What to eat on Laba Festival? In the cold winter, people eat ice cream the day before Laba Festival.

"Laba Festival" is a traditional festival. The ancients had the tradition of offering sacrifices to their ancestors and gods and praying for a good harvest and good luck. So, what should we eat on Laba Festival? What to eat on Laba Festival? Let’s take a look together.

The traditional Laba Festival is to eat Laba porridge

Eating Laba porridge on Laba Festival to celebrate the harvest has been passed down to this day. In ancient times, the Chinese Han people had the traditional custom of eating "Laba porridge" on Laba Festival. Laba porridge is also called seven treasures and five flavors porridge, which is a porridge made with a variety of ingredients. "Yanjing Sui Shi Ji•Laba Congee" records: "Laba Congee is made with yellow rice, white rice, glutinous rice, millet, water chestnut rice, chestnut, red cowpea, peeled date paste, etc., boiled with water, and then dyed with red peach kernels, almonds, melon seeds, peanuts, hazelnuts, pine nuts, white sugar, brown sugar, and grapes for coloring." In fact, there is no special regulation on the ingredients of Laba Congee. Some places eat sweet porridge, and some places eat salty porridge.

It is popular to eat Laba noodles in Shaanxi

Laba noodles are popular in the Guanzhong region, especially in the Chengcheng area around Weibei in Shaanxi. In the past, people would cook noodles to worship gods on the morning of the eighth day of the twelfth lunar month. Nowadays, people in Shaanxi don’t drink porridge anymore, and every household eats a bowl of Laba noodles. This is done to worship ancestors and gods and pray for a good harvest and good luck. There are also special steps when eating Laba noodles: the first bowl of Laba noodles is offered to the Kitchen God, which means food is the most important thing for people; the second bowl of Laba noodles is offered to the God of Wealth, which means praying for blessings and wealth; the third bowl of Laba noodles is offered to ancestors, which means asking for blessings for descendants and prosperity of the family business; finally, the "Laba noodles" offered three times are returned to the pot, which means sharing the blessings.