Beginning of spring, commonly known as "playing spring", is used to eating radish, ginger, onion and bread on this day, which is called "biting spring"; Beginning of spring still has its own food, mainly spring cakes, radishes and spiced plates. Spring rolls are very popular in the south.
In the old custom of rain in the north, people eat noodles, spring cakes, popcorn and so on. On this day. Different regions have different foods, but most of them are related to dragons. The name of general food is added with the title of "dragon", such as "dragon ear" in jiaozi; Eating noodles is called eating "dragon beard meat"; Eating rice is called "the son of the dragon"; Eating wonton is called eating longan.
"Rain Festival, going back to parents' home" is a popular holiday custom in western Sichuan. At this time, the married daughter went home to visit her parents. A typical gift is called "canned meat", which is to stew pig's trotters, snowflake beans and kelp in a casserole, then seal the jar with red paper and red rope and give it to parents to show their gratitude and respect for their parenting.
In ancient times, people smoked the four corners of houses with incense and wormwood.
When the solar term is dormant, it is warm and cold, and the climate is dry. Because pears quench thirst, people have the custom of eating pears when they are stung. In some areas of Shandong Province, people burn pancakes in the yard on Easter Day. In Shaanxi, some areas should eat fried beans after being stung; In Yanbei, Shanxi, farmers eat pears during hibernation, which means saying goodbye to pests.
The vernal equinox is an old folk custom of "eating spring vegetables at the vernal equinox", and it is a kind of wild amaranth, also known as Artemisia annua. The custom of watching cattle and offering sacrifices to birds is popular in Jiangnan area.
According to the custom of old Beijing, in order to avoid evil spirits and pray, the Spring Equinox will roll on donkeys. Donkey rolls have an unusual origin. Just looking at its processing materials, including rhubarb rice flour, soybeans, red bean paste, sugar, sesame oil, osmanthus, green shredded pork and melon seeds, is enough to meet the requirements of diversified ingredients in the Nutritional Dietary Guide. Its production is divided into three steps: blank making, stuffing mixing and molding. Cooked "snowballing donkey" is wrapped in bean powder, golden yellow, fragrant with beans, soft at the entrance and unique in flavor. It is a delicious food for all ages.
The custom of eating green zongzi in Qingming, Tomb-Sweeping Day and Jiangnan. Green jiaozi is made of a wild plant called "Pulp Wheat Straw" by mashing and squeezing. Then, take this juice, knead it with dry glutinous rice flour, and wrap it in jiaozi. There is a dietary custom of eating prickly heat (called cold in ancient times) all over the north and south.
Because of the combination of Cold Food Festival and Tomb-Sweeping Day, some places still keep the habit of eating cold food in Tomb-Sweeping Day. In Shandong, Jimo eats eggs and cakes; Laiyang, Zhaoyuan, Long Island eat eggs and cool sorghum rice.
Grain Rain, for fishermen, Grain Rain Festival is a folk custom of offering sacrifices to the sea. According to the custom of picking tea in southern Grain Rain, it is said that drinking tea on this day in Grain Rain can clear fire and ward off evil spirits and improve eyesight. So no matter what the weather is in Grain Rain, people will go to Chashan to pick some new tea.
There is a custom of eating Toona sinensis in northern Grain Rain. Toona sinensis sprouted around Grain Rain. At this time, Toona sinensis is mellow and refreshing, with high nutritional value. It is said that the Toona sinensis before the rain is tender as silk. Toona sinensis has been eaten for more than 1000 years, and it has spread all over the country in Han Dynasty, which can be enjoyed by dignitaries and civil servants.
In the old countryside in the long summer, five-color beans such as red beans, soybeans, black beans, mung beans and mung beans were mixed with white japonica rice to cook "five-color rice", which later evolved into glutinous rice cooked with Japanese bean meat and amaranth yellow croaker soup, and was called "long summer rice".
Eggs boiled with black tea or walnut shells are called "long summer eggs" and are fed to each other. Weave egg covers with colored thread and hang them on children's chests or curtains. Generally, children play the game of eating eggs and beating eggs, all of which rely on long summer eggs as a way of playing, and they win by beating the eggshell firmly but not broken. As the saying goes, "there is an egg on the chest in the long summer, but the child can't be in the summer." There is also a five-color silk rope for children, called "Long Summer Rope".
Zhou Shu Xiaoman: Xiaoman's bitter vegetable show. Bitter vegetables are one of the earliest edible wild vegetables in China. Compendium of Materia Medica: Long-term service, peace of mind and nourishing qi, intelligence and fitness, anti-aging. In medicine, this small bitter herb with stem is used to treat fever, and the ancients used it to sober up.
People in Ningxia like to cook bitter vegetables, cold salt, vinegar, spicy oil or garlic paste, and eat steamed bread and rice, which greatly increases people's appetite. Yellow rice soup can also be used to pickle bitter herbs into yellow, which tastes sweet and sour, crisp and refreshing. Some people also boil bitter vegetables with boiling water, squeeze out bitter juice, and use it to make soup, stuffing, stir-fry and cook noodles, each with its own flavor.
Miscanthus refers to the maturity of crops such as wheat. The custom of worshipping the god of flowers on mango festival. There is a custom of cooking plums in mango season, which has existed since the Xia Dynasty. Plums can be cooked in many ways. Simply boil it with sugar or mix it with dried plums and let the plum juice leach out. It is also useful to cook them with salt or mix them evenly with dried plums to extract plum juice. More elegant is the addition of perilla.
Plums produced in northern China are very famous. Sour plum soup is cooked with licorice, hawthorn and rock sugar, which is the best in summer.
Solstice in summer, "Solstice in winter, Solstice in summer in jiaozi", delicious Beijingers pay attention to eating noodles in summer, and the sunshine is the longest in summer, so Shaoxing, China has the slang of "have fun, have fun in summer". In the old society, people, rich or poor, sacrificed their ancestors in summer, commonly known as "going to the sun to escape the heat."
In addition to the regular offerings, a dish of Pussy cake was specially added. At that time, after the summer harvest, new wheat was listed. Because of the custom of eating noodles on this day, there is a proverb "Solstice in winter and Solstice in summer in Wonton Noodles". Others make wheat paste, which is to mix wheat paste with wheat flour, spread it out to make pancakes, bake them and taste something fresh.
In the hot summer, there was a folk custom of "eating new rice", that is, after the hot summer, farmers ground the newly cut rice into rice, cooked a meal to worship the gods and ancestors, and then everyone tasted new wine. It is said that "eating new things" means "eating new things", which is the first new day after the summer heat. Generally speaking, cities buy a small amount of new rice to cook with old rice, plus newly listed vegetables. Therefore, there is a folk saying that millet is eaten in summer and grain is eaten in summer.
In hot summer, people in China have the custom of drinking tea, drying ginger, burning incense and drinking mutton soup.
The twenty-four solar terms say, "It's a hot summer, in the middle of June. Summer, summer, size, small at the beginning of the month, big in the month, and still hot. " Its climatic characteristics are: "Dou refers to C as a great summer heat, and the weather in Sri Lanka is much stronger than a small summer heat, hence the name.
Many places in Guangdong have the custom of eating fairy grass at high temperature in summer. Cao Xian, also known as Cao Xian and Cao Xian, is an important medicinal and edible plant resource, and is called Cao Xian because of its magical summer-heat relieving effect. After the stems and leaves are dried, they can be made into fairy grass, which is called bean jelly in Guangdong and is a summer dessert. In northern China, the custom of eating noodles, jiaozi, eggs, etc. It is very popular in hot summer.
In early autumn, there is a folk custom to predict the hot and cold weather in early autumn. There is a folk proverb: eggplant is sown in long summer, and beginning of autumn eats eggplant. Early autumn is a good time to eat eggplant. Beginning of autumn put melons, steamed preserved eggplant, fragrant glutinous soup, etc. I hung in the yard all night the day before and ate it in early autumn.
After a painful summer, people tend to lose a little weight. With the autumn wind, my appetite is wide open. I want to eat something good, supplement some nutrition and make up for the loss in summer. Northerners call it "sticking autumn fertilizer".
The custom of boiling herbal tea in midsummer has been popular since the Tang Dynasty. Every household has the habit of frying herbal tea in summer. First go to the pharmacy to make a prescription, and then cook tea at home, that is, eat some autumn "bitterness"; In addition, another food that old Fuzhou eats in midsummer is white meatballs; The traditional dietary custom of Nanjing people is to eat ducks in summer.
Ducks, especially those in the cooked area of Jiangning Lake in Nanjing, are the most popular. It is reported that the ducks there are sweet and cold, fat and thin. If there is no time, the old Nanjing people will go to the deli to buy half a duck to go home; People who have time will stew "radish duck pot" at home or cook "braised duck pieces" for their neighbors. This is the old saying, send ducks in summer, and no one gets sick.
White deer in southern Jiangsu and old Nanjing in Zhejiang have the custom of brewing white deer rice wine. In the past, thousands of people went to the countryside around Jiangsu and Zhejiang, and every family made wine to entertain guests. Some people often brought Millennium rice wine into the city.
Hunan Bailu has the custom of drinking rice wine. Every year on Bailuyuan Festival, every household treats guests with Bailuyuan rice wine, which is called "local wine", which is sweet and moist and most suitable for autumn. Bailu wine takes glutinous rice, sorghum and other grains as raw materials and is slightly sweet, so it is called "Bailu rice wine".
Fuzhou people have a long-standing custom of eating egrets' longan, which they think is very complementary. Suzhou will eat some pomegranates, ginkgo, pears and so on. Nourishing yin and moistening lung; I want to eat some eels, too. At this time, eels are the fattest and the best time to taste. Therefore, there is a saying in Suzhou that "egrets and eels frost crabs first"; Folk Bailuyuan believes that eating sweet potatoes all year round, and eating sweet potatoes after shredding can prevent stomach acid, so it is a custom for farmers to eat sweet potatoes at Bailuyuan Festival in the old days.
Autumn in Lingnan area. On the day of the autumnal equinox, the whole village used it to pick autumn vegetables, a kind of wild amaranth. Picked autumn vegetables are generally "rolled soup" with fish fillets, which is called "autumn soup". In Nanjing, it is popular to eat "osmanthus duck", use ordinary salted duck and season with osmanthus.
Cold dew is near the Double Ninth Festival, and chrysanthemums are in full bloom. In order to get rid of autumn dryness, some areas have the custom of drinking "chrysanthemum wine". Another big custom of cold dew is eating crabs. Ancient poetry day: "September ball navel October tip, holding claws and drinking chrysanthemums."
There is also a folk proverb of "nine women and ten men". Crab is a first-class precious aquatic product with tender meat and delicious taste. "beginning of autumn walnut with Bailu pear, cold dew persimmon with red skin." Soft persimmon will not mature until autumn, so Hanlu people also have the habit of eating persimmon.
On the day of the first frost, many areas in China have the custom of eating persimmons. In the eyes of local people, it can not only keep out the cold and keep warm, but also strengthen the bones and muscles. This is a good first frost food. There are also many customs of first frost, and there are first frost festivals in Yunnan and Guangxi. Zhuang people pay attention to eating glutinous rice balls, killing ducks, offering sacrifices to ancestors and singing to celebrate the harvest.
Chrysanthemums are in full bloom at the first frost. At this time, people will hold chrysanthemum parties to express their love and reverence for chrysanthemums.
Beginning of winter, commonly known as "wintering" in central Fujian, means "wintering" in beginning of winter. In Chaoshan area of Fujian, beginning of winter eats sugar cane and fried fragrant rice. In Shantou, people eat fragrant rice made of lotus seeds, mushrooms, chestnuts, shrimps and carrots in early winter. These are warm foods. In the north, the custom in early winter is to eat jiaozi, because jiaozi looks like ears. People think that if you eat them, your ears will not get cold in winter.
Xiaoxue, there is a folk custom of "pickling in winter and keeping it for the winter". After the light snow, the temperature plummeted and the weather became dry, which was a good time to process bacon. After the light snow festival, some farmers began to make sausages and bacon and waited until the Spring Festival to enjoy the delicious food. In northern China, most people eat mutton hotpot in light snow season. Some places in the south also have the custom of eating Bazin in October of the lunar calendar.
Heavy snow, as the saying goes, "light snow pickles, heavy snow bacon." In the old days, in some places in Nanjing, every household began to prepare bacon, which was called "salted goods".
Add star anise, cinnamon, pepper, sugar, etc. Stir-fry in a big salt pan. After the fried salt and pepper are completely cooled, apply them to the inside and outside of fish, meat and light poultry, and knead them repeatedly until the color of the meat turns from fresh to dark and the surface oozes liquid. Then put the meat and the remaining salt into the jar, press it with stones and put it in a cool and backlit place. Take it out after half a month and add water to boil the marinade.
Skim off the floating foam, put the dried poultry meat into a jar, layer by layer, pour in the brine, then press it on a big stone, take it out ten days later, and hang it under the eaves of the rising sun to dry (Qiu Bingjun: the twenty-four solar terms of China people).
As for the northern nationalities, it is already quite cold at this time. For example, there is a saying in Baotou that "light snow kills pigs and heavy snow kills sheep". Snow season is coming, it's time to kill pigs and prepare for the new year's goods. At this time, no matter who kills livestock, relatives and friends will come to help, and the owner will prepare food, wine and side dishes for dinner. So the light snow season is a time for family and friends to catch up with each other.
The solstice in winter is considered a grand festival. There is a saying that the winter solstice is as big as a year, and there is a custom to celebrate it. In the north, it is customary to slaughter sheep and eat jiaozi and wonton from winter to Sunday, while in the south, it is customary to eat glutinous rice balls and long noodles from winter to Sunday.
The winter solstice in Suzhou and Wu was left over from the legislation of Zhou Dynasty. The night of the winter solstice is the end of the year, so the winter solstice is the New Year. Suzhou people have many eating habits during the winter solstice, such as "reunion dinner" and elegant names, such as egg jiaozi, bean sprouts, vermicelli, gold chain, fish and so on.
Eating jiaozi on the winter solstice, also known as the "winter solstice group", is particularly popular in Jiangnan. According to historical records, this custom existed in the Ming and Qing Dynasties. In the past, Shanghainese were most particular about eating glutinous rice balls. "Round" means "complete" and "reunion", which symbolizes family harmony and good luck.
Slight cold, eating Laba porridge is an important folk custom in the "slight cold" solar term in the diet. "Yanjing Chronicle" records: "Laba porridge is cooked with yellow rice, white rice, glutinous rice, millet, water chestnut, red cowpea and peeled jujube paste. It is dyed with red peach kernel, almond, melon seeds, peanuts, hazelnuts, pine nuts, white sugar, brown sugar and Soso grapes. " After catching a cold, Laba porridge is also eaten on Laba Festival, and then the annual flavor is getting stronger and stronger.
There are many customs in the cold solar terms, such as glutinous rice, laba porridge, rice and soybean sprouts. According to "Miscellanies of Jinmen", there was a custom of eating soybean sprouts in Tianjin in the old days. Soybean sprouts are a specialty of Tianjin, which are made of cabbage buds. In winter to the future, cut off the stems and leaves of cabbage, leaving only the heart of cabbage, about two inches from the ground, covered with fertilizer, airtight, and can be eaten after half a month. Crispy and tender.
Han people have different dietary customs, such as "cold cakes" in old Beijing, glutinous rice in Guangdong, chicken soup in Nanjing and fried spring rolls in Anhui. In the cold season, people are busy removing old decorations, pickling new year's dishes and preparing new year's goods, because the Spring Festival, the most important festival for China people, is coming. During this period, northerners have a very important day-Laba, which is the eighth day of the twelfth lunar month.
On this day, people cook a pot of sweet and delicious Laba porridge with cereals, peanuts, chestnuts, red dates and lotus seeds, which is an indispensable staple food for people during the Chinese New Year.