Jade Rabbit and Mid Autumn Festival

When we talk stories about Mid Autumn Festival, we tend to tell the story of Chang 'e, goddess of the moon. Well, do you know about the Jade Rabbit? It is the companion of Chang'e and it makes immortality elixir. There were a few legends about the Jade Rabbit. One of which is that Chang'e brought the rabbit together to the moon.

Chang'e lantern in Chinatown this year

The other story involved a beggar begging for food. The monkey gathered fruits from the trees and the otter collected dead fish from the river bank, while the jackal wrongfully pilfered a lizard and a pot of milk-curd. The rabbit, who knew only how to gather grass, instead offered its own body, threw itself into a fire the beggar had built. The beggar was actually a deity in disguise. Touched by the rabbit's sincerity, he chose the rabbit to teach it to make immortality elixir and  brought it to the moon.

Mooncakes and an embroidery.

 Mooncakes is a must have during mid autumn festival. This year, we had chosen to buy from The Peninsula. We bought 8 mini mooncakes with 2 flavours - the traditional brown lotus seeds mooncake and the egg custard mooncakes. We love mini mooncakes as they are small enough to be consume by oneself.  If I were to buy the bigger ones, I would have to cut them into small pieces and slowly consume them because my family is not a great fan of mooncakes. And yes, I would gain plenty of weight during this period of time. Peninsula's egg custard mooncakes taste great. We were told that this particular flavour was out of stock in Hong Kong! The reason we bought duo flavour is because my mom still prefer to eat the traditional ones.

Rabbit admiring the moon

I was glad I managed to register for Susanna Lo's classes in the library. Personally, I love the things she created. She has a facebook page named "Stuff Susie Made" where she showcases the crafts she had made. I believe she was inspired by Jade rabbit to come out with the idea to sew an embroidery consisting of 3D rabbit viewing the moon with a lantern . She embroidered some flowers and grasses too. After sewing all the stuff, I decided to test my embroidery skills by sewing more flowers on it. I guess it went tad bit overbroad.

Linking with~

Mooncakes from Bread Garden

I failed twice making the snow skin for my mooncake, so in the end I gave up. We bought some from the roadshow at J cube. We love to taste mooncakes when we go to these roadshow. We tried Bread Garden's mooncakes. Not overly sweet or oily.

Classy packaging

Fork and knife included.

We purchase 2 lotus paste with single yolk, pandan and lotus paste, cranberries snowskin  mooncake

They have plenty of other flavours such as durian snowskin, charcoal lotus mooncake to offer but we still prefer these.

Mooncakes are high in calories, fats and sugar. These are the main reason why mooncakes are not suited for diabetics. Howver, during this festive season, it is alright to consume just a little bit of it and control the intake of the sugar for the rest of the day.

I guess for the past 2 weeks, I have been eating lots of home made mooncakes, mainly because I had failed the snowskin. I have put on 2 kg. Time to do some work out soon.

Have you bought or made your own mooncakes?

Lanterns chasing in Chinatown

Mid autumn festival which falls on the 15th of the eight lunar month is coming this Sunday. It is also known as the moon festival or Mooncake festival. We were off chasing lanterns last weekend. Yes, besides eating moon cake with Chinese tea during mid autumn festival, carrying brightly lit lanterns is also one of the popular activities, especially among kids.

Lanterns at Chinatown Food street 

Traditional lanterns