Reunion dinner usually includes chicken, duck, pork, dumplings, fish, rice cakes, etc. The annual "Reunion dinner" is extremely important to the Chinese people. The reunion of family can make people spiritually happy. It is a happy time to be comforted and satisfied, the whole family respects and loves each other, and talks about their family relationship. Sitting around the dinner table is a happy time. The following are some of the meanings of what to eat at the reunion dinner.

1. Dumplings

Dumplings are a folk food with a long history and are very popular among the people. There is a saying among the people that "dumplings are not as delicious as dumplings". The custom of eating dumplings during the Spring Festival was quite popular in the Ming and Qing Dynasties.

Dumplings are usually made before 12 o'clock in the evening on New Year's Eve and eaten at midnight. This is the beginning of the first day of the first lunar month. Eating dumplings means "New Year's Eve". , "Zi" is "Zi Shi", and "Jiao" is homophonic to "Jiao", which means "happy reunion" and "good luck".

Dumplings have become an indispensable program food during the Spring Festival for the following reasons: First, dumplings are shaped like ingots. People eat dumplings during the Spring Festival to "bring in wealth". Secondly, the dumplings are stuffed, which makes it easy for people to wrap various auspicious things in the stuffing to express people's wishes for the new year.

2. Fish

For a reunion dinner on New Year’s Eve, every family’s dining table must have a dish of fish. The word “fish” is the same as “yu”, so there is “fish” every year—— There is "surplus" every year, which is auspicious and festive.

There are many fish dishes in the north and south of our country, such as "Poached Crucian Carp" in Jiangsu cuisine, "Fried Anchovy Nuggets" in Ussuri cuisine, "Flamed Crucian Carp" in Sichuan cuisine, and "Float Crucian Carp" in Cantonese cuisine. "Smooth Bass Balls", "Qiyang Penfish" in Hunan cuisine, "Vinegar Pepper Fish" in Beijing cuisine, "Korea Whitebait" in Tianjin cuisine, "White Pine Salmon" in Northeastern cuisine, etc., are all A famous fish dish.

3. New Year Cake

New Year Cake is also called "Nian Nian Cake", which is homophonic with "Nian Nian Gao", which means that people's work and life are improving year by year. It is said that at first, rice cakes were used to worship gods at midnight and for ancestors during the New Year, and later became a Spring Festival food.

New year cakes are mostly made from glutinous rice flour, which is a specialty of the south of the Yangtze River. In the north, there are sticky grains like glutinous rice. The first one is sticky millet, commonly known as small yellow rice. This kind of millet is shelled and ground into powder. After being steamed with water, it becomes yellow, sticky and very sweet.

The production method is to sift the glutinous rice flour with silk silk, add water and honey to make a harder dough, stick dates and chestnuts on the dough, wrap it with Ruo leaves and steam it. become. This kind of glutinous rice pastry is quite characteristic of the Central Plains.

There are many types of rice cakes. Representative ones include white cakes from the north, yellow rice cakes from farmers in Saibei, water-milled rice cakes from Jiangnan water towns, and red turtle cakes from Taiwan. There are two types of northern rice cakes: steamed and fried, both of which are sweet. In addition to steamed and fried, southern rice cakes can also be fried in slices and boiled in soup, with both sweet and salty flavors.