The "Sixi Tangyuan" that people like to eat on the morning of New Year's Day is made of four kinds of stuffing, including vegetables, bean paste, sesame candy and minced meat. It's delicious, but people pay more attention to the name of glutinous rice balls, because the meaning of this kind of "four happy glutinous rice balls" is "all the best" and "family reunion", which is similar to "four happy glutinous rice balls". In the old days, Yangzhou people also had the custom of eating "lucky eggs" on the morning of the first day. There is such a narrative in the twenty-seventh chapter of "Yangzhou Commentary" Piwu's "Pepper": In the fourth watch, the cold is heavier. At this time, someone shouted in the distance: "sell-lucky eggs!" " What is an auspicious egg? That is, after the eggs are cooked, people's scenery is painted on the eggshell, with red and green colors; Or write some words, such as "good luck" and "good luck every year" ... this egg is called good luck egg. In the past, during the Spring Festival, lucky eggs were sold everywhere and every household had to buy them. Buyers come to bring good luck to the family. The head of the family, lying in bed with his face facing the sky, the woman put the auspicious egg on the man's heart and said something auspicious! How satisfying it is to become rich! All the best! ..... and so on, and then invite the man to eat eggs, which goes well every year. ..... vendors selling "lucky eggs" have long since disappeared. Unfortunately, most people in Yangzhou today don't know what "lucky eggs" are. According to the description in Yangzhou Pinghua, this eggshell is painted with mountains and rivers, so it is not so much a lost seasonal food as a lost folk handicraft. On the fifteenth day of the first month of the Lantern Festival, there is a saying in Yangzhou that "the light on the lantern falls on the face of the lamp", which means that on the thirteenth night of the first month, you should eat glutinous rice balls, and on the eighteenth night of the first month, you should eat noodles. Why is there such a custom The popular explanation is that eating jiaozi symbolizes "satiety" and eating noodles symbolizes "smoothness". The "sweet dumplings" here are also called "Yuanxiao". Now people in Yangzhou call solid dumplings "Yuanxiao" and stuffed dumplings "Tangyuan". In the past, this was not the case. Those with stuffing are also called "Yuanxiao". "Introduction to Zhou Zhen and Zhi Zhu's Ci" said: "Yuanxiao people, rubbing glutinous rice flour, wrapped in osmanthus in the middle, like a full moon." It seems that because of the "full moon", Yangzhou people call "Yuanxiao" "Tangyuan". The meaning of eating glutinous rice balls "round and full" also comes from this. Eating noodles is on the night when the lights are turned off on the eighteenth day of the first month. Introduction to Zhou Zhen and Zhi Zhu's Ci also said: "Lights out on the 18th, people spit, commonly known as" putting lanterns, putting lanterns ". Let's hold a party for ourselves to celebrate. On the 19th, worshipping Tibetan statues washed away the joy, and happy common names hung music. As the saying goes, every family tore the music score and everyone searched it. Scholars attack books, workers return to their hometowns, and the years are over. " This passage doesn't directly explain why we should eat noodles on the 18th day of the first month, but the answer has been implied: the 18th day of the first month will be the end of the New Year, and from then on, "everyone will find his place", "scholars will attack books and work will return to his place". Eating a bowl of noodles is to wish people that everything will be as smooth as eating noodles in their coming life. Eating jiaozi or noodles is the self-design and self-arrangement of Yangzhou people for their daily life. It is also the uniqueness of Yangzhou people to find out the meaning of auspiciousness and auspiciousness from simple food images. On the first month of the New Year's Day Wine Festival, Yangzhou people also have the custom of "inviting spring" and "being a god of wealth". There is a poem "Please Make Spring Wine" in Volume 5 of "Three Hundred Poisons in Hanjiang River", which says: "Spring is coming, it is prosperous for a while, and spring dishes are full of strange fragrance. I won the beauty of spring, and I am at home this spring. " The quotation of this poem is more clear: "Yangcheng banquet is full, and it is called spring moths to feast relatives and friends around the Lantern Festival." There is also a record in "An Introduction to Zhou Zhen and Zhi Zhu's Ci": "A certain gentleman feasts and says' please spring'; The store hosted a banquet and said,' Be the God of Wealth'. " Well, this is an ancient wine container. In modern Chinese, "inviting spring wine" means inviting people to dinner during the Spring Festival. Only in "Introduction to Zhou Zhen and Zhi Zhu's Ci", people who gather for a banquet are divided into two categories, one is a gentleman and the other is a shopkeeper. The purpose of the party banquet is different and the form is the same. Nowadays, people no longer make such subtle distinctions. "Please celebrate the New Year" and "Being the God of Wealth" are all called "Please celebrate the New Year". In fact, the "Wine Festival to celebrate the New Year" is an ancient custom in the Tang Dynasty. In Fa Zhu Yuan Lin, a monk and Taoist priest in the Song Dynasty said: "Chang 'an custom in the Tang Dynasty, after New Year's Day, people were invited to meet and pass the number to sit in the wine. Today, more than a thousand years later, the custom of "Please celebrate New Year's Day" is still prevalent, especially in rural areas. People begin to invite friends, relatives and neighbors on the second day of the first month. If you invite me, I will invite you again until the eighteenth day of the first month. " Please celebrate the New Year "is a kind of etiquette of the Spring Festival, and it is also the need of people's real life. There are three meanings. First, it is a special respect for guests to treat them in the New Year, which is at the beginning of the year. Second, during the Spring Festival, there are more dishes at home, and there are more guests at this time. Thirdly, Yangzhou has been a commercially developed city since ancient times. Yangzhou people have many contacts with other places and work in other places. Villagers seldom meet each other. It is convenient for everyone to get together. Of course, nowadays people are more about buying wine, exchanging business information and discussing ways to make money. In this sense, it is quite reasonable to say that Zhou Zhen and Zhi Zhu's Ci "Silver Wine for the Year" is the "God of Wealth". There is a passage in "Introduction to Zhou Zhen Zhi Zhu's Ci" that it was preserved in the winter wind: "After a light snow, people preserved vegetables, saying' cold dishes', ... and stored them for the winter. "After Yangzhou people enter the winter, almost every household will pickle all kinds of vegetables and fish. The most common ones are sauerkraut, pickled radish, bacon and salted fish. In addition to "pickling", there is also "wind". Can wind vegetables, chicken, meat and so on. All of them are collectively referred to as "winter wax wind curing" by Yangzhou people. In the old society, people salted wax in winter in order to "save it for the winter". Now that the food supply is sufficient, there is no need to "keep it for the winter". Today's winter wax wind curing is a food processing method, because the food cured by winter wax wind has a special "wax fragrance", which is deeply loved by Yangzhou people and is called "cold dish" or "pickles". This kind of vegetable grown by suburban vegetable farmers seems to be specially used for pickling. Its head is fat, its stems are thin, its leaves are wide, its stems are white and tender, and it is green in Ye Er, one or two feet high. This dish is delicious only when it is cooked tender. Because it is tender, the soup overflows when it is cooked, so it is also called "soup dish". Wang Zengqi is a writer, but he can also pickle. In his essay "Gourmet in My Hometown", he specifically introduced the pickling method and eating method of pickles with the title of "Pickled Mushroom Soup", which was quite interesting to read: once it snowed, our family drank pickles soup. I don't know why. Is it because you can't buy food on snowy days? That's not necessarily true. Vegetable sellers can't go out, otherwise they will always go to the government to sell vegetables. This is probably just a habit. When I got up early in the morning and saw the snowflake, I knew it was pickle soup at noon today! Pickles are pickled vegetables. ..... green vegetables are like rape, but much taller. Pickled vegetables in winter, when vegetables are fat. Buy vegetables in bundles, wash them, dry them and put them in jars. A layer of vegetables, a layer of salt, solid code. You can eat whatever you want until the next spring. The new pickles preserved for four or five days are delicious, not salty or thin, tender, crisp and sweet, and unparalleled. In another essay, My Grandparents, Wang Lao also talked about mustard tuber: in winter, ... pickled mustard. Pickled "spicy dishes"-dried cabbage, pickled with mustard, opened the altar during the Chinese New Year, with a light color like gold, spicy and pungent, and extremely fragrant. I have never eaten such delicious pickles since I left my hometown. In addition to pickles, Wang Lao probably knows chicken. In "My Grandparents", he also talked about how to wind chickens: wind chickens-big cocks don't shed their hair, rub them with coarse salt, wrap them in lotus leaves and hang them in a ventilated place. It takes about 20 days, the longer the better. Wang Lao is from Gaoyou, Yangzhou. In his novels and essays, he wrote about home cooking in his hometown Gaoyou. Bachelor knows not only how to eat, but also how to eat, so it is ok to call bachelor a gourmet. In recent years, someone compiled Gaoyou's "Wang's Recipe" based on various dishes and foods mentioned in Wang Lao's articles. This is really a wonderful idea, very novel. It is said that this "secret recipe of Wang" is still very influential in Gaoyou. There is a poem in Lin Pu's Record of Xishan in Yangzhou in Qing Dynasty, which also talks about the pickles in Yangzhou. The poem says: shoulder vegetables are weathered and taste longer than autumn. Every family in the column is boasting, and it smells like dung. At the end of the poem, there is a note saying, "Before and after the heavy snow, all the pickles are collected and sent by the gardener. On weekdays, when people collect manure to irrigate their gardens, they even use vegetables to pay for it. "This poem records another custom in Yangzhou ―― pockmarked vegetables ―― winter wax is preserved in the wind. Ma Zi, Yangzhou dialect, is also called "toilet". In the past, in Yangzhou, every morning you could see farmers pushing dung carts to collect dung in toilets and transport it to farmland as fertilizer. This is called "emptying the toilet" in Yangzhou. There is a fixed area for farmers to "empty toilets" in cities, and they are not allowed to rob them indiscriminately. This fixed area is called "dung nest". As the saying goes, fertilizer is a farm treasure, and farming is indispensable. Therefore, farmers attach great importance to this "dung nest". Few people give up, even if they transfer others, they are paid. Farmers get fertilizer in the "dung nest" and think of giving back. What should they give back? Naturally, I grow my own vegetables. So every kimchi season, I choose a car full of "big dishes" for my family to eat. This is the so-called "pockmarked vegetable". When did Yangzhou school "pockmarked dishes" originate? Due to the lack of records, it is still difficult to determine, but at least it is the custom of the Qing Dynasty. Recently, I have seen some folk information from other places, and it is also common for foreign farmers to "pour girls" into the city. However, the "girl dumping" in other places is not a return of the "girl dishes" given by farmers to their host families, but a monthly cleaning fee called "monthly money". For example, at the end of the Qing Dynasty and the beginning of the Republic of China in Beijing, every household charged 10 cents to 50 cents, adding "saving money" on Dragon Boat Festival, Mid-Autumn Festival and Spring Festival, and extorting "drinking money" on cold and hot days and rainy days. Every family has a girl who urinates every day, but how to do it? I have to put up with a little blackmail. In contrast, Yangzhou's "Ma Zi Cai" is very human, and the meaning of "all manure" can be understood. -Steamed Chinese New Year dishes Yangzhou people have a lot of things to do before the New Year, but they are all marked with the word "Year". " "An Introduction to Zhou Zhen Zhi Zhu's Ci" points out this characteristic of Yangzhou people, among which, it is said that pickles are cooked at the right time around the winter solstice, which is called "cooking New Year's dishes". Everyone invited help and said "Help the Year". After the sacrifice, the development of age is called "annual account". People in the Qihe family will get a charcoal raft, which says "Year of Respect", and people who exchange gifts are called "Year of Ceremony". ..... Although the rice is also called "Nianchai" and "Nianmi", the word "Nian" is crowned to indicate the meaning of the festival. Among all kinds of "annual events" in Yangzhou, the most important one is "annual steaming". Mindfulness is a steamed snack, which is steamed before the festival and stored at home for people to enjoy during the festival. Steamed snacks in Yangzhou are mainly steamed buns, similar to jiaozi in the north. Scholars in the north have studied jiaozi and pointed out that jiaozi was called Wonton in ancient times, and said that Wonton was also connected with chaos, implying that the world was in a state of chaos at the beginning of its formation. Because Pangu created the world, there is a world on earth, so eating wonton in the New Year means opening a new year. By analogy, the steamed buns of Yangzhou people seem to be more vivid than those of jiaozi. The skin of steamed stuffed bun symbolizes the sky, and the stuffing inside symbolizes the earth. Isn't it more breakthrough? In fact, another practice of Yangzhou people is more practical. Some people air steamed bread, steamed buns and cakes a little, and then put them neatly in a conspicuous place at home like a pyramid, so we must wait until the New Year. The people explained that this is called "stacking ingots", which symbolizes the new year and making money into treasure in the new year. No matter whether Yangzhou people are rich or simple in New Year, there are several vegetarian dishes that are essential. One is pea seedlings, peas, also called Ando in Yangzhou. Stir-fry a plate of Ando seedlings, which means "nothing is wrong." Secondly, there should be water celery, the stem is tubular, and the career in the second year can be "Passepartout". The third is tofu. With tofu, you can be "steep and rich" in the coming year. These all come from homophonic and image understanding in dialects. After the reasonable imagination of the people, they sent good wishes. There are also some dishes that are not expected, and some dishes with practical significance and local characteristics, that is, "ten coriander" and "happy dishes." Ten parsley "is a simple and easy-to-cook home-cooked dish, which is mainly pickles, with shredded carrots, shredded bamboo shoots, shredded dried beans, peanuts and soybeans." Every household should be fired. During the Spring Festival, people eat a lot of meat dishes, which are too greasy. Eating this mixed fried vegetarian dish feels fragrant and delicious, hence the name "Ten Coriander". The raw material of "Anle cuisine" is purslane, also called purslane. Wang Zengqi has also studied this dish. He said: "Amaranth is divided into human amaranth and horse amaranth. Amaranth is today's amaranth, and amaranth is purslane. My grandmother will pick full purslane in summer to dry, and make steamed buns during the Chinese New Year. "Yangzhou Xishan Xiaozhi" also confirmed Wang Lao's statement, saying: "In April and May, the horsetooth vegetables were pickled, named Anle vegetables, and stuffed buns were made at the end of the year. "Ardisia japonica is an annual succulent herb that can be used as medicine to treat dysentery. There are many dishes in the New Year, and it is inevitable that there will be negligence. Housewives in Yangzhou use horsetooth vegetables to wrap buns, which is not only a kind of flavor food, but also can ensure the well-being of their families. This is a veritable "happy dish".