![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Chatty Cathy: I can has mooncakes?
I first had mooncakes last year at ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
paleaswater's wedding. They were good. I went looking for them this year and couldn't find them.
I know, I know- a twenty minute bike down to Huron and Dundas would have solved the problem in a jiffy. Alas, both my bicycle and I are unduly creaky these days, and while I don't necessarily mind biking down to Chinatown, the idea of biking back up the hill didn't appeal. I'd sort of hoped the big Korean supermarket ('Korean but not picky'- they carry yoghurt and o-senbei as well as kim chee and pig's ears) might have stocked them, but no. I wasn't looking *hard*, mind, or I'd have braved the ride south.
Whatever- today I'm up in the large yuppie supermarket, the likes of which I haven't seen outside of LA ('we sell lawn chairs, fashion crockery, skin care products, small kitchen appliances and of course food'). I'm picking up milk from the fridge back of the bakery section and turn to go when my eye is caught by a pile of very unyuppie-coloured red boxes. Mooncakes. From Alberta. Wrappers from Taiwan. What looks like a poem on the box. (Four lines of ten hanzi, written five and five. Suspicious, you know. Is it always the same poem, BTW?) I stop squinting at the hanzi and look at the price. 24.95 for the nice box of four big cakes, 22.95 for the not so nice box with six 'mini' cakes. Err- pricey, yes. But hey, special occasion. And pretty box.
Take it to the cash, she scans it, it comes out 26.95. Oh. I often misread signs, of course, and over $25 is more than I want to pay, or in fact have on me, but hey, special occasion. And pretty box. I use my debit card.
Then, most unCanadianly of me, I go double check the display. 22.95 and 24.95. Continuing out of character- what's a toonie among friends?-I go to customer service and point out the discrepancy. She pages the bakery section- several times, in fact- and finally sends a minion off to see what the display says, at which of course the bakery calls her back. "He says it's 24.95 for the small ones, 26.95 for the big ones," she says. "Err yes, but the sign says..." More time passes. Minion returns with the signs. CS woman does complicated things at the cash- 'How do you ring in tens?'- and asks for my debit card. "We'll credit it $10." The people in this store, seriously. "The difference was only two dollars," I remind her. "Yes, but for store errors we credit ten dollars." Sweet.
So there I am with my mooncakes for fifteen dollars. They are very good, aside from an understandable gaijin confusion as to what a serving consists of. They're confused too. They said 16 servings, meaning one serving is a quarter of a cake. But when you divide their 1 serving = 55 gms into the total weight, it comes out as 1 serving = a third of a cake, thus calming my panicked 'Did I just eat 800 calories of mooncake?!! reaction. 600 calories of mooncake. Too much mooncake, in any case. Shall save the rest for the day itself. Luckily that appears to be tomorrow.
paleaswater's wedding. They were good. I went looking for them this year and couldn't find them.I know, I know- a twenty minute bike down to Huron and Dundas would have solved the problem in a jiffy. Alas, both my bicycle and I are unduly creaky these days, and while I don't necessarily mind biking down to Chinatown, the idea of biking back up the hill didn't appeal. I'd sort of hoped the big Korean supermarket ('Korean but not picky'- they carry yoghurt and o-senbei as well as kim chee and pig's ears) might have stocked them, but no. I wasn't looking *hard*, mind, or I'd have braved the ride south.
Whatever- today I'm up in the large yuppie supermarket, the likes of which I haven't seen outside of LA ('we sell lawn chairs, fashion crockery, skin care products, small kitchen appliances and of course food'). I'm picking up milk from the fridge back of the bakery section and turn to go when my eye is caught by a pile of very unyuppie-coloured red boxes. Mooncakes. From Alberta. Wrappers from Taiwan. What looks like a poem on the box. (Four lines of ten hanzi, written five and five. Suspicious, you know. Is it always the same poem, BTW?) I stop squinting at the hanzi and look at the price. 24.95 for the nice box of four big cakes, 22.95 for the not so nice box with six 'mini' cakes. Err- pricey, yes. But hey, special occasion. And pretty box.
Take it to the cash, she scans it, it comes out 26.95. Oh. I often misread signs, of course, and over $25 is more than I want to pay, or in fact have on me, but hey, special occasion. And pretty box. I use my debit card.
Then, most unCanadianly of me, I go double check the display. 22.95 and 24.95. Continuing out of character- what's a toonie among friends?-I go to customer service and point out the discrepancy. She pages the bakery section- several times, in fact- and finally sends a minion off to see what the display says, at which of course the bakery calls her back. "He says it's 24.95 for the small ones, 26.95 for the big ones," she says. "Err yes, but the sign says..." More time passes. Minion returns with the signs. CS woman does complicated things at the cash- 'How do you ring in tens?'- and asks for my debit card. "We'll credit it $10." The people in this store, seriously. "The difference was only two dollars," I remind her. "Yes, but for store errors we credit ten dollars." Sweet.
So there I am with my mooncakes for fifteen dollars. They are very good, aside from an understandable gaijin confusion as to what a serving consists of. They're confused too. They said 16 servings, meaning one serving is a quarter of a cake. But when you divide their 1 serving = 55 gms into the total weight, it comes out as 1 serving = a third of a cake, thus calming my panicked 'Did I just eat 800 calories of mooncake?!! reaction. 600 calories of mooncake. Too much mooncake, in any case. Shall save the rest for the day itself. Luckily that appears to be tomorrow.
no subject
Silly mind. Maybe this year I will actually find out if it's true.
no subject
no subject
no subject
And I don't need to know how high in calories those things are. About the same as a Big Mac and shake, I'm sure: but there's a reason I don't eat Big Macs and shakes.
no subject
no subject
no subject
no subject
It's not always the same poem I don't think. Half the time there isn't a poem although the box is always pretty because people tend to use them as gifts. (although since everyone gives one to everyone else it becomes more a mooncake exchange than anything.)
Yes it's on the 25th this year! Mooncake + tea + looking at full moon, mmm.
no subject
清波澄皓月，沈璧遠銜空，
山影依稀習，荷花隱現紅。
潭心浮太極，水底近蟾宮，
莫被採菱女，攜歸繡幕中。
no subject
no subject
no subject
I hope you didn't mind the interuption. ^__^
no subject
And OMG at the prices. You should be telling me this if you want them - I can get you a full BOX and mail them to you at that price.
no subject
Yes, well, no guarantee they'd make it across the border, ne? And by the time Canada Snail/ Escargot Canada got them to me they'd be dry as well. But thank you for the thought.
no subject
In any case, traditional fillings: red bean, green bean, lotus, date, pineapple. Lots of other fillings can be used, someone once told me that in HK the fashion is currently 'garish, modern and sweet', but couldn't tell me what 'modern' was. And optional egg yolks, of course.
Like rasetsunyo, we always cut them up 8 ways and everyone had a sliver. Sometimes several slivers of different flavors.
no subject
The children will light their lanterns and we will admire the full moon and we shall see if they can see the rabbit and the Lady on the moon!
I don't like the yolk ones... waaay too rich and yes mooncakes are pricey and more so this year due to the increase of our GST to 7%and also because the AVA rejected something like 26000 ducks' salted egg yolks due to them not passing bird flu checks. However the plus for me is the the snow skin ones without the yolks turn out cheaper for me and I only bought 4 diddy ones. I was lucky with the flavours this year.
There was Green tea and Chestnut
Sakura essence with Lotus
Plum and red bean
Pomelo
...and I shared it with girl because hubby is very suspicious of things he cannot quite make out! and boy is like Daddy! ^__^
no subject
Sakura essence with Lotus
How immensely elegant.
no subject
I despair of Darian sometimes. Ste goes to me ... "you know it's ok, because I didn't like rice till I was 17!!!" and I'm like "@#*)("
And yes it was light not too sweet with a hint of saltiness you wouldn't expect, it was very delightful indeed! ^__^
no subject
...you can take the boy out of England but you can't take England out of the boy. Pork 'n beans with cut up hot dogs, served on toasted white pre-sliced bread, is how we do it.
It's a very nostalgic dish but at present totally indigestible. Sometimes I don't believe the things I ate when I was young.
no subject
no subject
no subject
no subject
Flavoured snowskin mooncakes. Glutinous rice crust, sort of like mochi. They're all lotus-paste filling apart from the taro, but flavoured.
The kanji on top for identification - yellow = durian, purple = taro, yellow-green = green tea, pale green = lotus.
View of cut mooncake
The more common baked variety - guessing this is what you got?
The cute but drier version
no subject
no subject
no subject
no subject
no subject
There are some flavours that should never have been made into mooncakes like coffee, chocolate and worse milk chocolate!
I like my old fashion yam and red bean ones, although as I told flemmings above that there were some lovely ones, like the green tea, and the sakura essence with lotus paste.
my other friends well you know what Singaporeans are like..they're all durian mad!!! ugh! I think years of living abroad made me not like them anymore. It's kind of sad because I feel like a small Singaporean part of me died but kind of glad too (from a cholesterol point of view)!
no subject
If you could work out how to have a coffee-flavoured mooncake I think it'd be the essence of cool. Yes, my eyes are round, why do you ask? ^_^
no subject
In terms of filling, coffee, tiramisu, green tea, orange and other fruity flavors have become quite the norm during the last few years. (Heck, you only see four flavors in that first pic from q because the white [tiramisu] and light-brown [cappucino?] ones are currently residing in my fridge =P)
And that toy cookies she showed last, that's - that's not mooncake! Unlike mooncakes, thicker skins (for people who like mooncake skins more than the filling >.>.), and available all-year round.
One LRD-ian found these mooncakes bizarre:
http://www.thebakerscottage.com.my/mooncake.asp
no subject
Yum. Yumyumyumyum x infinity.
I'm sure the innovations you link to may have caused the traditional apoplexy, but I read "The mysteriously tempting dark chocolate paste enfolds the soft truffle" and do a Pavlov dog imitation. It looks like a confection from my childhood whose name, even in my childhood, was an embarrassment because it's hair-raisingly racist, but consisted of darkest chocolate in a hard white icing. Without the extra sweetness of a white sugar icing it might actually be edible.
no subject
Hello Kitty is a throwback of my childhood that I can't let go off somehow! ^__^ I have my HK toothbrush, and my HK purse, my HK shoelaces on my DM's and my HK mobile phone pouch ... yes *facepalms* I'm a shameless HK addict I'm afraid! I buy stuff on the pretext that it's for my girl...but I think she's cottoned on to me now, that I buy it for me! ^_~
She has told me never to buy her anything pink ever again! >.< Is that child savvy or what eh! Talk about pride twinged with heartache!
no subject
I believe that the best mooncakes are made in HongKong, though I would love to buy the ones from my hometown, Guangzhou. The ones from my hometown are relatively cheaper, but the quality is as good as the Hongkong ones.
There are several kinds of stuffings for the mooncakes. Different regions in China produce different kinds of mooncakes. And I have never tried the other kinds other than the Cantonese type. In the Cantonese type, they have the pastes in White Lotus seed (this is toooooo sweet for me), regular Lotus seed (this is the most ordinary and less sweeter), Red Bean (I don't remember how it tastes like, probably less sweeter than the regular lotus seed), and the Five Nuts ones (My grandma's favourite, but I don't like, they have some nuts and some meat inside, sweet and oily. In fact, I don't actually know what exactly the stuffings are inside.) The egg yolk is what I dream for whenever I think of the Moon Festival. They are so yummy. Oops, my stomach is calling them already.
About the ice skin ones, I love them too. The stuffing is lovely. I bought them quite cheap this year, $10 for 4 pieces, two different stuffings.
no subject
And thanks for the tip that you can get them discounted next day. I won't be moon-viewing tonight- thunderstorm predicted instead- so I didn't really need them for today. You're in Toronto too, yes? Downtown or out Markham way? Do you have a particular store you get your mooncakes at?
no subject
My aunt's family love the white lotus one. But I don't actually eat them, 1 or 2 slice every year. I am not very fond of dessert.
no subject