What traditional food is eaten during the Lantern Festival? What to eat during the Lantern Festival?

What traditional food is eaten during the Lantern Festival? What to eat during the Lantern Festival?
The Lantern Festival is the first important festival after the Spring Festival. On the night of the Lantern Festival, the streets and alleys are decorated with lights, and people admire the lanterns and guess lantern riddles. So, what are the traditional foods for the Lantern Festival? What to eat during the Lantern Festival? If you want to know more about the first month of the lunar calendar in 2019, please pay attention to our Shui Mo Xiansheng website!

What traditional food is eaten during the Lantern Festival? What to eat during the Lantern Festival?

1. Tangyuan <br /> During the Lantern Festival, people in the south eat tangyuan. There is a line in the Taiwanese folk song "Selling Tangyuan": "A bowl of tangyuan is full and round, eating tangyuan brings reunion." The full moon in the sky and the tangyuan in the bowl mean family reunion and happiness.
Glutinous rice balls are made by mixing glutinous rice flour with water to form a glutinous rice skin, and then put into it various pre-prepared fillings, usually dried fruits and fruits plus vegetable oil, such as peanuts, sesame seeds, walnuts, etc. Finally, the glutinous rice skin is wrapped to form a round ball. Glutinous rice balls are wrapped.
2. Yuanxiao <br /> During the Lantern Festival, northerners eat Yuanxiao. Speaking of Yuanxiao, many people think that Tangyuan is Yuanxiao. In fact, although Yuanxiao and Tangyuan are not much different in raw materials and appearance, they are actually two different things. The most essential difference lies in the production process. Making glutinous rice balls is relatively simple. Generally, glutinous rice flour is mixed with water to make the skin, and then the filling is "wrapped" and it is ready. The making of Yuanxiao is much more complicated: first you need to knead the dough, cut the solidified stuffing into small pieces, rinse them with water, and then throw them into a basket filled with glutinous rice flour and roll them, sprinkling water as you roll, until the stuffing is covered with the glutinous rice flour and rolled into a ball.
3. Lettuce <br /> During the Lantern Festival, Guangdong people like to "steal" lettuce and mix it with cakes and pastries to cook. It is said that this food represents good luck. Guangdong people are peaceful and down-to-earth, and they seek good luck in festivals. Lettuce, which is usually used in festive occasions such as the opening of a new store, is also a must-have for the Lantern Festival. Lettuce is often a common vegetable on southern dinner tables. Its name sounds similar to "making money", which means making money. Therefore, it is also regarded as a festive symbol of wealth and good fortune.
4. Yuanxiao Tea <br /> In Shaanxi and other places, there is a custom of drinking Yuanxiao Tea during the Lantern Festival. Although it is called Yuanxiao Tea, it has nothing to do with Yuanxiao directly. Yuanxiao tea is made by adding various fruits and vegetables to hot soup noodles. After eating greasy foods such as fish and meat during the Chinese New Year, eating this Yuanxiao tea rich in vitamins, dietary fiber and minerals on the fifteenth day of the first lunar month can relieve the greasy feeling.
5. Oil tea <br /> The food on the night of the Lantern Festival is called "flat dumplings on the 15th and round dumplings on the 16th" in the plains. One day they eat dumplings and the next day they eat Yuanxiao. In the mountainous areas, it is "oil tea on the 15th and flat dumplings on the 16th". This is exactly what is meant by “customs vary every ten miles”. Making tea means stirring the tea with chopsticks and putting it into the pot to make oil tea, also known as noodle tea.
6. Youchui <br /> A traditional food for the Lantern Festival, rice or bean porridge topped with gravy during the Northern and Southern Dynasties. But this food is mainly used for sacrificial offerings and cannot be considered a festival food. It was not until the Tang Dynasty that Zheng Wangzhi's "Records of the Chef" recorded: "People in Bianzhou celebrate the Lantern Festival with oil hammers." The method of making oil hammers, according to a record of "Shangshi Ling" in "Lu's Miscellaneous Stories" quoted in "Taiping Guangji", is similar to the later fried Yuanxiao. Some people also call it the "Pearl of Oil Painting".
7. Dumplings <br /> The fifteenth day of the first lunar month is here. People in the north have the habit of eating dumplings. People in Henan have the Lantern Festival custom and tradition of "flat dumplings on the fifteenth day and round dumplings on the sixteenth day", so dumplings should be eaten on the fifteenth day of the first lunar month. Dumplings are a folk food with a long history and are very popular among the people. There is a folk saying that "nothing tastes better than dumplings."
8. Date Cake <br /> People in western Henan like to eat date cake during the Lantern Festival, which symbolizes good luck. Date cake was originally a royal pastry of the Qing Dynasty. It has a fragrant flavor and is sweet in the mouth. It contains nutrients such as vitamin C, protein, calcium, iron, vitamins, etc. It can not only nourish the spleen and stomach, invigorate qi and promote salivation, but also protect the liver, increase muscle strength, nourish the skin and prevent aging.
9. Sticky Cake <br /> Sticky Cake is also known as Rice Cake. In addition to Yuanxiao and noodles, people also eat sticky cakes during the Lantern Festival. Sun Simiao, a famous doctor in the Tang Dynasty, wrote in "Prescriptions for Emergencies: Food Therapy" that "Rice is sweet, slightly cold, non-toxic, can remove heat and benefit Qi." After the Tang Dynasty, there were also records of eating cakes on the Lantern Festival in the Yuan Dynasty.
10. Flour lanterns <br /> There is a custom of lighting flour lanterns that has been handed down since the Han Dynasty. Many people don’t know what flour lanterns are. In fact, flour lanterns are lamps made of flour, also called flour lamps. They are mainly a custom in the northern region. There are many shapes of rice dumpling lanterns. Generally, twelve lanterns are made, and thirteen are made in a leap year. Put cooking oil in the lanterns and then light them. This is a rice dumpling lantern. The lights during the Lantern Festival have auspicious meanings and can cure diseases and ward off evil spirits. As science was not well developed in ancient times, people used the amount of cooking oil left in the noodle lanterns after they were extinguished to predict the flood or drought conditions in the next twelve months of the year. On the 16th day of the first lunar month, the noodle lanterns were steamed and eaten. In some places, the noodles are steamed in a pot, and the amount of moisture remaining in the noodles after they are steamed is used to predict the yield.
11. Bean dough <br /> Kunming people like to eat bean dough. The method is similar to that of Yuanxiao. The beans are fried and then ground into flour. After rolling into balls, they are boiled in water. The taste is good.
12. Zao Geng <br /> People in the area around Taizhou, Zhejiang, eat salty Zao Geng on the 14th day of the first lunar month and sweet Zao Geng during the first lunar month. Zao Geng, also known as Shanfenhu, is a Lantern Festival food in Taizhou and one of the traditional snacks. Zao Geng is eaten after watching the lanterns on the 14th day of the first lunar month. There are two types of fermented rice soup: salty and sweet. It is mainly made with lotus root powder, rice powder or potato powder as the main ingredients, and then you can add your favorite ingredients to make it into your favorite flavor.
13. Steamed buns and wheat cakes <br /> In the Pujiang area of ​​Zhejiang, it is customary to eat steamed buns and wheat cakes during the Lantern Festival. It is said that the reason is that steamed buns are made of leavened dough and wheat cakes are round, which means "reunion of children and grandchildren". In Shangyuan, Changde, Hunan Province, families use pepper as soup and add leeks, fruits and other ingredients to entertain guests, which is called "seasonal soup".
14. Noodles <br /> In the Jiangbei area, there is a folk proverb that goes, "Light up the Lantern Festival, light up the noodles, eat and look forward to the next year." Locals eat noodles on the fifteenth night of the first lunar month, which may sound unrelated to the Lantern Festival, but it also means praying for good luck. "Yihui Sui Shi Ji" records: "On the 18th day of the first lunar month, the lanterns are turned off and people eat noodles, which is commonly known as 'dumplings for the lanterns and noodles for the lanterns'. Each family holds their own banquet to celebrate." Eating noodles when the lanterns are turned off symbolizes continuous joy.

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