It's not a beautiful day today. Just as I'm writing this, it's raining cats and dogs outside. Good thing, the weather was fine yesterday because yesterday was what's known in the Chinese community as the Mid-Autumn Festival or sometimes referred to as Mooncake Festival, Lantern Festival or simply "Fifteen day of the Eighth Month".
For Taoist Chinese, food offerings are placed on an altar set up in the courtyard. Various fruits are being offered especially pomeloes. Other offerings include mooncakes, cooked taro, and water caltrope, a type of water chestnut resembling black buffalo horns. This is a fascinating item and tasty too.
Mooncakes are synonymous with the Mid-Autumn festival. The normal size of mooncakes is about three inches in diameter and one and a half inches in thickness. The filling of these cakes is usually made of melon seeds, lotus seeds, almonds, minced meats, bean paste, orange peels and lard. A golden yolk (sometimes two, three or four yolks) from a salted duck egg is placed at the center of each cake, and the golden brown crust is decorated with symbols of the festival. However, these days, they come in various shapes and sizes like the ones in the picture.
Lanterns play a part in this festival thus this festival is also known as the Lantern Festival. I remember having a dragon lantern those days among others. Strange that I only remember this lantern. Probably because it was big and unusual and pretty too.
For the family, it is a time for relaxation - adults gather and chat over drinks and mooncakes watching children playing with lanterns all under the round silvery moon.
Hope your Mid-Autumn Festival was enjoyable.
I never really realized that the Japanese celebrate it, too. It's a very low-key event, but it is recognized. Last night my wife and her mother set up a sort of altar in a doorway from which we could see the moon and put pounded rice dumplings and flowers on it. They said it was for "tsukimi" (月見), which literally means "viewing the moon".
ReplyDeleteThe funny thing is that I don't remember their ever doing it before...
Such pretty mooncakes. Must taste good too ..... ;)
ReplyDeleteThe moon cakes interesting shapes. But the first one probably has too much yoke.
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