In the past two days, the cold current has gradually moved south, and the temperature here in Guanzhong has plummeted. I only wore a thin sweater when I went out yesterday. I went out this afternoon, put on a leather jacket and even felt cold. It seems that I need a steaming bowl of eight-treasure porridge to warm me up. Porridge is the staple food of China people, especially breakfast.

In winter, people's nutrition will mainly focus on increasing heat energy. At the cold temperature, drinking a bowl of hot and delicious porridge is a good meal for adults who come home from work, children who come back from school, and elderly people who need supplements at home. Rice has the effects of harmonizing stomach qi, harmonizing five internal organs, tonifying spleen deficiency and strengthening bones and muscles. Besides rice porridge, it can also be cooked with yam porridge, chestnut porridge, sesame porridge, almond porridge and walnut wolfberry porridge. If you often feel weak limbs, mental fatigue, low voice and sweating during exercise, most of them belong to qi deficiency. Ginseng, Schisandra chinensis, Astragalus membranaceus, Atractylodes macrocephala, Dangshen ointment, Shenhua ointment and other qi-benefiting drugs can be selected to cook porridge as a daily diet.

Among the many kinds of porridge, I'm afraid the eight-treasure porridge is the most famous. Today, let's talk about the meaning of eight treasures in eight-treasure porridge and whether the eight-treasure porridge we drink every day is right.

Eight-treasure porridge, also known as Laba porridge and Buddha porridge, is a traditional festival food in China. It is a kind of porridge cooked with various ingredients in Laba Festival. "Old Wulin Stories" written by China literati in the Southern Song Dynasty said: "Cooking porridge with walnuts, pine nuts, milk, persimmons and chestnuts is called Laba porridge. Eight-treasure porridge has the effects of strengthening the spleen and nourishing the stomach, resolving food stagnation and losing weight, benefiting qi and calming the nerves. It can be used for dietotherapy of obesity and neurasthenia, and can also be used as daily health food.

Today, I will share with you a recipe of my eight-treasure porridge: the grain is mainly japonica rice and glutinous rice, the nuts are mainly soybeans and red beans, and the nuts are walnuts, peanuts and pine nuts. Add red dates and raisins, and the ingredients of the family version of eight-treasure porridge are ready.

I have very few ingredients in this recipe, and many "eight-treasure porridge" have more than eight ingredients. Generally, japonica rice, glutinous rice or black glutinous rice are used as the main materials, and mung beans, red beans, lentils, white lentils, red dates, peach kernels, peanuts, lotus seeds, longan, pine nuts, yam, lily, medlar, Euryale euryales, coix seed and other auxiliary materials are added to cook porridge. People in different parts of China choose different materials according to their dietary preferences. Different brands of cans have different materials for "eight-treasure porridge". But there are basically four kinds of raw materials: rice, beans, dried fruits and Chinese herbal medicines. Cooking at home is "eight-treasure porridge", sometimes chestnuts, carrots, sausages, bacon and so on are added.

There are many legends about eight-treasure porridge among the people, the most important of which is the legend about Buddha porridge. According to legend, Buddha Sakyamuni became a monk and traveled around the world. One day, he fainted in the wild because of hunger and fatigue, and was found by a girl who was grazing. She hurried home to look for food. But her family is poor, and she is short of clothes and food. All the miscellaneous grains planted at home are almost eaten up, only a few grains are left. This girl is always generous and helpful. She collected a little bit of grain left under each grain bag, added some home-grown nuts, cooked a big bowl of porridge with clear spring water, served it to the Buddha and fed it to him bit by bit.

After eating delicious porridge, Sakyamuni soon woke up, took a bath in the nearby river, sat under the bodhi tree and meditated, and finally became a Buddha at the beginning of the twelfth lunar month. Later, Buddhist believers cooked porridge for the Buddha on the eighth day of the twelfth lunar month every year. So Laba porridge is also called Buddha porridge. On this day, the monks in the temple cooked the vegetarian food collected from the donation into porridge to worship the Buddha, and then distributed the porridge to the poor. Later, Laba porridge spread and became a folk custom. Lu You, a poet in the Southern Song Dynasty, left such a poem: "Today, Buddha porridge is given to each other, and Jiangcun is more important." Laba porridge, as a folk auspicious food, is given to each other, which means a bumper harvest at the end of the year and good weather in the coming year.