On New Year’s Eve, we in Shanxi Province drink Chuang Soup (note: a kind of soup made with meatballs, kelp, tofu, dumplings, sliced ??meat, instant noodles, etc.). Together), almost every household drinks bed soup at night. Before eating dinner, we must first worship our ancestors and then set off a firecracker before we can start eating.

But on New Year’s Eve, breakfast and lunch are really not that particular.

The most important thing to pay attention to is the three days from the first to the third day of the first lunar month. In the morning and evening of these three days, you usually still drink soup. At noon, it is rice with at least four dishes, one soup, and dumplings.

After the third grade of junior high school, there is nothing to pay attention to. It’s just visiting relatives and entertaining friends, and the main food is rice, dumplings, and bread. But depending on the number of guests, at least six or more dishes have to be fried.

The winds are different in a hundred miles, and the customs are different in a thousand miles. Each place has its own situation. Let me talk about the situation in my hometown of Southwest Shandong.

Breakfast

There is nothing special in the morning. You can have breakfast as usual, or you can eat dumplings. By the 30th day, almost every household has almost prepared New Year’s goods. Is there anything missing? , I will definitely go to the market to buy it this morning. At about ten o'clock, everyone is basically posting couplets and posts about God and Lao Zaoye. You must post them before lunch. If you don't post them, you will be suspected of something going on at home. Someone has died. No couplets were posted for three years.

Lunch

Our standard lunch is a big pot stew with meatballs, vermicelli, and meat. Every family makes the stew in the same way, but it must be included. There is also a custom that you must give a bowl to relatives, neighbors, and elders. This is still the case today. Now that life is better, you will also have a few side dishes and some wine. Also, you must eat at home, which is probably also a symbol of reunion during the New Year.

Dinner

After lunch, I prepare to make dumplings. Usually there are more dumplings, including those for dinner and New Year’s Day. Before dinner, each family will go to the ancestral graves to invite "grandfather and grandmother" home to celebrate the New Year together to fulfill their filial piety, then burn incense and kowtow, and then start setting off firecrackers to cook dumplings. The firecrackers must be lit while the dumplings are being put into the pot. Dinner is dumplings with some garlic or cold vegetables. Usually dinner is eaten very early, and the sound of firecrackers can be heard at around 4 o'clock in the afternoon, which means that some people have started to eat. After dinner, there is a vigil and play, those who watch the Spring Festival Gala watch the Spring Festival Gala, and those who play mahjong. It is a gathering of relatives and friends to drink and stay vigil. I remember that when I was young, our family would gather at our house. Now everyone takes turns. This year it will be at your house and the next year it will be at his house. Everyone drank and chatted, talking about the harvest of the year, plans for the next year, and looking forward to the arrival of the New Year.

Summary

As the times change, some eating customs are also changing, but no matter how they change, people’s expectations for the New Year have not changed, and their yearning for a better life has not changed. Change.

I am from the south, so there should be differences between the north and the south, or the customs in different places are different. For example, in my family, I usually eat a little bit as usual in the morning, and put away the dishes after eating. , we are preparing for the New Year’s Eve dinner. We basically don’t eat Chinese food here because we all get up late, and breakfast and lunch are almost at the same time, so we only eat two meals a day.

After breakfast, we start preparing the ingredients for the New Year’s Eve dinner. If there are many people in the family, no matter men, women, old or young, everyone will have their own division of labor. Everyone will talk and laugh together, and they will be ready when they are ready. It doesn’t matter when to eat, morning or evening.

For example, my family usually starts the New Year’s Eve dinner around 6 pm, and sometimes around 4 pm. After dinner, the whole family sits in front of the TV to watch the Spring Festival Gala. It is also a happy scene.

Eating steamed buns in the morning, a bite at noon, and a big meal in the evening is my family’s three-meal-a-day arrangement on thirty nights.

New Year’s Eve is the happiest day of the year. Because all the preparation work before the year has basically been completed, the food is full, the clothes are hung up, and we are just waiting to put on new clothes and start eating. The most important thing is that the tiring cleaning work has been completed. At most, I can only post Spring Festival couplets.

After thirty nights, on the first day of the Lunar New Year, we have to be busy paying New Year greetings and visiting relatives and friends. The family takes turns eating spring branches, and it is also the turn of my own family to entertain relatives for the whole day. The holidays can be very busy and there is no time to relax. So only thirty nights are what I’m most looking forward to.

On this day you can have the long-awaited New Year’s Eve dinner. That fragrant and refreshing chowder, that dazzling array of large platters, that spicy braised large intestine... In fact, making New Year's Eve dinner is very tiring. There are too many ingredients to prepare and too much preliminary work to do, but because our family does it every year My mother makes all the New Year’s Eve dinner, so I don’t have to do it. Thank you for your hard work, mom (hug)!

On New Year’s Eve every year, my mother gets up very early. Make breakfast, usually a very simple breakfast. For example, boil some porridge and heat some steamed buns. Because during the Chinese New Year, every household here has to steam steamed buns, at least more than 100 of them, and every family has to eat them for a long time after the new year. During the Chinese New Year, steamed buns are one of the most convenient staple foods at home.

When having breakfast, my mother always tells us to eat more. Because we are busy with the New Year’s Eve dinner, lunch is usually very late.

Actually, saying lunch is late is a "deceptive" statement, haha. Because - there is no lunch at all, haha! We were very hungry when we ate steamed buns in the morning. You must know that the homemade steamed buns at home are very big and filled with fillings. After eating two steamed buns per person, we were really not hungry at noon.

My mother has made several semi-finished products in one morning. For example, chicken soup needs to be boiled out first to make stock; soup is also ready; radish and black seed soup is also ready... And I will do some egg peeling, slicing, washing shrimps, and sorting vegetables. Taking care of these small things, the time passed by noon unknowingly in the busyness.

People who are really hungry at noon can hardly eat staple food, and my mother will not prepare the staple food for this day (laughing) ~ If you are hungry, you can drink soup, whatever you want, soup, black seed soup, Any chicken soup is fine, just take a sip. There is a popular word during the Chinese New Year here - "New Year's Satiety". It roughly means that you won’t be so hungry when you see delicious food every day, hehe

At around three o’clock in the afternoon, my mother officially cooked the New Year’s Eve dinner. Generally the whole process takes about two hours. Our family usually starts eating at five o'clock because the family laughs and chats together. This New Year's Eve dinner often lasts for an hour or two. You need to pack up quickly after eating, because the Spring Festival Gala will start at 8 o'clock!

Our family’s New Year’s Eve dinner is very sumptuous. Because my mother cooks it every year, the dishes are almost the same every year, but they always taste delicious every time I eat them.

My family’s New Year’s Eve dishes: platter of cold dishes, first chowder soup, braised glutinous rice meatballs, braised prawns, radish and black vermicelli soup, braised large intestine, taro soup, soy sauce beef, Sweet and sour pork ribs, braised lamb, stir-fried vegetables, fried lotus root cakes, fried spring rolls, and finally fish, and a green vegetable and tofu soup to finish, which means peace, smoothness, and abundance every year.

On New Year’s Eve, each place has its own custom. In the Northeast, people celebrate New Year’s Eve by worshiping their ancestors and pasting New Year pictures on doors. Morning meals are not very particular. When I was in the Northeast, every family would steam bean buns, steamed buns, flower rolls, siomai, steamed buns, and dumplings before they were thirty. Because the weather in the north was cold, they would put them in a large vat outside and cover it with a big iron Pot, in the north, it is called New Year’s Chew. When eating, take it out and steam it before eating, which saves trouble. In the north, the New Year is very particular from the first to the fifth day of the first lunar month, so no need to go under the knife. It is also a symbol of the Chinese New Year. The New Year celebrations in the Northeast are full of flavor. People also visit relatives and friends to celebrate the New Year, so every family must buy New Year’s things before the new year. This is called the busy year. When it comes to lunch at the age of 30, Northeastern people are very particular about it. When our parents are around, we want the whole family to reunite. You can't start the meal if one of them is missing. You have to worship your ancestors before eating. The seats are also particular. Parents sit in the upright seat. If grandma is there, grandpa sits in the upright seat. There is also a point when serving food, cold first and then hot. Don’t underestimate the Northeastern people’s New Year celebrations. They are very particular about it. Although the conditions were not good before, when the New Year comes, every family will be rich. In the past, we raised pigs at home, and the dishes made by those who killed the New Year pigs before the New Year would be better. a lot of. In my family, there must be chickens and fish during the Chinese New Year. There is no feast without chickens and fish, and meat is indispensable. There are pork ribs, pork slices, southern-fried meatballs, pot-wrapped pork, pan-fried rolls, sausages, salads, and sauerkraut. Fresh vegetables are very expensive in the north during the Chinese New Year, but Northeasterners still buy stir-fried vegetables. , stir-fry beans, stir-fry green peppers, stir-fry garlic moss, stir-fry squid, stir-fry mushrooms, stir-fry fungus, and some discerning people will also cook some sweet and sour dishes. In short, the reunion dinner on the 30th day is the most exquisite. Every family must have at least twenty-six to thirty dishes! In short, this meal is the most luxurious and exquisite meal. In the north, this meal also has the connotation of grabbing wealth. Whoever sets off firecrackers first means that his family is here, dinner is ready, and wealth is coming. In the evening, the whole family makes dumplings called pinching ingots. The whole family joins in and the dumplings are ready after a while. The children play with lanterns to watch the New Year's Eve and wait for the New Year's money to be given out. They eat dumplings on the morning of the first day of the Lunar New Year. After eating, we have to pay New Year greetings. In short, New Year's Eve is the most important thing to celebrate.

To be honest, you can eat whatever you want and don’t be extravagant and wasteful. Now that living conditions are better, there is no shortage of food and drink. As long as the family is happy and healthy, it doesn’t matter what you eat. Now, who is the king to be with?

People from Jilin in the Northeast, we eat casually in the morning when we are 30, and then prepare meals for the afternoon. We usually start eating from 1:30 to 2:00 in the afternoon. The meal is also the most sumptuous meal of the year for us. After the meal, we take a break and those who can play mahjong and poker start playing. The ladies in the family take a break and start preparing dumplings and vegetables for midnight. Our family In the middle of the night, I cook six dishes and make dumplings!

Located in Yangzhou City, Jiangsu Province, let’s answer what our family eats on New Year’s Eve!

Breakfast

Rice porridge, steamed buns (made at home)

New Year’s Eve is winter, and basically every household will steam steamed buns in winter. . But this steamed bun is not the big white steamed bun in the north. It has stuffing inside.

General: sesame sugar steamed buns, vegetable steamed buns, shredded radish steamed buns (self-grown sesame seeds, green vegetables, large white radish)

Special ones: bean paste steamed buns, meat steamed buns. These two kinds of packages are rare.

This steamed bun looks like a big steamed bun from the outside, not the pleated buns sold outside. It is fermented (fermented) with alkaline water and then wrapped.

I remember that this also requires skills. My dad failed once, and as a result, my family had no steamed buns to eat in the winter that year.

Chinese food (especially exquisite)

At noon on New Year's Eve here, we have to respect our ancestors, that is, we burn paper money, toast and kowtow to the relatives who have passed away at home.

After a few minutes, I thought the ancestors had finished eating, and then they started to collect the burned paper money and deal with the ashes. Then they had to reheat the vegetables and rice before they could be eaten by us living people. The chopsticks, wine, and rice must be taken back to the kitchen, put aside, and then put on the table, and the family begins to eat lunch.

After lunch, the whole family takes the remaining paper money to visit the graves of their deceased relatives, just like the Qingming Festival.

Dinner (Reunion)

The night of New Year’s Eve is probably a day for all Chinese league members, and they usually eat sumptuously. However, because there have been more three-high-income families in recent years, our family really doesn’t have as much food as other families. Mainly eat hot pot, induction cooker hot pot.

Summary

The customs of each place are different, but they all have their own characteristics. But no matter what, the Chinese New Year is a day of reunion. Good or bad food is not important. What is important is the warmth and excitement of being together as a family.

Now the Chinese New Year is the same as usual, not so particular. At most, the reunion dinner has more meat and vegetables.

You can eat whatever you want, no need to pay too much