Tang Yuan/湯圓

昨日は冬至だった。今の私からすれば、ちょっとインパクトが薄い。冬の短い日が本当に嫌いだから、今までは毎年凄く冬至を楽しみにしていた。でも台南の夏と冬は日の長さがそんなに変わらないので、昨日言われた時までは完全に冬至の事忘れていた。

台湾では冬至に「湯圓」と言う物を食べる習慣が有る。（珍しい事にウィキには湯圓の日本語ページが無い。）餅の中に甘い物が入っていると言う食べ物だ。たしかこういう物は日本にも有ると思う、名前忘れたけど。先のウィキページを読んだら、中国北部では塩っぱい物が割と多いと分かったけど、流石、台湾人は甘い物好きだから、昨日食べたやつは全て甘かった。胡麻フィリングも落花生フィリングも食べた。しかもお湯に黒砂糖をガバッと入れたし。

Yesterday was the Winter Solstice.  Usually I would be looking forward to the days getting longer, but  I almost totally forgot about it because the length of the days doesn't really change all that much here.  However, I was reminded of it because I had the chance to participate in an authentic celebration of the Solstice with some Taiwanese friends.  People in Taiwan eat Tangyuan on the Winter Solstice.  As you can see from the Wiki page, there are variations in when they are eaten, and what's in them, but the people I had them with said they are a Winter Solstice food, and the ones we had were all sweet.

 買う時はこういう感じだ。
Here's a package of Tangyuan.  These ones have a sesame filling.  There were also ones with peanut filling.

 お湯に入れるだけの簡単に作れる物だ。まあ、昔は多分そうじゃなかったと思うけど、現代はなんでもかんでも便利やけんね。
To make Tangyuan you have to be able to successfully boil water.  This is probably a barrier to entry for some people, but the group I run with is pretty smart, so we were ok.

 忍者匙！

 出来立てのはこういう感じだ。
This is what they look like when they're done.

 黒砂糖に入っている湯圓。
For one batch we added brown sugar to the boiling water so that there was a sweet soup in addition to the Tangyuan themselves.

 マリオも登場した。でもちょっと機嫌良くなさそうだなぁ、、、
Mario also made an appearance.  He looks a little down in this photo...

あ！頭をマッサージすれば、笑って呉れるとね！
But it turned out he just needed a temple massage.