What do people eat in Tomb-Sweeping Day?

As the saying goes: "Qingming breaks snow, and it keeps snowing;" Grain Rain broke the frost and kept frosting. " It's time to open the glacier and let Yan return. Wild vegetables on the mountain also shake off the soil, revealing tender new buds and green clothes. The apricot trees in front of the house will bloom with beautiful faces before the Cold Food Festival every year. The geese twittering under the eaves are busy repairing or nesting with their tireless efforts. Spring is coming with light steps again!

Everything is revived and the countryside is busy. And this cold food festival is a grand festival in spring. Women in the village are also busy organizing all kinds of delicious food at the Cold Food Festival. According to the custom of Qixia South Township in Yantai, noodles should be prepared for pasta, and bean cakes made of glutinous rice, beans and miscellaneous grains should be prepared for miscellaneous grains, symbolizing the birth of the family.

Paste millet is a time-consuming and laborious thing. Mixed porridge rice is mainly made from waxy corn, sorghum and wheat. During the Cold Food Festival in Tomb-Sweeping Day, you will enjoy a big bowl every morning. The processing process is that some water is added into the mortar, and corn, sorghum and wheat are repeatedly weighed, mashed and shelled. Then dry the pounded grain skin, fan it with a dustpan, rub it by hand, and repeat it several times to clean the grain skin. This woman who rubs food with a fan is a big "landscape" in the village this season.

The corn used is preferably waxy corn, and the porridge made is sticky and sweet. Sorghum seeds are full and chewy. In the old generation, this kind of sorghum red porridge is a food that people love and hate. It can fill their stomachs, but it is also difficult to digest. Wheat tastes better with the most primitive barley, but peeling is too troublesome. There is a folk song that says, "No matter what you rub, no matter what you beat, you can't become grass in the ditch." That is to say, the bran in the seam of barley can't be washed clean, so wheat is used now. Usually add a little red beans, cowpeas, peas, peanuts, and now jujube, longan and medlar and cook them in a large iron pot. The finer the processing, the more delicious the porridge will be. This is the hometown flavor that many people who are away from home think about day and night.

As the saying goes, "Don't take bean bags as improper dry food", and Qixia's bean bags are called bean cakes. I used to eat bean cakes at this time. The key to making bean cakes lies in stuffing: bean stuffing is not only red bean paste, but also dry sweet potatoes, red beans, cowpeas and other miscellaneous grains. Steamed in a pot, mashed in a mortar, and then mixed with white sugar to wrap jiaozi. Before making noodles, wrap jiaozi like a steamed bun and steam it. This kind of food is the most satisfying. It was not easy to have a meal in the countryside decades ago.