moon festival

As a child, on moon festival my house was filled with people and our tables were laden down with food. I remember our procession, a line of little children of varying heights, our tummies full and our lanterns lit and carefully held before us. We paraded around my parents’ property line, around the back and down the side until we came full circle, our lanterns held for the moon to see. Afterwards, there’d be more food, and perhaps some sulking if a lantern had caught fire. I went through so many lanterns this way, burning little holes in the cellophane of my butterfly (it was always a butterfly), but it was okay, because there would always be next year’s lantern.



It has been years since I celebrated Moon Festival, but I really wanted to celebrate it this year, so as the fifteen moon of the eighth lunar month approached I invited a dozen friends around and D and I spent a day in preparation, cleaning and cooking and buying new outdoor furniture.

I was rushing around, cooking things, and D was flitting about chatting with people, so neither of us had a chance to take any photos of the food. I’ll probably put up some of the recipes for these eventually. There are no specific foods that are served at Moon Festival – the emphasis is just on the having of food, its abundance, and the sharing of it with your friends.

On the table: laksa, lontong, gado gado, satay mushrooms, char kuay teow, nasi goreng, chickpea rogan josh, potato rendang, yao chao guai and gai lan in a garlic soy sauce. After dinner snacks were passion fruit melting moments, mooncake, oreos and kuih bangkit.

It was so delightful being able to share this with my friends, even though most of them only knew what google could tell them about it.