(technically, it's midautumn festival, but i think all holidays should follow in t-day's footsteps and answer to their signature foods)
i just scored two mooncakes (that's 4 egg yolks), 1 chocolate bar, and 1 asian pear, plus a boatload of sympathy. hurrah!
from about mid september to post new years, a trading floor is a food lovers paradise. brokers from all over send baskets of chocolate, mooncakes, fruit, fruitcakes, toffees, cookies, teas, hams, you get the idea. unfortunately, as a structurer (i.e. not a client of a broker), none of these baskets are directed at me. so, i scrounge what i can.
holy who cares batman! i actually just wanted to gloat about my food getting prowess. queenie had these two leftover mooncakes, and she couldn't get rid of them (they're really sweet, and everyone but EVERYONE here is on a diet). to get me to take them, she had to throw in the chocolate bar and the asian pear (moohaha). check out my poker face, i played that situation like your mother. plus, according to her, its bad luck to have them past today (b/c if you don't eat the mooncake on time, you don't find out about the invading hordes in time, duh!*) .
*we (as in my people, the chinese) celebrate this holiday b/c a long time ago, some other people were going to attack them. our spies found out about this attack, but couldn't communicate it except by means of mooncake (and memory and muchness), so they (the spies) baked a msg into the mooncakes and distributed it to the people.** it's like, if paul revere were a baker and not given to riding so many horses.
**good thing the spies didn't give the mooncakes to my grandmother (not that she's actually THAT old), b/c she's the type that would save the cakes and give them to someone as a regift when they were properly aged (read: hard as a moonrock, har har).
9 comments:
That looks delicious. What does it taste like?
very very very sweet. have you ever had red bean paste? imagine a heaping spoonful of that.
atong said that this holiday was a result of some woman trying to achieve immortality and accomplishing it but ending up on the moon in the process. but you said it was like paul revere. you asians need to get your stories straight.
i think there are many stories. my story doesn't really say why we eat mooncakes, just why the moon is so big.
http://www.sw.uh.edu/documents/currentstudents/aaasw/mid-autumnfestival.pdf
that's a better explanation than the disconnected one i gave you. apparently i forgot about the hare.... who knew.
how could you forget about the hare?
china has a very long history. maybe the people decided to plan the attack on midautumn b/c everyone would be drunk, plus good visibility. and then mooncakes joined the party. (i think mooncakes is a good nickname for someone, like honeycheeks, or honeysuckle).
I ate a lot of mooncake today!! My labmate is asian and I asked him to bring me some after reading your blog last night, and he did! And not just some but a whole box. And then Jen came over to watch ANTM and she brought me more mooncake!
did you like it?
When I had mooncake in Hong Kong last year, I didn't really like it, but this year I tried some with different fillings and I liked them better. One with dried fruit and nuts was especially delicious, and another with red bean was decent too. Nary an egg yolk in sight. Did I commit some faux paux equivalent to eating tofurkey?
i had mooncake today in my class with a chinese professor. oh, urban studies. it was glorious.
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