Happy Mid-Autumn Festival

or also known as happy mooncake festival amongst south east asian.
pinkcocoa has written brilliant entries about mid-autumn and mooncakes in her entries.visit
pinkcocoa's coverage pinkcocoa covers about the origin of the festival and also fanstastic tasting of all sorts of mooncakes.thanks pinkcocoa :)

for me, mooncake festival reminds me of my paternal grandma (my ah ma). her birthday fell on the 15th day of the 8th lunar month. before she past away, we celebrated her birthday every year and all my cousins will return to sibu to celebrate grandma's birthday. her first big celebration was celebrated in my house. mom made a corsage for me and my two other cousins besides for grandma. three of us were all born on the same year.i remembered i was so happy that day i was running about and one of the petal of the vanda orchid dropped from my corsage. so much for the running around. *paiseh. as the years gone by, there are more additions in the family, we moved the birthday celebration to restaurants. i miss grandma's birthday.

as for 2005, i had a steamboat. or hotpot (all the different term used depending where you come from). the weather has been wet and rather cold in auckland so steamboat seems to be a great option. here's a photo i took of the ingredients before steamboat started. there're the typical fishballs,squidballs, etc etc homemade beef wontons, chicken, veggies, wooden ears..btw, i prepared the chicken stock myself.
chicken bones,celery, carrot, ginger, garlic. it was nice steamboating in front of the tv ;) following the result of election 05 in NZ.