Harvest Festival in 3 different cultures!!

Hello everyone!!

I hope you all had a wonderful weekend!

Last weekend, we celebrated the coming of fall by partaking in 3 different Harvest Festivals!  The Korean kind and the Chinese kind (although this isn't labeled as a harvest festival,,, it's a Mid-autumn festival!) were planned, as I grew up looking forward to 추석 every year in Korea, and David brought back some Mooncakes from his travels in Taiwan.  The 3rd one, the Dozynki, was a Polish Harvest festival that was completely random, completely unplanned, and a detour that we thoroughly enjoyed  =)

Even though the full moon festival was supposed to have happened on Thursday (I think...) we were both busy, so we pushed back the celebrations to Sunday when we could make a nice dinner together, and eat the moon cakes and some Songpyeon (Korean rice cakes with sweet goodness in the middle).  So early  (aha ha ha,,) Sunday morning, we set out to get some groceries at H Mart, just like any other Sunday.  On our way there, we noticed an advertisement for a Polish Harvest Festival on the highway, and I jokingly pointed it out and said, 'Ooh, look! we should go check it out!!'  to which David replied, 'Ok!'   bless his heart..  he's always so game to go along with my crazy ideas  haha   ;)   but I had a rehearsal later that day, so I figured we didn't have enough time to check it out.. I mean, who knew where it could be! Houston is so darn large that we could probably drive an hour and not be outside of the city..   but I decided to look it up anyway on my Iphone, (which took longer than expected because I'm still not used to IOS7..  -.-) and lo and behold!  The festival was happening a block away from H Mart!!!!

So obviously, we had to go check it out.  It was a perfect weather for it too!

Everything was so colorfully decorated, and the atmosphere was so festive!  =)  The first thing that greeted us as we entered was a row of different Polish gift shops!

I loved seeing all of the Polish traditional clothing too! So colorful!  Have you noticed that no matter what culture you look at, the traditional clothing all tend to be super colorful?  perchance it's time to bring those back into our daily lives  ;)  haha.  anyway, I may have done more staring than is considered polite, but people were just walking around in traditional garments, and having so much fun singing, eating, and mingling, and I just had such a blast taking it all in.

Then, of course, the most important part came:  the food!!  I had never tried Polish food before, though David seemed to know a couple of things from the menu..  so, in the spirit of trying everything, we ordered the Polish Plate which had 3 pierogi, 1 golabek (the cabbage roll with red sauce), kielbasa (sausage), bigos (hunter's stew), and lots of bread.  I'm not much of a sausage fan, but surprisingly, the kielbasa was my favorite!!

 Then, of course we had to try some desserts!  There were so many amazing looking desserts, but we asked for the 'most traditionally Polish' dessert, and were given Angel Wings!  It seemed like a thin strip of fried puff pastry with powdered sugar?  whatever it was, we enjoyed it!  =D

I'm so glad we decided to visit this festival in the most spur-of-the-moment, random kind of a way!  After all, these random detours of life are what makes living so interesting and exciting, no?  ;)

Later that night, after working and rehearsing and practicing, we got back together to make dinner and have some moon cakes!  The box of moon cakes David brought back were so beautifully packaged that I had a difficult time tearing through them, but what was inside was totally worth it!

It's a little pastry with red bean paste inside, and in the center there's an egg yolk!!  I was so surprised when I bit into it  haha   

he's such a goof  =p

and then, we finished the night with some Korean part of the Harvest Festival, the Songpyeon!  송편! I used to loooovveee these as a kid!   =D

Did any of you celebrate the coming of fall with cultural festivities?

Thanks for stopping by!

--Janny