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Thursday, September 22, 2011

Moon Cakes & Fall Equinox

September 23rd marks the fall equinox this year. This is the time of year when there is about the same amount of daylight and moonlight, or lightness and darkness. After that date, the days get shorter for awhile. That's perfectly fine by me, because it means I have more time to glow in the sky! So I feels like everyone should celebrate the fall equinox!

There are lots of traditions and celebrations around the September or Fall equinox. The Chinese have one I particularly like. They call the mid-autumn festival "Moon Festival".  It's not always celebrated on exactly the fall equinox and they usually time it with my phases, and celebrate on the nights when I am full. They celebrate the abundance of harvest.

One of the main foods for this celebration is moon cakes! In their tradition, they used to make these cakes as offerings to me- the moon!  The cake is made in lots of different ways and some are filled with lotus seeds, sesame seeds, duck eggs or dried fruit.

Heather isn't quite that good at cooking, so I got her to find an easy moon cake recipe.  She found one on the Internet http://www.dltk-holidays.com/china/easy_chinese_mooncakes.htm  This one won't look like the moon cake picture above (Heather's didn't even come close!), but it will taste pretty good.  You could also just make a round cake, decorate it with yellow frosting and put my face on it.  Or make cupcakes and decorate each one exactly the way you want to.

It doesn't matter how you celebrate, just that you do celebrate!

Sincerely,

Melvin Moon

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