Beginning of winter solar terms mean autumn harvest and winter storage. China used to be a farming society. People who have worked for a year should take advantage of beginning of winter to have a rest and reward their families for their hard work over the past year. There is a proverb that "beginning of winter fills the winter and the mouth" is the best metaphor. In the north, I like to use jiaozi as a nourishing food in early winter.

Jiaozi is a folk food with a long history, and it is also a unique folk tradition of China people during the Spring Festival. Because it means "making friends when you are young", it is very popular with people. There is a folk saying "delicious but not as good as jiaozi". During the Spring Festival, jiaozi has become an indispensable delicacy.

Jiangmu duck

On this day in beginning of winter, in Taiwan Province Province, a mutton stove, ginger duck and other winter tonic restaurants are on the street. Many families will also stew sesame oil chicken and siwu chicken to supplement energy.

Red bean glutinous rice

In Jiangnan water town, there is a custom that the whole family get together to eat red beans and glutinous rice at the beginning of a winter night. Legend has it that there was a man named Gong Gong, whose son died in the winter of the solstice, and became a plague after his death, which continued to harm the people. However, this epidemic ghost is most afraid of red beans, so people cook red bean rice from winter solstice to drive away the epidemic ghost and prevent diseases.

Chinese dumpling

Tuanzi is a famous snack in the Yangtze River valley, including white dumplings and green dumplings. Jiaozi is spherical, which means round and round. It is similar to the Lantern Festival in the north, but it is also bigger than the Lantern Festival, as big as an apple. An adult with a large appetite will be round after eating three bellies. Jiaozi is crispy outside and tender inside, and all kinds of spices inside will be heated together with jiaozi, and the aroma will come to the nose.

The structure of jiaozi is the same as that of steamed stuffed bun. The outer layer is glutinous rice and the inner layer is various fillings. Jiaozi is rich in fillings: meat, dried bean curd, pickled mustard tuber, garlic, ginger, leek, lotus root, plum and pepper. Chop it into small pieces, season it, fry it in a pot, add seasoning such as salt, let it cool, and begin to wrap jiaozi with drained glutinous rice pulp.

Bacon, vegetables and rice

Eating a bowl of bacon and vegetable rice in winter is a special custom of old Suzhou people. The cooked rice is fragrant and waxy with frost cabbage, lean bacon and rice vinegar as raw materials and brick stove and straw as fuel. Bacon paella is not among the famous dishes in Suzhou, but there is never a shortage of diners who love to eat.

In fact, eating paella with bacon has another meaning, that is, eating salty kidneys. Salty taste has been listed as the first of the five flavors since ancient times. After beginning of winter, the weather is getting colder and colder, and kidney yang is most likely to be injured. Salty food into the kidney can play a role in tonifying the kidney. However, it should be noted that patients with hypertension should not eat too much salt.

sugarcane

In Chaoshan area, beginning of winter wants to eat sugar cane and fried fragrant rice. Sugarcane can become one of the foods for "supplementing winter" because there has always been a folk saying that "beginning of winter eats sugarcane without pain", which means that the sugarcane of "beginning of winter" is ripe and will not get angry after eating it. At this time, "eating sugar cane" can not only protect teeth, but also play a nourishing role.

Caogen decoction

Beginning of winter, commonly known as "Jiaodong" in central Fujian, means the turn of autumn and winter. Beginning of winter "winter tonic", every household must boil root soup, chop the roots of Radix Angelicae Dahuricae, Rhus verniciflua, Litsea cubeba and Paeonia suffruticosa into pieces, put them in a pot to boil thick root soup, remove the root pieces, and then add chicken, duck, rabbit meat or pig's trotters and pig's bellies to boil.

Cooked glutinous rice is mashed into paste.

On this day, rural families in Zhangzhou will celebrate the harvest by "paying for the winter harvest". After the glutinous rice is steamed, pour it into a stone mortar to make it tough and sticky, pull it to the size of a table tennis ball, and carefully knead it into a ball; Stir-fried peanuts, finely ground and mixed with sugar. The prepared rice cake is rolled with white sugar peanut powder and placed in a sea bowl. When eating, string a few pieces with chopsticks in one breath, just like a rattle, so it is also called "playing waves". To prepare a "winter meal", we must respect the land god and thank him for his generosity.

Maziguo

In winter, Shangrao has the custom of beating hemp seeds to "tonify winter" (people think hemp seeds are tonics).

Hemp seed is a special snack of Han nationality popular in Shangrao and Fuzhou. It is a sweet food that steamed and rotten glutinous rice is put in a special stone trough (called "mortar"), first rammed into mud with a wooden hammer, and then beaten hard. After that, knead a large group of fruit with the core removed into a ball of about 3cm, and wrap it with crushed fried beans, sesame seeds and sugar.