What's the story about Laba eating eight-treasure porridge?
There is another interesting story about the origin of Laba porridge: It is said that Zhu Yuanzhang grazed for the landlord's house when he was young, and lived a life without enough food and warm clothes. On one occasion, on the eighth day of the twelfth lunar month, he kept sheep in the wild for a day and didn't eat a decent meal at night. So he searched everywhere in the wild to satisfy his hunger. All of a sudden, he found a big fat mouse at the edge of the field and fled into a mouse hole in a hurry. Zhu Yuanzhang approached the hole and dug it out with branches. He found some various kinds of food in the mouse hole. Obviously, this is the winter storage food for the mouse. Zhu Yuanzhang took out a handful of whole grains, including millet, corn, peanuts and red beans. He washed these miscellaneous grains and cooked them into porridge, which tasted delicious. After Zhu Yuanzhang became emperor, he still remembered the "miscellaneous grains porridge" he personally made when he was young. He stipulated that this kind of cereal porridge should be made in the imperial dining hall, and named it "Laba porridge". The royal chef added Gordon Euryale seed, lotus seed, osmanthus fragrans, peach kernel and jujube to the porridge, which made it especially sweet and delicious. Later, this kind of porridge spread to the people, and it has been extended to this day.