Happy Mid-Autumn Festival

The Mid-Autumn Moon Festival is the second most popular holiday, just after Chinese New Year. It is kinda like having Thank sgiving. Some of the activites are Eating mooncakes, traditionally consisting primarily of lotus bean paste. Drinking tea. Matchmaking. In some parts of China, dances are held for young men and women to find partners. "One by one, young women are encouraged to throw their handkerchiefs to the crowd. The young man who catches and returns the handkerchief has a chance of romance." Carrying brightly lit lanterns, lighting lanterns on towers, floating sky lanterns. Fire Dragon Dances. Solving riddles, or miyu in Mandarin Chinese, usually written on slips of paper and pasted on the lanterns. Moon rabbit is a traditional icon. There is lots of food, and some fun stories. We try to take the good part of the traditions, the things that work with our beliefs and work them into our life. We all enjoy the stories, and food. The time together. Instead of burning incense to gods that we know aren't true, we spent time together outside looking up at the beautiful autumn moon. Discussing how magnificent the universe that our one true God created. It was an incredibly bright moon, beautiful moon. I just couldn't get a great picture of it. We spent the afternoon cooking, think thanksgiving only more complicated, because I am far from a great Chinese cook! It was a lot of fun, and everything turned out good. We made mooncakes from scratch for the first time. Using this recipe. http://zesterdaily.com/cooking/moon-cakes-made-fresh-and-flavorful They turned out really well and tasted much better than ones I've bought in the tins at our Asian market before. Of course, that could have something to do with the salted duck egg that is inside most of those. I just can't get past that texture/flavor. These had a really nice filling. We also made eggrolls, and oven fried them. Not quite the same deep fried goodness, but still really good and much better for us. We had pot stickers, sticky rice, lemon chicken, and baby bok choy. So good. We want to weave parts of the Chinese culture, and traditions as part of our life. Not some big out of the ordinary thing, but that it will just blend as part of our life and enrich our family, just like Vivian. Now some fun pictures. This is Olivia working on the mooncakes.

We didn't have a real mooncake mold, and so we used a spongebob sand toy mold!

Silly boys waiting for dinner!

The finished mooncakes, not much of the spongebob impression left, but still fun. And the moon, but doesn't do it justice.