What is the food culture of Lantern Festival?

Tangyuan 1

Tangyuan, also known as "Tangtuan" and "Floating Zi Yuan", is a traditional food eaten by southerners during the Lantern Festival. According to legend, Tangyuan originated in the Song Dynasty. At that time, in Mingzhou (now Ningbo City, Zhejiang Province), a kind of round cooked food was developed, which was filled with black sesame seeds and pig fat, with a little sugar and glutinous rice flour outside, and could be eaten when cooked. This is also the original glutinous rice balls. Because of its roundness, people gradually give it the meaning of round and round. Boiling jiaozi in water is the easiest way and the healthiest way to eat it.

2. Lantern Festival

In the north, it is very popular to eat Yuanxiao on the Lantern Festival. Yuanxiao and Tangyuan are similar in appearance, and many people mistakenly think that they are the same, but the production technology is quite different. Tangyuan is made by kneading glutinous rice dough pieces into stuffing, while Yuanxiao is made by cutting the stuffing into small pieces, throwing them into glutinous rice noodles and rolling them into big balls. There are sesame seeds and peanuts in Yuanxiao, which northerners often eat. In recent years, many new flavors have been introduced, such as Yuanxiao with fermented bean curd, which is made by adding lotus seed paste and chopped peanuts.

3. Lantern Festival tea

In Shaanxi, there is also the custom of eating Yuanxiao tea on the Lantern Festival. Yuanxiao tea is a kind of "Yuanxiao porridge" made by adding various vegetables and fruits to noodle soup, also called "Yuanxiao tea".

4. Lettuce; lettuce

In Guangdong, besides glutinous rice balls, lettuce is also very popular during the Lantern Festival. Because lettuce is homophonic with "making money", which means that financial resources are rolling in, lettuce is an indispensable food on the Lantern Festival table in Guangdong.

5. Fried pile

In Panyu, Dongguan and other places in Guangdong, "fried dumplings", also known as "concentric fried dumplings" and "paired dumplings", are popular during the Lantern Festival. They are fried spherical dumplings. "Explosive pile" was called oil hammer in Tang and Song Dynasties. In the Tang Dynasty, Zheng's Record of Chefs recorded: "Go on a diet in the middle of the year and put on an oil hammer." According to the Records of Sorrow for the Past cited in Tai Ping Guang Ji and Lu Shi Za Shuo, the practice of oil hammer is similar to that of frying Yuanxiao in modern times.