T17 - Mooncakes and Dumplings

Well this morning I quite embarrsingly turned up for morning prayers after the singing of the first two hymns, but let everyone know I’d made it by fluffying my way through the third! I blame the alarm clock or something.

After a hearty discussion over breakfast, I headed back to my room to begin preparations for the Bible study I will take on my return to Taipei next Thursday. Because notesheets and powerpoints need to be translated, I have to buck my usual last minute trend and get something done early! At 10:15 I was told to meet in the kitchen for making mooncakes. This coming weeked is the moon festival (just to avoid any pagan ideas, the less catchy title is the Mid-Autumn festival). Every Taiwanese person I know has gone made for mooncakes. They are sweet small pastry balls filled with anything, ranging from Pork, hard-boiled egg, red beans, ice cream etc. It is traditional to give and recieve boxes of the things which can range from a few pence to about £10 each. The process of making 50 or so took me and four students about an hour and a half - its complicated!

After lunch I continued with my study until four o’clock, at which point we had ‘afternoon tea’ with the mooncakes, fruit and green tea. Before we could eat we had to sing happy birthday to Jo (I’m not quite sure she heard, but I sent a pciture!).

These are our wonderful creations. Despite being intricately involved in their construction, I’m quite suprised at how they turned out. They have a sweet flaky pastry outing, with a few random brown things on top, a sweet red bean puree inside, with half a hard boiled egg yolk in the centre, just to give that strange Taiwanese salty-sour-sweet taste!

In the evening we headed to the Joyce home I visited earlier in the week to visit the dumpling restaurant that is run by those with mental disabilities. We had a fantastically tasty meal, and after some negotiation I was allowed to treat the Pastor and his family (5 of us in total) to the three course dinner. It came in it at 1000NT (£20, including a 60% tip!).

This entry was posted on 02/10/2009 at 07:55 am and is filed under Paul's diary. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.