Have you noticed the brightly coloured tins appearing in Asian grocery stores?
The Mid-Autumn Moon Festival falls on October 3 this year, a time for families to come together and eat mooncakes and pomelos, beneath the bright and full mid-autumn moon.
The packaging and flavours of mooncakes continues to evolve each year. These fancy mooncake gift boxes are probably the most impressive I've seen - the one on the left has drawers which are secured by the chopstick at the front. Perfect for re-using as a jewellery box!
Image by Hei Yue Thong
Grab Your Fork recently received some sample boxes of o-mochi mooncakes by Hei Yue Thong, presented in beautifully decorated packaging.
Sonata Combo Bento gift box
The Sonata Combo: white lotus 2 yolk,
green tea with milk, mixed nut and chestnut o-mochi
Autumn Romance 4A Butterfly pattern
Autumn Romance 4A: green tea o-mochi,
chocolate o-mochi, pandan o-mochi and chestnut o-mochi
What is an o-mochi mooncake?
Chestnut o-mochi, chocolate o-mochi and green tea o-mochi mooncakes
Chestnut, green tea tea and chocolate mooncakes with mochi
Instead of the traditional salted egg yolk, o-mochi mooncakes have a chewy ball of pounded rice cake--or mochi--in the middle. The unusual flavours provide a new twist on an old favourite, although the thin baked skin of the traditional mooncake remains the same.
The chocolate mooncake has an almost fudgy texture and the flavour of the green tea mooncake isn't too overwhelming. Chestnut was a favourite with everyone with its fragrance and delicate nutty flavour.
Curious to try some yourself? Thanks to Australian distributors Amyson, we have
Prize giveaway for Grab Your Fork readers
THE PRIZE:
1 x box of Autumn Romance o-mochi mooncakes (valued at about AU$30)
Due to an overwhelming response, there are
HOW TO ENTER:
All you have to do is,
- Add a comment to this post with your answer to the question: "What's your favourite thing about Autumn (or the mid-Autumn Moon Festival)?"
- Send an email to grabyourforkmooncakecomp@yahoo.com.au with your full name and a copy of your posted comment to the question above.
COMPETITION CONDITIONS:
- This competition is open to entrants with an address in Sydney or Melbourne only.
- Competition closes on Wednesday 23 September 2009 at 5.00pm AEST. Winners will be announced on Friday 25 September 2009.
- The winners will be drawn randomly.
THE WINNERS have been announced here.
Mooncakes are a bit like Easter eggs now, you see them weeks before the actual day.
ReplyDeleteVery interesting! Pig Flyin' hates fully cooked egg yolks and happens to love mochi, what a good alternative. His fav is five-nuts cake, only old people eat that :p
Hi Helen, My favourite part of the Mooncake Festival is the day after the actual festival when all mooncakes go for half price! Seriously though; I do love the myths/legends that go with the historical significance of the festival, ie how the Han Chinese smuggled their secret messages within the cakes to each other to synchronize themselves for rebelling against the Mongolian invaders and also the boiled baby yams to resemble the heads of the Mongols et cetera.
ReplyDeleteGobsmack'd
Best part about Mid-Autumn Festival is being with families and friends enjoying wonderful mooncakes. Lanterns and candles brightly lit and folks tales are shared. ^B.L.I.S.S^
ReplyDeletemy favourite bit about mid-autumn festival is meeting up with friends and families and have wonderful dinner + mooncakesssss!!! as a tradition of my mum's family, we always have a dish - taro paste!! its super yummy! what's better than sitting around with friends and families with lots of food and mooncakes surrounding us? :D
ReplyDeleteMy favourite part of the mid autumn festival is that it is yet another time when I have been welcomed into the homes of friends and made to feel part of the family, another great example of how sharing culture enriches the lives of those around you.
ReplyDeleteThe best part about the autumn festival is where the family gathers again to feast at dinner and to savour the lovely mooncakes that only make their appearances once a year.
ReplyDeletemy fav bit of the festival are the mooncakes themselves!!
ReplyDeleteFavourite thing about the Autumn Moon Festival? Getting together with family, mooncakes, festivities and lanterns!
ReplyDeleteMy fave thing about the Autumn moon festival is thinking back to my childhood and me savouring those mooncakes; having them cut into 8ths and taking a tiny piece each time (over several days), and hearing the legend as told to me by my mother.
ReplyDeleteAlways a good excuse to bring female friend out to see something different and the mooncakes arent bad either!! :P
ReplyDeleteSydneyguyrojoe
The best part about mid-autumn festival is the lanterns that i used to play as a kid, not the paper ones, but the ones of anime characters from sailor moon, dragon ball z etc..
ReplyDeletewhen i was five, growing up in malaysia, i took the initiative of inviting my entire kindy class to my house for a lantern parade around the neighbourhood. i failed to let my mother know of the planned festivities until about 10 minutes before everyone was to arrive, but she took it very well. amazing, isn't it, how little children were allowed to carry flimsy and flammable cellophane paper lanterns with small fires burning inside them? every so often a candle would topple, and the paper would ignite. so brightly it burned, and so very quickly! in seconds, a colourful bunny or goldfish shriveled up into a charred, black wraith. these days, the kids carry sturdy plastic lanterns, glowing with the light from a tiny bulb. the battery hidden in the lantern's handle can also make it twirl, or sing an irritating electronic tune. progress!
ReplyDeletei much prefer keeping up with developments in mooncake technology. every year my mum lets me know of the brave new varieties unleashed by the chefs at fancy hotels and bakeries in singapore. crystal skin, snow skin, durian chocolate, lotus custard, champagne truffle... alas, i have never had the pleasure of eating any of these.
the most out-there one i've had was surely the beguiling candied roast duck mooncake i found in emperor's garden a few years ago. the traditional brown, cakey skin concealed a sweet, crunchy filling of duck skin, all brown and glistening with honey, sesame seeds and duck fat. now *this* is the stuff memories are made of. i'm willing to bet though, that the o-mochi ones are probably better. ;)
Like most people, the best part about mid-autumn festival is the opportunity to have family together celebrating the festival over a nice home cooked dinner by my dad (who is a retired chef) and then eat mooncakes that are home made by other relatives! As a child, i love listening to the myths behind why we eat mooncake, and even more recently, I was discussing with my boyfriend why in Australia, it is still called the mid-autumn festival when we are well into spring! He explained to me the fact that farmers harvest their crops in the northern hemisphere during mid-autumn because the moonlight was so bring. Stories like this make moonlight festival so much more meaningful....
ReplyDeletethe most thing i enjoy for the mooncake festival as a chinese, is the chances for the whole family members get together and have a reunion. drinking the tea and eating the mooncake, enjoying the full mooon is like the best part came along with the reunion.. and espcially the part where we get to have the tanglung lighting, walking all over the street, singing the mid-autumn festival song.. this is one of the best childhood memory~
ReplyDeleteI haven't had a proper mooncake festival for AGES but back in the childhood days in Singapore we used to eat tons of mooncakes, play with lanterns (both electronic musical ones and traditional candle lit ones) and sparklers! My grandaunt also made her own mooncakes with "snow skin" (similar to mochi skin) and old school skin moulds and those were my favourite :D I think there are some snowskin ones available here in Sydney but they're plentiful in Singapore.
ReplyDeleteGuessing Lantern riddles!
ReplyDeleteHere's one:
When small, it walks on four legs.
When grown, it walks on two legs.
When old, it walks on three legs.
When I was little, aimlessly wandering around with paper lanterns around our backyard like it was a new adventure. Now I teach my younger cousins how to ceremoniously set fire to them accidentally! Love getting drunk on incense fumes in packed temples, and family dinners drinking tea and sharing mooncake.
ReplyDeleteMy favourite part of the festival is an activity we used to do in my childhood. We would have a picnic down at Clovelly and set tiny candles alight on paper boats. I personally liked setting the whole boat on fire :P
ReplyDeleteMy favourite part of the mid-Autumn Moon Festival was going to the festivals at Bankstown or Cabramatta and choosing a lantern to buy and carry around. I'd get bored of them by the end of the day, but they were fun while I had them :)
ReplyDeletemy favourite thing about Autumn Moon Festival is just the celebration of having family and friends together! its always a great feeling!
ReplyDeleteAlso gathering around to eat the mooncakes themselves is also my favourite thing.
The best thing about autumn is kicking piles of fallen leaves!
ReplyDeleteI love the whole festival is focused on gathering the family, spending time together. I have fond memories of:
ReplyDelete-playing with paper, candle lanterns with my cousin
-lighting up plastic sailormoon lanterns (not as fun as the paper, fire lite ones though)
-get a mooncake tin and watch, light and melt candle wax (it's the only time we as kids could "play with fire")
- carefully slicing up a mooncake grandma and grandmother gives us (as a family) into 8 and slowly savouring it over the next few days/week (my fav is white lotus 2 yolk).
-being with the extended family for dinner, then walk down the street to watch the "dancing dragon" parade in Tai Hang, Hong Kong, where the community parades with a incense lite up dragon to celebrate the ceasing of a horrible plaque in the area.
Now, my favourite thing is to share this "delicacy" with friends who is foreign to this practice.
I've never tried O-Mochi mooncakes before - how are they like?
My daughter loves Mooncakes. Her suppliers would come in to the office where she used to work and bring them as gifts. Nobody else liked them so guess who got them all.
ReplyDeleteMooncakes.
ReplyDeleteMy favourite thing about Autumn Moon Festival is that it allows those of us from non-Asian backgrounds to learn and experience some fun that isn't available to those of us who grew up in the country! It can be a bit daunting to go to Cabramatta with no idea of what is going on or what to try but it is a great experience. :)
ReplyDeleteI love the boxes - they're definitely worth reusing. The patterns on the cakes are good too.
ReplyDeleteWhat kind of foodie would I be if I didn't say the mooncakes themselves? Nom nom nom!
ReplyDeleteHi Helen
ReplyDeleteTo me, the best part about Mid-Autumn Festival is of course, trying out all sorts of mooncakes which shops have on offer. I still love the plain lotus paste one the best though (: Also being able to enjoy a lovely dinner with the whole family.
When I was young, my favourite thing about mid-Autumn festival was lighting and melting candles in mooncake tins on the driveway after our yearly family dinner, figuring out all the fun things we could do with matches and melted wax.
ReplyDeleteNow, it's basking in the warmth of the early spring night, talking and laughing with my family over mooncake and tea. Although if someone busted out the candles...
back home the chinese locals/we'd play a game w/ family (game of dice too long to explain the rules lol) the luckiest dice would get the biggest mooncake they also say its lucky to be the winner. hehe.. :D
ReplyDeletethis is a really important day as it marks my parent's wedding anniverary. They got married on this day as it represents that their family is as round as the moon. -wenqi
ReplyDeleteWhat a fantastic re-invention of the traditional mooncake! I wonder if mochi mooncakes have less calories than the traditional lard-laden egg yolky version - never mind, they look delicious and the packaging is worth the purchase itself.
ReplyDeleteMy best memories of the moon cake festival is of the latterns and lattern parade in the housing estate back in Msia when we were young. Also making our own latterns with colored glass paper, wires and making moulds from "Milo" tin.
ReplyDeleteAnd of course playing with fire and candles. Other than fire crackers during CNY which was later banned, the other chance to "play wih fire" is only on mooncake festival.
BC
the best thing about the moon festival will definitely have to be the mooncakes! i know it's packed with lots of fat, sugar and it's a heart-clogging delicacies. but it's so delicious that i can never pass one. like EVER! my sisters and i had like 8 mooncakes to share between the 3 of us last year and we are yet to break the record this year. lol
ReplyDeletebtw, i saw a giant mooncake with eight yolks at chinatown. i am considering if i should get it. rofl :)
what beautiful mooncakes! I've never tried ones with a mochi middle..I didn't even know they make them with mochi filling!
ReplyDeleteThe packaging is beautiful! I've never had moonakes with mochi filling before, interesting.
ReplyDeletethe best part is eating mooncakes of course (: its got to be the mooncake festival for a reason hahaha
ReplyDeleteMy favourite thing in the mid-autumn festival is the delicious lotus mooncakes, the gathering of extended family and the festivities like the lanterns at night time.
ReplyDeleteMy favourite thing about the mid-Autumn Moon Festival would be the chance to sample delectable green 'snow-skin' mooncakes. Since no one else in my family likes the 'snow-skin' ones, I had all of them to myself! *grinz*
ReplyDeleteThe best part about Autumn moon featival is learning and tasting a little more Chinese culture. Hen hao
ReplyDeleteThe best would be spending time with my family at the front yard, while adults drink tea and eat mooncakes and chat. The kids (including me) would light up the paper latterns and hang it on the fence every metre. From memory as a kid, I always thought it made the house look so nice with everything lit up! And of course, stomping on the lanterns once they caught on fire ;)
ReplyDeleteMid-Autumn Moon Festival..from what I remember as a child, we used to go out to the park
ReplyDeleteto light the lanterns and hang them up on trees. After that, the family would cut the mooncakes and enjoy the fullmoon night.
My favourite thing about mid-Autumn Moon Festival…
ReplyDeleteI used to think it was the lanterns, candles and enjoying chinese tea with the mooncakes. My sister and I used to decorate our gates and garden with lighted candles. The next morning, we will get a great scolding from granny for leaving the candles wax everywhere!
This mid-Autumn Moon Festival is the first year we will be celebrating without our beloved granny. The day does not seem so special and exciting anymore. It made me realise that my favourite thing about the Festival is spending time with my family. How I wish I am able to enjoy one more special night with my granny again…
My favourite Autumn Moon festival moment is eating mooncakes with the entire family!
ReplyDeleteeating the many ex & free mooncakes (wif egg yolks of cuzzzz!!!!) my dad brings home given by suppliers! =) together with the gathering of the family and lighting up lanterns! sometimes we would even light up firecrackers! and play around the garden...
ReplyDeletei would always rmb the one time wen i was visiting my gpa's house in m'sia when me+my cousin huddled up in the corner of the roof and tried to lit up our paper lanterns! but due to the strong winds as we were by the sea... O_O our candles kept extinguishing and worse, our lanterns kept catching fire!!!
sooo both of us... 7 & 15... we left wif no more lanterns to play and we headed downstairs gloomily...
love the boxes! they are so pretty.
ReplyDeletefav part? hm...definitely the big feast with family. pretty much like chinese new year, less the red pocket but hurrah for the mooncake goodness!!! =D
The best thing about the mid-autumn festival is the brightness of the moon and the nostalgia it bestows. I realise the full moon shows itself pretty much every month- haha- but in mid autumn it is at its roundest, biggest, and brightest. It brings back many fond memories of food-centric family dinners and celebrations under the stars. As a child I've always found that aspect of the mid-autumn festival to be quite magical, and as an adult the ability to retain that sense of wonder is something which has real meaning to me.
ReplyDeleteMy favourite thing about the Mid-Autumn Festival is having a delicious meal with the family. Everyone makes time for mooncakes and takes part in the lantern-carrying, even the adults!
ReplyDeleteOooo... they are pretty boxes.. I'm so going to look out for these to give. My boyfriend is italian and last year I gave them the "moon cakes" that are shaped into pigs?? Not to sure what they are actually called though... His dad is very old fashion and doesn't like trying new things but when I got him to try it he didn't mind it at all and quite enjoyed it!
ReplyDeleteMy favourite thing about Moon Festival was going to the festival at Cabramatta and mucking around with friends. This was when I was a teenager and had no care in the world.. Now, it's all about the food!
My Favorite thing about atutumn is the wonderful colors all around and the good food :)
ReplyDeleteI can't meet up with my family for mid autumn festival being an international student, but my favorite part is introducing my friends to moon cake and getting them to join me in the celebration.
ReplyDeleteFavourite memory is playing mah-jong with my grandmothers and mother. Three generations of women, together enjoying the festivities. Grandmother (in her 90s) taking me to the cleaners.
ReplyDeleteEvery year I have the same little tradition around the time of the Autumn festival; being the white girl trying to buy mooncakes. I love the look of confusion on the faces of the sellers and their consternation as I pick up the boxes and read the ingredients. Will she understand, does she know there's *gasp* preserved egg in the cake? Eventually they seem to decide I must have a Chinese partner as I walk away with quality cakes in a variety of styles and occasionally get comment that I "choose like a Chinese mother" which always makes me laugh. Eventually when the cakes are all gone I love using the boxes for storage, all my stationery at work is stored in Kee Wah tins.
ReplyDeleteAs for our actual Autumn, coming from Queensland the turning of the leaves still fascinates me... it never gets cold enough up north for it to happen. I would love to get to Japan in Autumn instead of Spring to see the maples in Kyoto.
---
BTW having big problems with your OpenID log in, so had to post old fashioned style.
Hello!
ReplyDeleteMy favourite part without a doubt is the myths and legends. I'm a sucker for a good story. Even better with tea and mooncakes! The culture is so facinating. The food is divine. Close to the best holiday of the year I think!
I'd love to try the chestnut ones - but what does the packaging look like for those - pic please so I can print it and take it to my local chinese place...as a non chinese speaker I can only go by the pictures once I get there!
ReplyDeleteBy the way, on your new post comment screen there's no longer the option to just select name - how come?
Regards
Jax
It's during this time of the year where you get to slice the mooncake into quarters (keeping one for yourself of course!) and trading the other three quarters with friends and families for all the other different flavoured mooncake you don't have before devouring each one! Yum!
ReplyDeleteMy favourite part of midautumn festival is seeing the new flavours of mooncake come out each year. I swear, it started with just lotus with egg and now it's spread to crazy flavours like coffee, lychee, taro and even strawyberry mooncake. Never ceases to amaze me what they'll come up with next. Love an excuse to eat cake :)
ReplyDeleteFood, friends and family!
ReplyDeleteI love the sense of occasion, the packaging and the delicious texture of the moon cakes. I was in Malaysia recently and there was a whole slew of crazy flavours, but I still like the lotus seed ones the best.
ReplyDeleteThe mooncake- durian flavour is my favourite. Wish they have it here in Australia. I remember one year, we have a great cookout to celebrate the festival with various food with different symbolic names; lotus moon soup (Lotus root soup), fish pond under the moon (steam fish with ginger sauce), Autumn leaves combo (all sorts of vege) etc. YUMMMMM!
ReplyDeleteThe best thing about Mid-Autumn Festive is the mooncakes (yes yes i know it's typical, but it's the one thing that makes me love being asian)
ReplyDeleteMy wife introduced the mid-autumn festival to me and a few years ago we gathered with some friends in a local park in Brooklyn NY to celebrate. We brought lanterns for the kids, food (including mooncakes!), and a selection of lunar-centric songs--most in chinese but some in english: moon river, blue moon, etc. It was fun, but my favorite part would have to be the lanterns!
ReplyDeletecheers,
"johnny forks"
Best thing about Mid-Autumn Festival is eating the yummilicious mooncakes and watching the kids run around with their lanterns.
ReplyDeleteMy ever so frugal parents never bought mooncakes during the festival but rather waited afterwards when they become heavily discounted. So my favourite part of the festival when I was growing up was the lighting and parades of the paper lanterns. I can still remember the smell of hot candle wax on crepe tissue paper.
ReplyDeleteMy favourite thing about the Lunar Festival when I was younger was being allowed to stay up and play in the garden with sparklers and lanterns. These days, I'm a little too old to be frolicking around with the youngsters so I enjoy the feast that my mum cooks up every year and of course, savouring the so delicious, yet so unhealthy mooncakes.
ReplyDeleteMy favourite thing is the family time made even more special by the spread of mooncakes and chinese tea on the table. Yummy food and family warmth...perfect!
ReplyDeleteThe bestest part of mid autumn festival,as for me, sitting around the dining table,picking out every single bits of the melon seeds before savouring the red bean paste mooncake, then only one by one I pop those seeds in mouth and crunch them away. This is my family tradition i guess..as in for all the youngsters. Some may said it's gross but it's really fun and memorable throughout my childhood (well, i still inherit this habit until now,lol). Not to mention, lighting all the colourful candles,pink,red,yellow,green...you named it... along the concrete paths around the house.
ReplyDeleteI think this year we have started a new tradition whereby my parents eat split mooncake for breakfast and then leave me a quarter as they get up before I do. Great start to the day (albeit unhealthy!!)
ReplyDeleteMy favourite part of the Mooncake festival was not eating the mooncakes (although I must admit, they were too good to resist) nor was it the chinese tea (wasn't a big fan when I was a kid) nor even the folklore (I still imagine what it would be like to have rabbits hopping all over the moon) but was actually the part where I got to stay up late and enjoy the cool breeze and darkness of the surroundings while admiring the beauty and sheer awesomeness of the Moon! And this all happened while a couple of lanterns were set ablaze. We did enjoy burning the uglier lanterns out. It was like our Mid Autumn Festival ritual for my brother and I. After lighting some, we had to burn some. Hehehe. =)
ReplyDeleteoh and I do know the answer to Meow's riddle. Muahahaha.
ReplyDeleteIt's a "namuh"!
(clue: read backwards)
Hi Helen,
ReplyDeletei love your blog because it feels like im a step closer to home and i always check ti if im stuck for ideas when going out with friends, now a few of my friends read your blog too. :]
my favourite thing abt mid autumn festival is spending time with my family and being able to share the lovely mooncakes we recieve or buy each year under a full moon with nice fruits and traditonal chinese tea.
have a nice mid autumn fesitval!
I love Moon Cake Festival because I LOVE mooncakes. I especially love collecting all the lovely mooncakes boxes every year!!!
ReplyDeleteI love the mooncakes - something you can't get any other time. Worth hunting down.
ReplyDeleteIt reminds me of my Grandma and how she will buy me multiple lanterns as I keep burning mine! One year she got a little frustrated and bought me a battery operated one instead. Hahhaa! And of course, eating mooncakes and she used to be make the best ones ever. Very fond memories.
ReplyDeleteI have been away from family for a long time. Family here is just Mister and some close friends which are 'orphans' like me. But we make it a point to get all sorts of mooncakes and enjoy them together.
best bit about moon festival would have to be dinner and catching up with families! the food, the laughter and eating the mooncake itself with tea or cognac :)
ReplyDeletebest thing about the moon festival this year will be for my brother, he is getting married! it will be double celebration for him!
I love the falling leaves during Autumn and when it crackles beneath my feet. But most of all, I love the smell of Autumn in the air!
ReplyDeleteMy fondest memory of Mid-Autumn fest is when i tried to burn my brother's paper lantern at night. hohoho. but yeah, all the mischievous fun has turned into enjoying mooncakes with friends and family.
ReplyDeleteAutumn... one cannot help but think of baked sweet potato warming cold hands, chestnuts and mooncake, calmly sipping tea and gazing at the full moon while children laugh happily nearby, holding colourful lanterns and dripping candle wax into water to make colourful droplets.
ReplyDeleteThese are a few of my favourite things =)
My favourite thing is slicing up a mooncake into the tiniest of slivers as they are so rich and sharing them around with family and friends.
ReplyDeleteMy favourite thing about mid autumn mooncake festival (besides all the cliche reasons), is this:
ReplyDeleteHave you ever needed to say thank you, or shopw appreciation or just gone to someone's house and needed to find a gift suitable for the whole family.
Well for once, your woes are at an end. Mooncakes is always a correct answer!
That's what I love about mooncake festival =)
mmm Autumn means running around the street to step on the crunchiest leaves you can find.
ReplyDeleteMooncake means picking at the mooncake to get the creamy paste and none of the yucky egg yolk > <
My favourite part of autumn is the red leaves on the trees and on the ground. You would want to swoosh them around with ur feet making that nice ruffling sound.
ReplyDeleteMoon Festival of course is the.. EATING OF MOONCAKES mmm!! I love to eat the yolks inside the mooncakes so I would scoop them out and eat it first XD
best thing about autumn, to be able to walk around knowing that you won't have beads of sweat building up as the wind is cold enough to freeze it
ReplyDeleteWhen I was younger my favourite part of the Autumn Moon Festival was trying all the different mooncakes! My extended family and family friends would come over with different boxes of mooncakes and I would greedily eye up each one. Because I didn't realise till I was older that different mooncakes had different patterns so you could generally tell which was which. Before we could eat our mooncakes we would have to "offer" them to our ancestors by placing the cakes on their shrine for a day.. (this is when the eyeing up would occur). I would either be disappointed when it was the meat and nut version.. or be delightfully happy when I found out the moon cake was lotus paste and egg yolk (the more egg yolk the better!).
ReplyDeleteMy favourite thing? Memories of running around my suburban Aussie backyard with bare feet and red paper "lanterns". I say "lanterns" and not lanterns because a combination of dry grass, giant candles and six year old clumsiness prevented us from ever having them lit...
ReplyDeleteNot that my sister minded. While I pretended to dance with my "lantern", my sister ate the middles out of the mooncakes and blamed it on me.
The best thing for me about the Mid-Autumn moon festival is the mooncakes! Growing up in Australia, the only sign I know it's coming is the arrival of the mooncake boxes in the Asian grocery shops!
ReplyDeleteThese mooncake boxes are gorgeous! So much better than the usual metal tin ones!
my favourite thing about mid-autumn mooon festival is sitting around the dinner table with my family and sharing mooncakes! :)
ReplyDeleteMy favourite thing about Autumn is the combination of crisp air and sunshine. It's the best season to be outdoors in!
ReplyDeleteA haiku to describe my favourite Autumn things:
ReplyDeleteAutumn full moon ----
a bowl of warm edamame,
a pint of cold beer
-Lucas
HI helen,
ReplyDeleteMy favourite would have to be just eating and trying different types of mooncakes!!
My favourite thing about the mid-Autumn was this lantern festival held every year in the suburb where I used to live. All of us kids would be running around with colourful paper lanterns - I looked forward to it so much! Thanks for the competition Helen!
ReplyDeleteMy favourite thing about Autumn is seeing the beautiful seasonal tree leaves change their colour to a gorgeous red/orange and seeing them fall to the ground... the weather is cooling and it's starting to get to snuggle-under-the-covers weather :)
ReplyDeleteBest thing about the Mid-Autumn Moon Festival is definitely the assortment of food and the unity it brings! Colourful mooncakes, the white soft cookie/bread and pamelos.
ReplyDeleteThe tradition of gathering everyone for a short prayer under the brightly lit moon, with lanterns everywhere, kids running around and lanterns accidentally burning up, causing minor fires bring a lot of excitement. And the evolution of lanterns to battery driven ones always amazes me. This is a great tradition that reminds me what being in a Chinese family is all about, unity and great food.
My favourite thing about Autumn is when I take my first step outside my house every morning only to hear the light crackle of the autumn leaves beneath my feet. It is like when you take your first bite into a fat crunchy potato chip that has come straight out of the fryer. As you bite through the firm outer layer, you get the initial pleasure to the sensors, the 'crunch'. Although being such a simple sound, it is what the sound represents which makes it so special. A preview to such a devine taste sensation that comes from eloquently simple ingredients that make a chip. Once the initial taste bud euforia starts to wear off its then come to horrid realisation that the chip is still covered boiling hot oil! The thought of spitting it out and wasting such a tasty specimen is just too horrendous to imagine, so *gulp* and down it goes......
ReplyDeleteOpps, got a bit distracted, yes Autumn is awesome.
The mid-autumn festival brings up memories of the whole family gathered around, eating slivers of mooncake and grapefruit, while throwing riddles at the younger relatives. Afterwards, there is the six-dice game, where prizes are won depending on the number of 4's thrown. Tradition has it that the grand winner (six 4's or one of each number) will have good luck for the rest of the year. These are the things I love about the festival, especially now as an international student living alone in Sydney.
ReplyDeleteCabramatta!
ReplyDeleteBeing asian and growing up in the west meant that moon festival was all about scabbing as much money from your parents to spend on games and fishball sticks!
Best part is gathering with families and friends for a beautiful dinner which ends with mooncake, tang yuen, boiled taro and pomelo.
ReplyDeleteMissed those old paper lanterns since now mostly they are replaced by plastic ones. The beach was the place to go time of the year usually the weather is quite warm. Me and my cousins would run around with the lanterns in our hands while the other kids started burning candles in the mooncake tin cans.Wish I could still do this but my cousins are over the other side of the world.
ReplyDeleteit is the time of the year when we get to eat nice mooncakes while drinking chinese tea. it is also a time for gatherings and catching-ups :D
ReplyDeletemost importantly, it is my mum's birthday on lunar calendar! :D
My favourite thing is pretty obvious.. it's mooncakes! When I was younger it was a real treat to eat mooncakes as they were hard to come by in China (well they were for my family after we fell through hard times). But we still celebrated the festivities the best we could :)
ReplyDeleteI'm going to be honest - the best part about the mid-Autumn Moon Festival is the "Hóng Bāo" red packets!!
ReplyDeleteThe Mid Autumn Moon Festival always makes me feel particularly Asian - sharing mooncakes with family, lanterns and watching Asian TV shows at grandma's.
ReplyDeleteMy favourite is the happy crowds, traditional culture environment, and lots of food cooking at family reunions, also nothing beat the moon cake as dessert time with hot tea plus long conversation.
ReplyDeleteFavourite thing is definitely the mooncakes! We always buy the "mei tong" brand with double egg-yolks. ooh yeh.
ReplyDeleteBut with that comes the mooncake weight LOL - inevitable when you look at the nutritional info on the back of the tins!
my favourite thing is all the beautiful lanterns and festive atmosphere. i will also always cherish those childhood memories of running around the neighbourhood with brightly lit lanterns and sparklers!
ReplyDeletedelicious food and more of it!
ReplyDeleteMy favourite thing about autumn is the smell of a pile of freshly fallen crunchy leaves when you step on them. Sure, the sound is great and evocative, but the smell lifts it higher and makes your senses and imagination come alive!
ReplyDelete