MY REAL JAPAN: Ume-boshi (Pickled Plums 梅干)

Ume-Boshi is one of the most important and traditional Japanese food among all.
Ume-Boshi literally means " Dried Plums" but it needs lots of process to make.

In these days,the new generations' housewives do not know the preparations steps and they usually buy the plums from the stores.Exceptional for the those who appreciate or prefer the natural kind of lifestyle;like me!

We do need unriped plums which is said that they have some poison which works for the stomache.

First,it has to be washed and followed by removing off the calyxes then preserve them in salt & keep them till the perillas' season comes.
It is usually red in colour.Salt has to be added and then knead them.After the red juice comes out,we put them on top of the salted plums In the olden days,when many were not able to afford to buy food,lunch boxes were prepared in large
When the hottest weather comes,we dry them for 3 days and 3 nights and return them back to the salty perilla juice to keep.
We keep them till the rainy season which ends in July, as it needs the strongest sunlight to dry both of them.

The taste of Ume-boshi is salty and very sour so the thought of Ume-boshi makes us salivate.
In the olden days, when many were not able to afford to buy food; lunch-boxes were prepared in large serving boiled white rice and a Ume-boshi put in the center of rice.
& this is named, "Hino maru(the rising sun)- bento" as it looks like our national flag.
Both rice & Umei-boshi are good combinations & we still use it as the filling of Rice Balls .

After the terrible earthquake last March , we found that farmented food such as Ume-Boshi , Miso is more important . In Macrobiotic course I took last Nov , one old teacher,Mr.Oba proved that when the atomic bomp falled in Nagasaki in 1945,there was a clinic just near to the center of the explosion(1.4k away).
Doctor Akizuki who had learnt macrobiotics and knew the effect on farmented food , gave his patients and staff them and brown rice and seaweed ..Most of them were saved by these traditional food  he had stored .
Amazingly   the teacher was in!He is now 83years old but very healthy and still teaching Macrobiotics with her wife in Nara prefecture.
He said if we have radiation, the farmented food might detoxify as radiation has very strong Yin Power but they have  very strong Yang power  so it may neutralize ,besides  old one is more effective .
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During childhood days, whenever I had stomache, my mother would prepare rice porridge with umei-boshi.
Our ancestors were wise,they turned the poison to medicine ,which is amazing!