The Power of Umeboshi

If you enjoy eating Japanese food, you would probably be familiar with umeboshi.

I use to pickle my own umeboshi every year when I was living in Tokyo and it was one of my favourite seasonal preparations of the year. Ume plum is in season around June. Whenever I visited my grandmother in the summer, it was always around the time she dried ume plum on bamboo baskets, placing them at the corridor facing her garden. I loved lying on this corridor for naps. Thanks to the warm summery breeze, I would smell the ume plums and often pinched some to taste!