The solar term season in the Great Cold coincides with Laba Festival, so it is customary to eat Laba porridge in the Great Cold.

Laba porridge is a kind of porridge cooked with a variety of ingredients in Laba Festival, also known as Qibao Wuwei porridge. Eating Laba porridge to celebrate the harvest has been passed down to this day. In ancient times, on the eighth day of the twelfth lunar month, the custom of eating "Laba porridge" ("laba rice" in some places) spread among the people in China. In Henan, Laba porridge, also known as "everyone's meal", is a festival food custom to commemorate the national hero Yue Fei.

"Laba porridge at the age of Yanjing": "Laba porridge is cooked with yellow rice, white rice, glutinous rice, millet, water chestnut rice, chestnuts, red Jiang Dou, peeled jujube paste, etc., and dyed with red peach kernels, almonds, melon seeds, peanuts, hazelnuts, pine nuts, white sugar, brown sugar and miscellaneous grapes for topical use." . Laba porridge, like laba rice, is the remains of ancient wax sacrifice.

"Sacrifice to the Suburb Special Sacrifice" says that the wax sacrifice is "December of the year, which brings together all things and seeks for food". Laba porridge is mixed with food from all directions and cooked in a pot with rice, which means bringing together all things and reconciling thousands of spirits.

The Origin of Eating Laba Porridge in Great Cold

Origin one:

In ancient China, the Emperor of Heaven, in December of the lunar calendar, used dry things to make a La Worship to worship the gods. La Worship includes two aspects: one is sacrifice; The second is prayer.

Sacrifice is to worship the eight-valley star god, offering it with dry things to express the meaning of Qingfeng harvest. Dry matter is called wax, and eight is the god of eight grains and stars, so it is called Laba. In terms of time, La Worship is held on the eighth day of the twelfth lunar month every year in the lunar calendar. The eighth day of the twelfth lunar month is also called Laba.

Prayer is an important aspect of La Worship, which is to pray for good weather in the coming year and ensure a bumper agricultural harvest. Every year on the eighth day of the twelfth lunar month, dry things are sacrificed to the eight-valley star god, and prayers are made, which are called Laba wishes or wax eight wishes, and they are homophonic with porridge. So on the eighth day of the twelfth lunar month, dried fruits and vegetables are mixed together, cooked into porridge, and offered to the agricultural god to express the meaning of harvest in Qingfeng, and prayed. Laba porridge is used to homophone the meaning of Laba Zhu, which is the origin of Laba porridge. It means cooking porridge with dry things, offering sacrifices to the god of agriculture, praying and praying for blessing to celebrate the harvest.

Origin 2:

Another way of saying it is that Laba porridge was originally cooked by Buddhist temples for bodhisattvas-eighteen kinds of dried fruits symbolize eighteen arhats, and later this custom became popular among the people. The story of Laba porridge in Buddhism comes from the story that a cowherd girl provides chyle. Later, it became effective for China's Buddhist disciples. On the eighth day of the twelfth lunar month, they cook porridge with grains and fruits for the Buddha, which is called Laba porridge, also called Qibao Wuwei porridge. Up to now, this custom has gradually spread to the people, and most people have to cook Laba porridge on this day, which has become one of the folk customs.

On the night of the seventh day of the twelfth lunar month, people began to get busy, washing rice, soaking fruits, plucking skin, removing stones and picking them carefully, then cooking them in the middle of the night and stewing them with low fire until the next morning, when Laba porridge was cooked.

After laba porridge is cooked, you should first offer it to the Buddha and the monk. After that, if you want to give it to your relatives and friends, you must send it out before noon. If you give the porridge to the poor, it will be good for yourself. Finally, it is eaten by the whole family. Leftover Laba porridge, which is preserved after eating for several days, is considered as a good omen, taking its meaning of "more than one year".

Matters needing attention in drinking Laba porridge in cold solar terms

1, children

When making traditional Laba porridge, people usually choose rice, coix seed, japonica rice, millet, black rice, adzuki bean, cowpea, mung bean, pea and broad bean as the main ingredients, and then add peanuts, pine nuts, raisins, walnuts, lotus seeds and chestnuts. Children's digestive ability is weak, you can add jujube, lotus seeds, yam, coix seed and other accessories to strengthen the spleen and replenish qi, warm the middle warmer and strengthen the spleen. If children accumulate food, you can add fresh hawthorn to help digestion. Because barley, peanuts, oats, etc. are easy to cause children's allergies, if they are given to children before the age of one, they should not be put in porridge.

2. People with diabetes

People with diabetes often worry that porridge is easier to absorb and their blood sugar will rise after eating. Experts remind that patients with diabetes and cardiovascular diseases can solve this problem by adding oats and yam in Laba porridge. Eating oats can slow down the rise of blood sugar, and raw materials such as yam can also be added. But don't put jujube, persimmon and other raw materials with high sugar content, and don't put sugar when drinking porridge. If you want to eat sweets, you can put some sweeteners. In addition, diabetic patients should appropriately reduce the intake of staple food when drinking porridge.

3. Cardiovascular and cerebrovascular patients

Coix seed is beneficial to water infiltration, spleen strengthening, lung tonifying and heat clearing, and can reduce blood pressure when added to porridge. Red beans are beneficial to water infiltration and blood enrichment. Soybeans are rich in protein, crude fiber and trace elements, and mung beans can help lower blood pressure, which are all suitable for patients with hypertension and cardiovascular and cerebrovascular diseases.

In addition, young people can put more starch-rich nuts such as chestnuts and lotus seeds when eating Laba porridge. Obese people can drink Laba porridge with more oats, buckwheat, soybeans and peas. Laba porridge for the elderly should be thick and thin to increase intestinal peristalsis. Women who love beauty can add black rice, black beans, walnuts and pine nuts to Laba porridge.