appeared on countless Japanese TV shows, has written 15 books (one of which, Kaiseki, the Exquisite Cuisine of Kyoto's Kikunoi Restaurant, has just come out in English) and is chairman of the Japanese Culinary Academy.

Murata may embrace traditional ways, but when it comes to spreading the kaiseki gospel, he is breaking all the rules.

In the intense, 25-chef kitchen at Kikunoi in Kyoto, Japan, the art of kaiseki is a culinary skill and a way of life.

Galicia is a nationality in Spain that became a Spanish autonomous community in 1978. The name Galicia comes from the Latin name Gallaecia, associated with the name of the ancient Celtic tribe that resided above the Douro river.

It is located in the northwest of Iberian Peninsula. It shares borders with Portugal to the South and the communities of Castile and León and Asturias to the East.

A vanishing way of life. Carmen Iglesias de Filgueiras, 95, in her the living room of her farmhouse, in Vilar, Galicia, where she was born.

Espresso was developed in Milan, Italy in the early 20th century, but up until the mid-1940s it was a beverage produced solely with steam pressure.

The invention of the spring piston lever machine and its subsequent commercial success changed espresso into the beverage we know today.

Restaurant-times spends a day in one of Rome's famous and fabulous coffee bars, and discovers why Starbucks struggle to gain a foothold in the land of the barista.

Fusion pioneer Jean-Georges Vongerichten never stops testing culinary boundaries.

He opened his most famous restaurant, Jean-Georges, in Trump Tower at Columbus Circle in New York City in 1998 and has in recent years opened a series of other restaurants around Manhattan, Shanghai and elsewhere.

Jean-Georges remains one of the few restaurants in the city awarded four stars by the New York Times and three stars by the Michelin Guide.