Naturally, we eat congee!

Minqin County, a small county in Gansu Province in the north of my hometown, is a place where we drink congee on Lahai, but there are also Lahai noodles, which are a unique local specialty!

The congee and noodles of Lapa in my hometown have both the characteristics of the north and the flavor of the southern congee! This has a direct origin in the history of the old family Minqin County.

Before the Qing Dynasty, this place was called Zuma Ye Ze, not suitable for human survival, only the army guarding the border. At the end of the Qing Dynasty, the water level dropped, and the Hu people began to invade from here, so there was a large number of troops, and merchants from Inner Mongolia, and then later from Shaanxi, Sichuan, Jiangsu, etc., "sent" to a lot of "unemployed", and some of them only need to be "reformed" now. "reform through labor" of the "prisoners", so the old home customs and culture of life is "diversified", "North-South integration So the customs and culture of life in the old country are "diversified" and "fusion of north and south". The congee and noodles on the 8th day of the 12th lunar month is a representative example of this.

Laiba congee:

Laiba congee is traditionally made in Laojia and the country's production process is similar to that of the north, but the materials are the north, mainly: wheat, barley, mung beans, grains, soybeans, peanuts and so on.

Due to the characteristics of the northern desert climate, this mixed grain crop has a long growth cycle, so the flavor is a little more delicious than in other places. This is one of the main reasons why spring wheat flour in the north is of better quality than winter wheat flour.

LaBaNian noodles:

LaBaNian noodles are different from the ones you usually eat, they are wider, about four or five centimeters wide and about ten centimeters long! There are rectangular shapes and diamond-shaped ones.

As for why it is so wide, it is said that the original living conditions are poor, basically rely on the sky to eat, Lahai eat wide noodles, herald or look forward to see the grain harvest!

1, vegetarian Laha noodles.

The real folk characteristics, of course, to count the vegetarian Laha noodles.

The practice is to put the noodles under the branch Lahai porridge inside, which requires cooking people skilled in making noodles, otherwise it is either the noodles raw, or porridge paste to the pot!

Now the only people who can do a good job of making Laha noodles are the old people in the countryside who are over 60 years old! As a local life mine is also nearly ten years have not eaten authentic Minqin Laha noodles!

2, Halo Laha noodles.

One is directly to the fried mutton, meat down to the vegetarian Lahua noodles inside. This one requires even more skill!

The other kind is somewhat similar to the northern bashful noodles. First you make the bashfulness, then you add the bashfulness to the boiled noodles. However, this kind of noodle is a bit like ramen, longer and more like the pants belt noodle in Shaanxi. The difference is that the pantyhose noodles are pulled by rows of noodles (kind of like beef noodles nowadays), while the ramen noodles are first made, then stretched with a noodle stick, and then cut.

The traditional way of eating it is actually more elaborate. I can only remember that when I was very young, my mother would first sing a folk song with us when we ate Lapa noodles:

Lapa Lapa freezes off the master's chin

Maizi hits the chin

Cattle and goats have many chairs. 牛羊多下(ha)

......

哎，其他的都忘了，而且每个小乡镇的唱法不一样，内容也不一样。 But from within those words, you can also see that Lapa is actually about celebrating a good harvest and praying for happiness!

After singing, we were each given a small bowl, a small bowl of Lahai noodles, in each doorway to "pour point" (to each place a small amount of porridge and noodles). Grandparents generation of old people said, Lahai this day, the temperature is low, all the ancestors will come to the door to eat, if too hungry may stand directly to the door to visit, so to all the door are "pouring point", otherwise the ancestors will not eat, can not wait for New Year's Day ......

These customs just reflect the poor natural conditions at that time, not much to eat, every holiday first to sacrifice ancestors, to share with the ancestors! This is also the same as the Chinese New Year festival, for all the food offerings to ancestors - eating water do not look forward to digging wells! Pray for blessings - just hope to see a good harvest! People live a long life and have a good year!

Lastly, I hope you will come to my hometown as a guest, which is surrounded by deserts on three sides, with long years of wind and little rain, sweet fruits and pasta! There are also many desert specialties of wild vegetables in the fall rainy season!

The circles are farmland that can be cultivated; the arrows are the two highways to the outside, the top one leads to Inner Mongolia, where you can drive directly to Beijing, and the bottom one connects to the Lanxin line.