In the Laba Festival in northern Shaanxi Plateau, in addition to using a variety of rice and beans, various dried fruits, tofu and meat must be added to make porridge. After eating, the porridge should be smeared on the door, the stove and the trees outside the door to ward off evil spirits and avoid disasters and welcome a bumper agricultural harvest in the coming year. Moreover, it is forbidden to eat vegetables on Laba day. If you eat vegetables on this day, there will be many weeds in the crop fields.

In some places in Shaanxi that do not produce or produce little rice, people do not eat Laba porridge, but eat Laba noodles. Use various fruits and vegetables to make sautee, and roll out the noodles. On the morning of the eighth day of the twelfth lunar month, the whole family eats together. In Ningxia, this Laba porridge has also transformed into Laba rice. It is usually made with various beans, rice, and potatoes to cook the porridge, plus "wheat ears" made of wheat noodles or buckwheat noodles cut into rhombus-shaped willow leaves. Then add scallion oil, and the whole family will only eat Laba rice and no vegetables that day.