Qingming Festival is a very traditional festival. Like other traditional festivals, you need to eat corresponding delicacies on Qingming Festival. There are many delicacies to eat during Qingming Festival, but few people know why they eat them. So on Qingming Festival

Why eat Ai Bo?

What is Aibo?

Why eat moxa sticks during Qingming Festival? As early as thousands of years ago, Ge Hong and Bao Gu used mugwort for medicinal purposes. Bao Gu used red-foot moxa to make moxa sticks to treat people.

The traditional snack that has been passed down to this day, mugwort, is made from mugwort and has certain medicinal and health-care functions.

There is a folk custom in the Hakka area: "Eating mugwort before and after the Qingming Festival will keep you from getting sick all year round."

Ai Cong, also called Qingming Cong, exudes a strong fragrance of mugwort leaves and has the effects of removing dampness and warming the stomach. It is a local specialty snack that almost every household can make. It is also a unique Qingming culture of the Hakkas.

The moxa cake made with traditional ancient methods inherits not only the taste, but more importantly, the culture of health preservation.

Every time around the Qingming Festival, when mugwort grows most tender, Hakka people will go out to pick mugwort and make mugwort cakes with glutinous rice flour.

During the Qingming Festival, the weather is damp and humid, and moxa leaves have the effect of dispelling dampness and strengthening the spleen and stomach. Eating moxa sticks is suitable for dispelling dampness and warming the body. Therefore, it is said that eating moxa sticks will strengthen the body.

What is Ai Bo? Ai Bo is essentially a glutinous rice product, a type of Hakka rice, and a local traditional snack.

Whenever the Tomb-Sweeping Festival comes, Hakkas in every household will pick natural mugwort on the way to worship, and then make such a flavorful snack.

Nowadays, Aibo is not only a traditional Hakka snack, but also widely popular in Fujian, Jiangsu and Zhejiang regions. It incorporates the special practices of Fujian, Jiangsu and Zhejiang regions, has local characteristics, and has a new name - "Qingtuan".

How to make mugwort 1. First prepare cornstarch, glutinous rice flour, fresh mugwort sprouts, white sugar and water.

Mix the cornstarch and glutinous rice flour in a ratio of 1:1 into a large clean plate and mix well and set aside.

2. Boil a pot of water. When the water boils, pour the fresh mugwort leaves into the pot. Leave the lid on and continue to boil until the water boils. Then remove and drain the water.

After the mugwort leaves have cooled, wring out the excess water, place them on a chopping board, chop the mugwort leaves into pieces with the back of a knife, and put them on a plate for later use (do not chop with the blade, as the chopped taste will not be good).

3. Mix the processed mugwort, glutinous rice flour, cornstarch, and sugar (add an appropriate amount of sugar, increase or decrease according to personal taste) into a large plate, slowly add water to the rice flour, a small amount at a time, and add water while kneading the dough.

, mix the rice flour and mugwort leaves thoroughly until the dough is formed (the dough should not be too soft or too hard, and should not stick to your hands).

4. Grind the fried peanut kernels and sesame seeds into coarse powder.

5. Mix the ground peanuts, sesame seeds and appropriate amount of white sugar as a backup filling.

6. Wash the banana leaves, cut them into small pieces, and spread them flat on the steamer.

Banana leaves are used to hold the mugwort so that they do not stick to each other.

7. Take a small ball of dough about the size of a table tennis ball, knead it into a cake shape (not too thin, otherwise the filling will leak out), pour two teaspoons of filling, and wrap the filling like a bun.

8. Put the stuffing-wrapped moxa sticks against the banana leaves and steam them in a steamer for 25 to 30 minutes.

Where is the specialty of Ai Bo? Ai Bo is one of the Qingming rice dumplings. It is a delicious traditional snack of Han nationality and belongs to Hakka cuisine.

It is made of sticky rice flour, glutinous rice flour, mugwort, etc. Because mugwort is added, it has certain medicinal and health-care functions.

Mugwort pastry is a traditional pastry widely popular in Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Hakka, southern Fujian, Chaoshan, and Guangfu regions. It is called "Qingtuan" in Jiangsu and Zhejiang, "Aihuan" in eastern Guangdong and Taiwan's Hakka areas, and "Aihuan" in northern Guangdong and

In Jiangxi area, it is generally called "Ai Guo" or "Ai Ci", in southern Fujian and Chaoshan areas, it is called "Ai Kueh", and in Guangfu area, it is called "Ai Cake".

The preparation methods and related customs are similar in different places. There are different ways of eating sweet or salty fillings, steaming or frying.

In Jiangsu and Zhejiang areas, it is usually filled with bean paste filling or other sweet fillings and made into a ball shape; while Hakka people usually press the mugwort into an oblate shape, which is mainly sweet; in Jiangxi area, they like to wrap meat fillings and shape them into dumplings.