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Why do you eat Laba porridge on Laba Festival? How do you make Laba porridge? What eight ingredients

Today is the eighth day of the twelfth lunar month. It's Laba Festival. Laba Festival wants to eat Laba porridge. Even the children next door know that they want to eat Laba porridge, but why do they want to eat Laba porridge on Laba Festival? How to make Laba porridge? What eight ingredients do you need?

Why drink Laba porridge on Laba Festival?

Laba porridge is a kind of porridge cooked with a variety of ingredients on Laba Festival, also known as Qibao Wuwei porridge. The earliest Laba porridge was cooked with red beans. After evolution, coupled with local characteristics, it became more and more colorful. One of the most important festivals of the twelfth lunar month is the eighth day of December, which was called "twelfth lunar day" in ancient times and commonly known as "Laba Festival".

Since the pre Qin Dynasty, the Laba Festival has been used to offer sacrifices to ancestors and gods, pray for a good harvest and good luck. It is said that Sakyamuni, the founder of Buddhism, was also a Buddhist. Before becoming a Buddha, Laba had been practicing asceticism for many years. He was as thin as a bone and decided not to practice asceticism. At this time, he met a shepherd girl and gave him chyle to eat. After eating chyle, he recovered his strength, sat down under the bodhi tree and became a Taoist on December 8, which is called the 'Buddha becoming a Taoist festival'. The Buddhist temple chants scriptures on this day, and imitates the legend of Gong chyle, a herdswoman before Chengdao, and makes porridge with fragrant Valley and fruit for the Buddha. Laba has the custom of eating Laba porridge on this day.

China has a history of drinking Laba porridge for more than 1000 years. It first began in the Song Dynasty. On Laba day, Laba porridge is made in the imperial court, government, temples and people's homes. In the Qing Dynasty, the custom of drinking Laba porridge was even more popular. At the palace, the emperor, empress, Prince, etc. all gave Laba porridge to the ministers of civil and military affairs and attendants, and distributed rice and fruit to all monasteries for monks to eat. In the folk, every family should also make Laba porridge to sacrifice their ancestors; At the same time, families get together to eat and give gifts to relatives and friends.

The twelfth lunar month is the end of the year. In ancient times, the idle people had nothing to do, so they went out hunting. One is to get more food to make up for the lack of food. The other is to worship ancestors and gods with wild animals, pray for blessings and longevity, avoid disasters and welcome good luck.

That's why we drink Laba porridge on Laba Festival.

Significance of drinking Laba porridge on Laba Festival

The significance of eating Laba porridge is not only to commemorate the Buddha's night to see the star's enlightenment, but also to be warm, complete, harmonious, auspicious, healthy, cooperative, nutritious, indifferent, convenient, grateful, happy (porridge instead of tea), bond and so on. Tianjin Folk Custom in the night before Laba, good men and women twist beans to make porridge. Each twist of a bean is called knot bean. Therefore, I wrote a poem: "I like the twelfth lunar month on the eighth day of the first lunar month. In front of the door, I give up beans and customs. Believers and disciples stay up late to eat porridge, cherish the sound of Buddha and form a good relationship."

Laba Festival drinks ingredients for cooking Laba porridge

The ingredients of Laba porridge vary from place to place. With the eighth day of the lunar new year, cook with eight things. Among them, rice, carrots and vegetables are indispensable three treasures. In addition, there are peanuts (or soybeans), lotus seeds, ginkgo, tofu or oil tofu, taro and other ingredients. If you want to add more ingredients, you can put Sichuan fungus, red jujube and vegetarian bean cake instead of vegetarian ham and mushrooms.

The proportion of Laba porridge ingredients is usually:

Penglai rice accounts for 40%, glutinous rice accounts for 20%, green vegetables account for 10%, carrots and peanuts (soybeans) account for 5%, tofu (oil tofu) and fried dough sticks account for 5%, ginkgo, lotus seed and taro account for 5%, and the other 10% can not be used to measure the situation.

The so-called 'five flavors are harmonious and 100 flavors are fragrant'. Before cooking porridge, heat the oil, fry the rice, and then put the fried rice into the hot pot to cook, and then put peanuts and other materials in. The whole pot of Laba porridge has bright yellow fried dough sticks, white tofu, red carrots, black fungus and cyan Qingjiang vegetables.

There are several things to deal with before cooking porridge. First, peanuts are soaked in water the night before. Second, Emperor beans are not easy to boil. They can be fried and boiled again, or broken with a fruit juicer and fried in oil. They will soon be cooked. Third, lotus seeds and ginkgo should be boiled. Fourth, taro should be fried. Fifth, as long as green vegetables put leaves, don't put stems, and don't put too much. And the fried dough sticks can't be too broken.

Porridge should not be too thick. It should have a little thin porridge juice. Before starting the pot, turn off the fire for two to three minutes, and then turn on the low fire to roll, so that all the ingredients can be melted and cooked again. Pepper can be added to enhance the taste.

The ingredients of Laba porridge now depend on personal taste. Generally, there are rice, peanuts, mung beans, red beans, lotus seeds and so on. Others include lentils, red dates, longan, yam, lily, medlar, job's tears, millet, other beans and red dates. This porridge can be sweetened with sugar or salt.