Mid Autumn
(Mid Autumn Festival veneration: Pete’s garden, Bangkok)
Tonight, the moon will appear at its largest of any day this year and in Asia, specifically China, it is celebrated as the ‘Mid Autumn Festival’. A special cake is prepared for today, made with all manner of ingredients preserved inside a thin pastry. I tried two kinds of mooncake today; macadamia nut with lotus seed and durian (a large pungent fruit with sweet flesh) with egg yolk. I find their blend of savoury and sweet elements very novel, but they are extremely compact and dense so not much was consumed before we had all had enough!
Preceding the mooncakes, there was a complex lunch with a noodle base to which we made all manner of additions. As usual when I spend time with Pete, I am almost constantly in a state of regret at how much food I have eaten. What you see here is a table laid with offerings to a deceased family member; Pete’s great grandmother. Since no picture survives of her, they arranged her offerings of food and mooncakes (hiding behind the melon) in the outside sunshine. All the family members present placed three incense sticks on the table in front of the chair reserved for his great grandmother.
