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Tuesday, September 17, 2013

Happy Chuseok -- Sweet Ways To Learn New Cultures By Buying Korean Sweets Or Moon Cakes

Chinese moon cakes at Lotte
The Korean Chuseok festival runs this week, starting Wednesday and running through Friday (at least on the majority of the sources that I can find).

Chuseok is a harvest festival.  People visit their ancestral homes and enjoy good foods.  In similar fashions, there are festivals associated with this same moon -- names like the Moon Festival or Children's Festival -- that range from Vietnam through China to the Philippines.

These are all opportunities for you to eat and learn a little culture.  Groceries like Lotte are selling moon cakes and the sweet filled rice cakes called songpyeon.  The songpyeon are Korean -- dumpling-sized rice cakes filled with sweet red bean paste, sesame seeds, and other flavors.  The moon cakes are more Chinese.  They're often thin crusts around a dense, sweet filing as well.  You can't go wrong with sweets!
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4 comments:

  1. Trip KlausSeptember 17, 2013 at 5:07 PM

    Thank's for the heads up again this year.

    ReplyDelete
  2. AnonymousSeptember 18, 2013 at 7:56 PM

    I live in Highland and drive by the Inn everyday--they still do not have a parking lot, so I do not think they will be opening any time soon.

    ReplyDelete
  3. DangoSeptember 18, 2013 at 8:40 PM

    For Japanese, it's called Otsukimi. We eat dango (a kind of sweet mochi.) Too bad I can only find dango in Japantown, NYC.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Trip KlausSeptember 23, 2013 at 4:42 PM

    FYI- Lott Ellicott City only has red bean, H mart in Catonsville is out and Lotte Catonsville still has Egg Yolk, Red bean, Nut & Lotus paste as of today 9/23

    ReplyDelete

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