Formal wedding banquets in the village are either not held at all, or if held, the entire village must be invited.
Yes, you have to invite everyone in the village, unless someone has a grudge against you, then you can refuse to invite them. Otherwise, those who are not invited for no reason will definitely gossip about you for the rest of their lives.
But not all the villagers would come to eat. After all, some families have a lot of children, such as the Ma family. If all of them came, there would be more than a dozen people, and that family would be able to bankrupt the host family.
So generally, apart from relatives and specially invited friends, when villagers come to the event, each family will provide two people.
Banquets, a rare treat these days outside of Chinese New Year, are usually a family's way of eating out. Some families, with smaller children, have a single parent go out. After all, two people from each family come, and there's no need to bring gifts. If you don't bring enough, you'll be at a disadvantage; if you bring too much, you'll definitely be looked down upon.
I originally planned to have a simple lunch, mainly to entertain the people who came to pick up the relatives, and then hold the formal ceremony in the evening.
As it turned out, today was both a working day and a time for spring plowing, so everyone had different hours of free time. Plus, it was cold, so if we opened too many tables at once, they would be too far away on the village road, and the dishes would definitely be cold by the time they were served.
So the wedding banquet was divided into two groups, one at noon and one at night.
People like Lin Guoqing's family and Lao Shi's family who came to escort the bride would definitely eat all day, while Master Zhang and his family would have to come in the evening.
The Ma family set up 20 tables, 20 tables for lunch and 20 tables for dinner.
A traditional wedding banquet, also known as "eating ten bowls of food", is a square table with eight people sitting at each table. There are ten bowls of dishes, and the wine is mostly homemade rice wine.
The standard dish is usually a bowl of three delicacies plus three braised dishes, four stir-fries, vinegar fish and soup.
I won't repeat the three delicacies here. The three braised dishes are braised pork, braised chicken or duck, and braised goose. The four stir-fries are stir-fried shredded pork, medium stir-fried pork slices, taro pieces, and wild rice and pork skin. Add to that the fish with radish and vinegar, and the Chinese soup.
Look at the food, don't they? Meat and fish, wouldn't that cost more than 10 or 20 yuan per table? And for 8 people? That's a hefty wedding banquet! Who could afford it?
Actually, it is not.
The most expensive main course on the table was probably the three fresh dishes, which came with eight fish balls, eight meat balls, bamboo shoots, egg skin slices, shrimp, pork skin, shredded pork belly, and cabbage leaves. This dish reflected the entire banquet's status and the quality of the dishes served.
And the rest,
Vinegar fish, also known as head and belly vinegar fish, is made by mixing the fish head, belly and tail left after scraping the fish balls, with radish slices and red sauce and rice vinegar. To put it simply, it is the leftovers of the fish.
Among the four stir-fries, the small stir-fry is made with leeks, shredded pork, shredded bamboo shoots and shredded dried tofu. The leeks should be chopped as finely as the shredded pork. The key is that the amount will definitely not be more than the other three shreds.
Chinese stir-fry is made with pickles, meat slices, dried tofu slices, and radish slices.
Taro seasonal items are the offal of poultry used in banquets. The Vietnamese people call these gizzards, livers, and intestines "seasonal items". After slicing them, stir-fry them with taro to retain the original flavor, saving money and effort.
Water spinach and pork skin, fried pork skin, water spinach and black fungus together, also known as a vegetarian dish.
The braised pork belly is a bowlful, topped with eight thin slices of braised pork, sliced so thinly that even 20 tables wouldn't kill a pig. With one slice per person, it's hard to overeat. The base is usually a mixture of dried vegetables, bamboo shoots, or taro.
"Kouji" and "Kou'e" (Baixiankouji and Baixiankouge) are steamed goose or chicken with dried croaker. Eight pieces of goose or chicken, skin-side down and meat-side up, are placed in a steamer basket, along with several pieces of dried croaker. Finally, the dish is inverted and placed in a large bowl.
A goose is usually cut into 18 plates, so you can imagine the sheer size of the plate. When people were even poorer, they would often choose between two bowls of poultry meat and eat one, leaving the other to look at but not eat. This meant they would have another chance to eat it later, symbolizing the saying, "Hold on and eat for a long time."
To put it bluntly, it's because they are poor, and the poor just help each other tacitly to save money.
The last bowl of soup does not have fixed ingredients. If you have salted cabbage at home in winter, you can make salted cabbage soup. When it is the season for bamboo shoots in the mountains, we will throw some bamboo shoots into the soup. When there is no salted cabbage, you can make green vegetable soup or dried vegetable soup.
This soup is also called reply soup, which means that the soup is served after all the dishes are served, and the banquet should be over after eating the soup.
Some less well-off families add a lot of rice fat to the meatballs to reduce the amount of pork, increase the volume of the meatballs, and make the meatballs softer. The entire process relies on green vegetables, radish, taro, and wild rice stem.
If we hold such a banquet according to tradition, it would cost less than 50 yuan for ten tables.
However, this time the Ma family probably really treated Sanni as their own son. According to the standard of "a son marrying a daughter-in-law", they set up a large round table for 10 people, and the fish balls and braised pork with meatballs in the dishes were also for 10 people.
The meatballs tasted solid, the braised pork slices were not thin, and even the chicken and goose were no longer cut into 18 plates per piece, but at least half a piece per table. Each table even got an extra bowl of stir-fried shrimps and bamboo shoots with beaten eggs.
Liang Shengdi ate the meatballs in the bowl and turned her head to whisper to Chen Chunhua who was sitting next to her. This time, Yulan and her husband were really willing to give it away!
Chen Chunhua looked at the dishes on the table, the people busy in the yard, and the two newlyweds who were being pulled to each table for toasts, and didn't know what to say.
Actually, it wasn't so bad. At least there was 288 yuan in the red envelope she and Lin Guoqing paid out! To put it bluntly, it was Sanni's own money that helped her hold half of the wedding banquet.
To Ma Dexiang and Lin Yulan, they were no different from the two old men and women in the Ma family. Their only desire was to continue the family line and have children. They'd probably rehearsed this scene a thousand times in their minds.
Then again, if Sanni had been born a boy and hadn't had six younger sisters, the place would probably have been a little bigger.
In short, my dream finally came true today.
Especially the son-in-law Qi Jinzhou is very impressive. He has good looks, education, financial resources, and good character... This cannot be seen by people who don’t live with him, but he is completely different from the one in the previous life.
The couple will probably be happy for a long time.
"Mom, you are the grandmother of the bride and groom today, so don't say such things to outsiders." Chen Chunhua also put her own portion of meatballs into Liang Shengdi's bowl, gave the fish balls to Shumei, and the braised pork slices to Shuchao.
She sees chickens, ducks, and geese every day, and smells pig and cow dung, so she is not really that interested in this kind of meat now.
"I know, I know. I'm just telling you." Liang Shengdi stared at the meatballs in her bowl, her eyes wide open with laughter. "Didn't you say that when you receive something from someone, you're always grateful. When you eat someone's food, you're always soft-hearted. I'm eating the Ma family's food. How could I go out and say bad things about them?"
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I've been feeling really broken and upset lately, feeling so hopeless every day...
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