![]() Don't let this close-up confuse you mooncakes are actually the size and heft of a hockey puck. It's a point of pride that I can say I've eaten most of the featured foods.) It made such sense that Costco - the place where you could find almost anything - would also have mooncakes that it was almost unsurprising to suddenly find them among the granola bars and trail mix. (The song " Asians Eat Weird Things" was filmed in the Asian supermarket where my family shopped weekly. In my particular city, Asian grocery stores and businesses exist next to 7-Elevens and McDonald's on streets with names like "Las Tunas" and "Del Mar." Instead of a Starbucks on every corner, we had boba, or bubble tea, a Taiwanese tea drink that has chewy tapioca pearls at the bottom. But I grew up in the San Gabriel Valley, one of the United States' largest and fastest growing ethnoburbs, where many of the cities are majority Asian. It's a pretty esoteric food (describing them to friends almost always results in furrowed brows and exclamations of "What are lotus seeds? Wait, a duck egg?!"), and they might seem completely out of place at an American warehouse chain. There's a type known as "five kernel mooncake," which, according to my father, is the Chinese fruitcake that's often gifted and re-gifted to unfortunate recipients. Mooncake fillings are almost always sweet and can be made with different nuts, seeds or beans. The yolk isn't my favorite part, so my mother gets most of what ends up in my portion. The salty, crunchy yolk crumbles when cut and contrasts with the almost cloying sweetness around it. A dense rich filling of sweetened lotus seed paste envelops the yolk from a salted duck egg. Mooncakes are about the size and heft of a hockey puck, with a thin crust. ![]() I've been eating these pastries since I can remember, and I start craving them right at the cusp of fall, as sunsets get earlier and the nights grow colder. A box of four mooncakes generally costs anywhere between $10 and $50 (though more expensive brands can certainly be found), and my parents are usually willing to splurge on the higher end of that scale for their favorite brand.Īt home, my family cuts the mooncake into wedges, and we eat crowded around the kitchen counter or bent over the sink to avoid spilling crumbs. They're shared among family and friends as a symbol of wishing prosperity in the coming year. The mooncake is traditionally only served during the Mid-Autumn Festival, on the 15th day of the 8th month of the lunar calendar. I take one back to my mother and ask, "Can we get one?" There's a large display of square tins, each decorated with a painting of a Chinese man. Samples are, after all, the only reason to visit Costco in the middle of a Sunday. I grab a piece (OK, a couple) before the jostling crowd behind me can get to it. The little plastic sample tray is empty, but the man behind the counter quickly replaces it with one full of a mooncake cut into teeny-tiny pieces. This year, Mid-Autumn Festival is celebrated on Sept. Editor's note: This story was originally published in 2013.
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