Next month is Qingming Festival, which has a history of more than 2500 years. In addition to tomb sweeping and ancestor worship, Qingming Festival is also rich in food customs. Qingming Festival has a custom of eating qingtuan in the south. Do you know why Qingming Festival eats qingtuan? How can qingtuan do it?
Why do you eat green dumplings on Qingming Festival? The origin of eating qingtuan on Qingming Festival
Eat green dumplings
In the Qingming Festival, Jiangnan has the custom of eating green dumplings. Green dumpling is mashed with a kind of wild plant called "wheatgrass" and squeezed out juice. Then take the juice and mix it with the dried water mill pure glutinous rice flour, and then start to make dumpling. The filling heart of the dumpling is made of delicate sugar bean paste. When filling, add a small piece of sugar lard. After the dough is made, they are steamed in the cage, and when they are out of the cage, the cooking oil is evenly brushed on the surface of the dough with a brush, which is a success. Qingtuanzi is as green as jade, waxy and soft, fragrant, sweet but not greasy, fat but not full. Qingtuanzi is also a necessary food for people in Jiangnan to sacrifice their ancestors. Because of this, qingtuanzi is particularly important in the folk food customs in Jiangnan.
Why do you eat green dumplings on Qingming Festival? The origin of eating qingtuan on Qingming Festival
Why Qingming eat qingtuan
Shanghainese had the custom of eating qingtuan around the Qingming Dynasty, which can be traced back to the Zhou Dynasty more than 2000 years ago. According to the Zhou Li, there was a law that "in the middle of the spring, the wood duo was forbidden to follow the fire in the middle of the country", so the people put out their cooking and "ate cold food for three days". During the cold food period, i.e. one or two days before the Weiming Festival, it is also designated as the "cold day festival".
The traditional food of the ancient cold food festival includes glutinous rice cheese, wheat cheese and almond cheese. These foods can be prepared in advance to satisfy the hunger of the cold day. There is no need to raise a fire for cooking.
Now, some of the green regiments are made of green wormwood, some of them are made of bromegrass juice and glutinous rice flour and then filled with bean paste. They have been circulating for more than 100 years, and they are still an old face. People use it to sweep tombs and worship ancestors, but more importantly, they should make a try of the new, and the function of the Youth League as a sacrifice is increasingly weakened.
Why do you eat green dumplings on Qingming Festival? The origin of eating qingtuan on Qingming Festival
"Recalling food" back to the common people's table
Method: grind the wormwood (a kind of wild grass), rice and glutinous rice into powder and make it into a skin. The white rice flour and the green of wormwood immediately turn into green, and then wrap it into the bean paste filling. The steamed Qingming fruit is green and like a pie. Under it, there will be a round bamboo leaf (pine needles in my family are more fragrant and healthy). The small snack is full of fragrance and looks more like It's a beautiful jade. It's fragrant, smooth and glutinous.