http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mid-Autumn_Festival

I went for the first time to the INSEAD Partners lunch today at the INSEAD cafeteria. It’s supposed to be each Tuesday around 12:30-1pm where all the partners have lunch together and catch up. I’d missed the first few weeks because of other things (like being sick :() but didn’t have any plans today so decided to join. It was fun seeing everyone again and just chatting.

It is also National Food Week at INSEAD so there is Korean, Japanese, and Australian food this week. Apparently they coordinate with the student council at Fontainbleau to arrange it so the same theme of foods are served each day. There are also company sponsors for each event.

This morning they had Korean breakfast and Korean snacks in the afternoon. I went to try the Korean shaved ice and rice cakes.

The shaved ice also had vanilla ice cream, red beans, mini rice cakes, and some bean powder.

The rice cakes were filled with sweetened sesame seeds and in four different flavors: original, honey, yam, and “grass”.

There were plain rice cakes covered in bean powder. They’re not sweetened so I think it’s a flavor to be acquired.

They also had sweetened carmelized walnuts. They were tasty but they stick to your teeth!

It was a nice afternoon treat. It was also good for the students to let out some frustration after or before today’s quiz. They had this huge block of wood and a large piece of rice cake to pound. It’s super sticky and that hammer is pretty heavy.

For dinner we planned to meet up to have a mid-autumn festival dinner at a place in Holland Village called Crystal Jade. We had a traditional Chinese banquet style dinner. Oh, a little about the mid-autumn festival, traditionally it’s when the moon is at its fullest to celebrate the abundance of the summer’s harvest. We usually eat mooncakes at this time and also sometimes light lanterns. But we’re usually with family and friends to celebrate.

We had a 9 course meal, I missed taking a picture of the seafood rice 😛 The food was similar to what we have in the US. Only the shark fin soup wasn’t quite as good, it had a funny taste, but otherwise it was really nice to have steamed fish and the peking duck was a nice treat.

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We didn’t eat any mooncake today though… maybe they’ll be on sale tomorrow 😛