What traditional foods are there in the Lantern Festival?

1. Tangyuan and Yuanxiao

In the Lantern Festival, people in the south eat Tangyuan and people in the north eat Yuanxiao, all in order to seek a beautiful meaning of family reunion. The main raw materials for making glutinous rice dumplings and Yuanxiao are glutinous rice, which is flat in nature, sweet in taste, tonifying deficiency and regulating blood, invigorating spleen and appetizing, benefiting qi and stopping diarrhea, and has the functions of warming the middle warmer, promoting fluid production and moistening dryness. The stuffing of glutinous rice balls is sweet, salty, meaty and vegetarian, while Yuanxiao is mostly sweet, mainly fruit and dried fruit.

2. Lettuce

During the Lantern Festival, Cantonese people like to "steal" lettuce and cook it with cakes. It is said that this kind of food represents auspiciousness. Cantonese people are calm and down-to-earth, and they have the best intentions for festivals. Lettuce, which is most commonly used in festive occasions such as the opening of new stores, is also an essential holiday item for the Lantern Festival. Lettuce, which often becomes a common vegetable in the southern dining table, is homophonic with "making money", so it is also regarded as a festive thing symbolizing wealth and good fortune.

3. Yuanxiao Tea

In Shaanxi and other places, there is a custom of eating Yuanxiao tea, that is, putting all kinds of vegetables and fruits in hot noodle soup, much like "Yuanxiao porridge" in ancient times. This tea increases the intake of cellulose, minerals and vitamins, and is not as greasy as ordinary Yuanxiao. It has a neutralizing effect on the acidic constitution caused by eating more animal food in festivals, and also makes Yuanxiao more comprehensive in nutrition.

4. Camellia oleifera

On the night of the Lantern Festival, the flat ground says "fifteen flat, sixteen yuan", one day to eat jiaozi, one day to eat Yuanxiao; In the mountainous area, it is "fifteen dozen camellia oleifera, sixteen pinch flat food". It is the so-called "ten miles of different customs." Making tea is to stir the tea noodles with chopsticks to make camellia oleifera, also called noodle tea.

5. Oil hammer

In the Southern and Northern Dynasties, rice porridge or bean porridge with gravy was poured on the festive food of the Lantern Festival. However, this food is mainly used for sacrifices, and it is not a holiday food. It was not until the Tang Dynasty that Zheng Wangzhi's "The Record of the Chef" recorded: "Dieting in the middle of the year, going to the oil hammer." The method of making an oil hammer is similar to the fried Yuanxiao of future generations, according to a record in Shangshi Order quoted from Taiping Guangji and Lushi Miscellanies. Some people call it "the pearl of oil painting".

6. jiaozi

The fifteenth day of the first month is here, and people in Henan have the custom and tradition of eating jiaozi, so they should eat jiaozi on the fifteenth day of the first month. Jiaozi is a kind of folk food with a long history, which is very popular among the people. There is a saying among the people that "it's delicious but not as good as jiaozi".

7. Jujube cakes

People in western Henan like to eat jujube cakes during the Lantern Festival, which means good luck. Jujube cake was originally an imperial cake in the Qing Dynasty. It is fragrant and sweet, and contains nutrients such as vitamin C, protein, calcium, iron and vitamins, which can not only tonify the spleen and stomach, but also benefit qi and promote fluid production. It also has the effects of protecting the liver, increasing muscle strength, caring skin and preventing aging.

8. Sticky cakes

Sticky cakes are also called rice cakes. In addition to Yuanxiao and noodles, there are people who eat sticky cakes during the Lantern Festival. Sun Simiao, a famous doctor in the Tang Dynasty, wrote in "Prescription to Prepare for a Urgent Need, Food Treatment" that "self-nourishing rice is sweet, slightly cold, non-toxic, heat-removing, and qi-invigorating." After the Tang Dynasty, there were also records of eating cakes during the Lantern Festival in the Yuan Dynasty.

9, bean dough

People in Kunming like to eat bean dough, which is similar to Yuanxiao. It is to stir-fry beans, grind them, make them into balls and cook them with water. It tastes good.

1. Bad soup

Taizhou eats bad soup after seeing lanterns on the fourteenth day of the first month every year. Stir-fry the bad soup with shredded pork, shredded winter bamboo shoots, mushrooms, fungus, fresh ducklings, dried beans, oil bubbles, Sichuan bean boards, spinach, etc., and then add a little rice flour to cook it into a salty paste food. The bad soup drunk on the fifteenth day of the first month is sweet, made of sweet potato powder or lotus root starch with lotus seeds, sweet dates, longan and so on.

11. Steamed bread and wheat cake

There is a custom of eating steamed bread and wheat cake in Pujiang, Zhejiang during the Lantern Festival. It is said that the reason is that the steamed bread is made of dough and the wheat cake is round, which means "a happy reunion of the hair and grandchildren". In Shangyuan County, Changde, Hunan Province, pepper is used as soup, and leeks and fruits are added to entertain guests, which is called "time soup".

12. Noodles

There is a folk proverb in Jiangbei that says, "Put on the Lantern Festival, put down the Lantern Festival, and look forward to next year after eating it." Local people want to eat noodles on the fifteenth night of the first month, which sounds irrelevant to Lantern Festival, but it also means praying for good luck. "Records of the Year of the Emblem" contains: "On the 18th day of the first month, the lights went down, and people spat on their faces. As the saying goes,' When the lights went up, the lights went down', and each family celebrated for itself." Eating noodles when the lights are off symbolizes the meaning of continuous celebration.