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Happy Mid-Autumn Festival!

Yes, it’s today, the fifteenth day of the eighth moon of the Chinese calendar. Tonight the children in the neighborhood will walk around with lighted lanterns (hence its other name, Lantern Festival) while their elders sit around a table and eat mooncakes (hence it’s also called Mooncake Festival) while admiring the full moon above.

I have treasured childhood memories of playing lanterns with my neighborhood friends on this moonlit night every year when I was growing up. My grandmother used to prepare a small feast to celebrate the Mid-Autumn although technically it’s always summer here.

We’ve kept up the tradition of celebrating on a small scale since my kids are too old for lanterns and we’re not big fans of mooncakes. Nothing special for dinner tonight except for this yeem kok kai, or salted herbal chicken which a friend brought us from Ipoh as a gift.

It looks like ordinary pak cham kai, or steamed chicken but this had been marinated in salt and steamed in aluminium foil with dong gui and some other Chinese herbs. It smelt really good when I opened up the package. The chicken itself is salty with a strong herbal flavor. Yumm.

DH went to Bali, Indonesia last week and look what he brought home. You can’t go to Bali or Indonesia, for that matter, and not eat their famous Layer Cake. Beautiful, isn’t it

It’s quite a challenge to make this cake. You have to bake it one layer at a time and I think you’re supposed to get the layers to be the same, exact height. It’s time-consuming and needs a steady hand and loads of experience. That’s why it’s so expensive. DH paid around rm35 ($11) for a 7.5″ square cake.

The layers in this photo are not quite standard. DH says the lady who made this had so many orders to fulfill she probably didn’t have time to bother too much about the looks. DH alone bought 6 cakes so you can imagine!

I’m glad he bought so many. This layer cake is one of the best I’ve tasted. It’s soft and buttery and has a barely-there saltiness to it. Every time I open the fridge, I pop a couple of pieces.

The thing I like about Sunday mornings is that they’re so lazy and laid-back. One of the kids suggested we go out for breakfast this morning but the rest of us were just too lazy to budge.

We spent a half day at the movies yesterday and we’re headed out for another movie in a bit where free lunch will be provided - yay!

So I figured let’s have a simple, down home breakfast, it being Father’s Day and all, and then go pig out at the movies afterwards *muahaha*.

This is what I came up with. I prefer to buy back bacon because it has practically no fat. If I buy strip bacon, we end up stripping out the strips of fat anyways. There, how’s that for using the same word 3 times in one sentence !

My eggs are sunnyside up but well done. Always. I’ve never trusted anything else since the time I had scrambled eggs (I suspect they weren’t cooked well) on a flight and ended up with my head stuck in an air-sick bag on the entire 18-hour flight from Honolulu to Singapore. Now that’s a tough lesson but I’ve learnt it well…done.

I received a box of tikuanyin as a gift from an aunt who knows how much I appreciate a good cup of Chinese tea.

There are so many different kinds and brands of Chinese tea that it’s hard to know which is good until you actually taste it.

It was love at first sip for me with this Anxi brand. It leaves a bitter aftertaste which I really like.

It takes two of these shrink-packed packets to brew one big pot of tea. Only problem is she doesn’t know where to buy this brand of tea since she got this as a gift from her friend!

Tikuanyin is considered to be a cooling tea. According to the elders, older folks, new mothers and those who are weak and under the weather should avoid drinking (too much) tikuanyin because it may trigger rheumatic aches and pains due to its cooling effect on the body.

There’s a restaurant in Bloomfield, New York, called the Grapevine Cafe where the owners let customers ‘pay as they wish’. What an interesting idea, eh!

As I was watching this video on CNN video (I can’t link to the video because I don’t think they have links to specific videos), it occurred to me that’s what the Buddhist temples do here too. Many of them offer free, buffet-style vegetarian meals on the first and fifteenth days of the Chinese moon.

That’s where I got my vegetarian curry and noodles last week. The food is free for those who can’t afford it but you’re encouraged to make a small donation on the way out.

For the owners of Grapevine Cafe in New York though, business has been slow as people are feeling the pinch of the rising cost of eating out. So as a way to encourage people to eat there, they have certain items (depending on which ingredients are on sale) each day where you pay what you can afford.

It’s a really great idea and more restaurants should do this. Many restaurants charge entirely too much for food which they claim to be good but which I find substandard. It’d certainly be nice if I could pay what I think the food is worth, not what they claim it should be worth.

What do you think?

When you eat at Chinese restaurants, tea is typically served in a pot and poured into small cups. After a few rounds, the tea is bound to run out. So what do you do?

There’s no need to catch a waiter’s eye and flag him down. Here’s the trick. Simply tilt the pot cover like this to signal that you need your teapot refilled. A passing waiter will notice and top up your teapot.

And when someone fills up your cup, simply tap your right index finger on the table next to your cup as the unspoken way of saying ‘thank you’.

Hardly a day goes by when I don’t have chillies in my meal, whether fresh or cooked. I just gotta have it .

Frankly once you get the hang of it, you’ll wonder how you ever lived without it in the first place.

Cooked chilli is less fiery than fresh ones so if your tongue is not seasoned yet, start with something mild, preferably cooked.

Once you get the hang of it, you can graduate onto something a little more spicy.

Take your time. Leave the fresh fiery chillies for when you turn pro. Some tongues need to go to Chilli School for years before they can take the heat, and some just never graduate.

But at least try, okay? Because chilli not only tastes heavenly, it’s seriously good for you. It contains tons of Vitamin C. If you have a cold or feel one coming on, eat something hot and spicy and next thing you know, your itchy nose is gone!

Another useful thing to know about chillies is that if your tongue is on fire, drinking cold water will NOT douse the fire. You got to fight fire with fire. The best fire extinguisher is hot water or tea. I guarantee your fire will be put out in no time and you’ll happily get your tongue back .

My neighbor presented me with this bowl of killer chillies. I have no idea what its name is but I swear it sent me right through the roof, and I’m someone who regularly chomps on fresh bird’s eye chilli which is known to be super-duper fiery. So don’t try this at home or anywhere else and always wear a safety helmet !

Food and me, we have a strange relationship.

I love to eat but I’m a picky eater.

I like to try new food places but I’m not prepared to drive miles to chase down food.

I look forward to good food but I’m not greedy.

I like to cook but I eat very little of what I cook myself.

Does any of this make sense? Because if it doesn’t, I don’t understand it myself . But I’m going to try to blog some sense into it all.