Mooncakes 月餅

This year we have really done a good job of hitting the after moon festival mooncake sales. Some places offer ‘buy 1 tin of 4, get 1 tin free’ 買一盒送一盒. At the bakery where relatives of my wife work, it is buy ‘1 tin get 4 tins for free’ 買一盒送四盒.

Normally mooncakes are really quite expensive 一般來講月餅很貴, about as much as lunch at the better bakeries, but they are worth it. Some people compare them with fruitcakes, those awful things that are given as presents, and never seemingly eaten, around Christmas but there is no comparison. I like the combination of some sweet paste with salty duck egg yolk 鹹鴨蛋黃, sort of like potato chip cookies which sound bad but taste good. Next on my agenda is to try a fresh durian mooncake 新鮮榴蓮月餅 at that Vietnamese bakery and the chocolate ones (triple fudge??) from Singapore.

The first photo is of a lotus paste mooncake with a single egg yolk in the middle. The second is of some friends at our moon festival celebration.

We’re back 回來了

It’s time to get started on the year. Thank you for all of you who have been checking back and asking when things will get started. I have found that there is a certain inertia to writing blogs. 不要再拖延! Starting is hard, but once started they are much easier to keep going. So, here we go. Clear off the cobwebs, eliminate the spam and start writing.

It is fall once again! Each season has its own special feel and character 自己的特色. The thing I like best about fall is that it is the harvest season. And this year, in addition to the really large harvest 豐收 of pomegranates 石榴, guavas 芭樂 and jujubes 紅枣, there are papayas 木瓜. Yes, as you can see our baby of the fruit tree family already has fruit and it is only the first year 今年春天! In the first photo you can see the size of the pomegranites this year by the perspective those sunglasses give.