Mid-Autumn Moon Festival

So actually the holiday was Sept. 6th through the 8th, but we finished up today--all good things, right?  In case you're not familiar with the Mid-Autumn Moon Festival, it is held on the 15th day of the eighth month on the Chinese calendar.  Usually it falls somewhere between mid-September to mid-October.  Mid-Autumn Moon Festival is to China, what Thanksgiving is to us.

A chance to reconnect with family, reflect on the bounty of the harvest, give thanks for blessings and to celebrate all things round, specifically the moon.  Grace Lin has a really cute picture book called Thanking the Moon that we check out regularly from our library--it explains the holiday in a simple, easy to understand way.

There is also a lot of talk about Chang E, the jade rabbit, and a wood chopper who wanted to be immortal.  These relate to legends that the Chinese have in regards to the moon.  Often, people will go out and gaze at the moon and they can find comfort that even if they are not with their loved ones, the loved ones are also gazing at the same moon.  I try to sneak in a little birth-mother/birth-father talk where this is concerned.

Lastly, during the Mid-Autumn Moon Festival, people traditionally eat mooncakes.  I would definitely say that mooncakes are an acquired taste.  They are beautiful pastries that have various fillings inside like red bean paste or lotus seed paste inside and nestled in the core is an egg yolk (again with the round reference).  

We have a variation that works wells for us--you can find the recipe here.  Yesterday we started making the dough but ran out of time and so finished this afternoon and enjoyed the cookies after dinner.  

Perhaps you are looking some of the pictures of the Noodle as she was cooking and wondering "Why is she wearing safety glasses, circa 1976?"  Good question.  Unfortunately, when I posed the same question to her, she just continued reading the recipe and pushed the glasses higher onto her nose.  I guess Girlfriend is just embracing her inner diva?!

Anyway, happy Mid-Autumn Moon Festival to you!  Enjoy the beautiful, full, round moon, eat some mooncakes (or some variation of them), celebrate your family and remember that even safety goggles can look cute--if you wear them with confidence!

Past Mid-Autumn Moon Festival info. here , here, here and here.