Laba porridge was originally a religious festival food of Buddhism. Dieting and Dieting Custom in the Year of China: Before becoming a Buddha, Sakyamuni traveled all over India to find the true meaning of life. When he arrived in Magadah in northern India, he was tired and hungry and fainted. At this time, a shepherdess saw this scene and quickly took out her lunch and fed it to Sakyamuni bit by bit. Shepherdess's lunch is a mixture of all kinds of food, including all kinds of wild fruits collected. Sakyamuni ate this delicious lunch and recovered. Later, he bathed in the Nellian River, sat under a bodhi tree and meditated. He became a Buddha in early December. Since then, every year on the day of "La Qi", monks in the temple have to take fresh dried fruits and put them in washed utensils and stay up all night until dawn. The cooked porridge will be used to worship Buddha. At that time, the monks in the temple will recite the scriptures and then drink porridge as a souvenir. This is the origin of Laba porridge. Buddhism has spread far-reaching in our country and followed this custom. As for the ingredients of Laba porridge, almonds, peach kernels, preserved fruits, glutinous rice, soybeans and beans were used in the Northern Song Dynasty. Walnuts, pine nuts and persimmon chestnuts were used in the Southern Song Dynasty. Porridge in the Yuan Dynasty is dark red, also known as red porridge and cinnabar porridge. Red raw materials such as red beans, lotus seeds, peanuts and red dates may be used.
In the Song Dynasty, Meng Yuanshen recorded in "Dream of Tokyo": On December 8, "Buddhist baths were held in various temples, and seven treasures and five flavors of porridge were given to his disciples, which was called Laba porridge. Everyone is a Japanese family and eats fruit porridge. "
According to the legend of Anhui people, when Zhu Yuanzhang was a child, he herded cattle for the landlord and was often hungry because he could not cook. One day, he found a hole in a hut. He reached down and touched it, but it was a mouse's "granary"! There are rice, soybeans, red dates, chestnuts and other things in it, so he put these grains together in the pot and cooked a pot of hot porridge, which was delicious. After Zhu Yuanzhang became emperor, he was tired of eating delicacies all day and wanted to change his taste. On the day of Laba, he suddenly remembered cooking porridge from a mouse hole when he was a child, and now he ordered the chef to cook porridge with various cereals. After eating it, I was very happy and named this porridge "Laba porridge".
Since then, Yuan, Ming and Qing dynasties have followed this dietary custom, which was the most popular in Qing Dynasty. There is a poem that says, "Laba cooks a double bow, and hazelnuts and peach kernels are dyed red. I like to ask my children to look at it. The Buddha's shadow is boundless. "
In the Ming Dynasty, rice, ginkgo, walnuts and chestnuts were added to cook porridge.
The famous Lama Temple Laba porridge, in addition to glutinous rice, millet and other grains, also has diced mutton and cream. Porridge noodles are sprinkled with red dates, longan, walnuts, raisins, melon seeds and green shredded pork.
Laba porridge, also known as eight-treasure porridge, is made of eight materials (such as longan, coix seed, cereal, glutinous rice, mung bean, red bean, kidney bean, peanut, etc.). ).
New Year's Cake-Eating New Year's Cake during the Spring Festival, "Choose a year to win the year to pray for the New Year." It means that every year goes well.
The types of rice cakes are: white rice cakes and yellow rice cakes in the north; There are water mill rice cakes in Jiangnan; There is glutinous rice in the southwest; There are red turtle cakes in Taiwan Province province.
In the book Dialect of Han Dynasty, the title of "Gao" was popular in Wei, Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasties. Jia Sixie's Book of Qi Yaomin records the production method. During the Ming and Qing dynasties, cakes have developed into snacks supplied in the market all year round, and the flavors in the north and south are different.
There are two kinds of rice cakes in the north: steamed and fried. In addition to steaming and frying, there are other methods in the south, such as frying in slices and cooking in soup.
Jiaozi —— As early as the 5th century, jiaozi was a common food for Han people in the north. At that time, jiaozi was "shaped like a crescent moon, and the world was delicious." But at that time, jiaozi ate soup, so it was called "Wonton". In the Tang dynasty, eating was the same as today. 1972, Jiaozi was found in a Tang Dynasty tomb in Turpan, Xinjiang, with seven different shapes from those in modern times. Jiaozi was called "Jiaozi" in Song Dynasty, and it also appeared in novels of Qing Dynasty. There was a word "flat food" in Hu Sihui's Eating in Yuan Dynasty. In the Ming and Qing dynasties, there were new names such as "dumplings", "water snacks" and "boiled cakes".
After the mid-Ming Dynasty, jiaozi gradually became a traditional food for the Spring Festival in the north. Because jiaozi is shaped like an ingot, it means "turning money into treasure".
During the Spring Festival, jiaozi pays attention to wrapping at twelve o'clock on New Year's Eve, which means "making friends at a young age".
Lantern Festival-Lantern Festival, which Taoism calls "Shangyuan Festival". According to the notes of Yi Tu Zhen (female+lang) in Yuan Dynasty, I quote the notes of Sanyutie: After the Goddess Chang'e flying to the moon, I missed her and fell ill. On the fourteenth day of the first month, a teenager suddenly asked for an audience, claiming to be the messenger of Chang 'e, and said, "Madam knows you are thinking, and there is no way to go down. Tomorrow is the full moon. You should use rice flour as a pill, put it in the northwest of the room, call your wife's name, and you can go down in three nights. " You obeyed the law, and Chang 'e really came. It can be seen that eating Lantern Festival means "reunion is like the moon".
In the Ming Dynasty, Lantern Festival was very common in Beijing, and the practice was no different from today. During the reign of Kangxi in the Qing Dynasty, the "Babao Lantern Festival" and the Ma Siyuan Lantern Festival prevailed in the ruling and opposition parties. In the early years of the Republic of China, Yuan Shikai ordered that it was forbidden to shout Yuanxiao, because it had the same pronunciation as "Yuan Xiao".
In addition to glutinous rice noodles, there are glutinous sorghum noodles, yellow wheat and so on. The fillings include sweet-scented osmanthus sugar, mountain slag sugar, assorted foods, bean paste, jujube paste and so on.
Physically, there are walnuts as big as soybeans, "Baizi Tangyuan", and "deerskin Tangyuan" with solid and thin skin in jiaozi.
Spring cakes-Eating spring cakes at the beginning of spring is an ancient custom in China. In the Jin Dynasty, there was a "five taro plates", that is, "spring plates", which put spring cakes and vegetables in the same plate. During the Tang and Song Dynasties, eating spring cakes became more and more popular, and the emperor gave them to officials. At that time, spring cakes were very particular: "Green HongLing, golden rooster and jade swallow, extremely exquisite production, each dish costs 10 thousand yuan." People also use it to give gifts to each other.
The custom of eating spring cakes also influenced the brotherly peoples. For example, when Lu Ye Chu Lu followed Genghis Khan on his expedition to the western regions, he ordered the chef to cook a spring dish and wrote a poem: "I accidentally forgot the spring day yesterday, so I'll try to cook a spring dish." At the beginning of this case, the silver line was chaotic, and the sand bottle cooked the lotus root. Mix well with peas, knead well with scallion, and finely chop Artemisia annua and chives. Why fill it up? Why bother being anointed? "
Nowadays, spring cakes come in different shapes and at different times. There are baked and steamed; As big as a round fan or as small as a lotus root.