Monday, September 12, 2011

We've a Holiday Today!

Today is a national Chinese holiday, Mid-autumn festival, a time to go out and look at the full moon with your family.  And of course, there are fireworks.  Any excuse is a good excuse to bring out the fireworks. 
We're just glad to have a day off from school and work.
  About a month ago, elaborate, expensive boxes started showing up in grocery store displays, and we were curious.  What are they, and what are they for?  The answer?  Moon Cakes.
 It is the tradition to give each other moon cakes for this holiday, and apparently, during the month leading up to the holiday.  
Our realtor gave us this box, containing 6 or 8 moon cakes.
(We later found out we should have turned in the gift to John Deere, since it is "influence".  Too late.  We'd already eaten them, or thrown them away.)
 Each cake is lovely to look at, but just about every cookie I've ever tried in my whole life is better than this,
including cheap store cookies.
The Chinese don't do dessert-type things very well.
The filling inside is typically red bean paste or a fruity paste (the type of fruit isn't really recognizable).
So moon cakes are really just the Chinese version of
fruit cake--looks a lot better than it tastes!

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