Hi, friends. How have you been recently? I hope you all are doing well and have a nice time.
Autumn has come here my place. Sunset has been getting earlier and the night has got longer since the autumnal equinox. It's been beautiful crisp autumn weather these days, so I dried pickled ume plums the other day to make umeboshi.
For making traditional umeboshi, plums pickled in salt in June should be dried for three days and nights in the hottest part of summer called "doyo" season. However, the doyo season is too hot for me to turn around every plum under the glittering sun. I could do it in the morning or evening avoiding the heat, but then mosquitoes are quite active in these hours. In addition, the sun in the midsummer is so strong that ume dries up too much. As I searched on the Internet, a plum farmer said they dry their pickled plums in September and October. Drying plums under the hottest sun is not a must! I got relieved to know that I can dry them in autumn.
Since then, I dry my ume in autumn to make umeboshi in recent years. I'm happy to see this year's umeboshi dried soft and delicious. Red shiso perrilla leaves pickled with ume for coloring are also dried under the sun to make "yukari", salted red shiso seasoning. Fortunately, I have got a plenty of ume vinegar this year. It may be because I could pickle them in ideal ripeness. Some broken plums were turned into sweetened ume paste with white wine and mirin, a sweet sake.
Speaking of this time of the year, it's the time to make shiso-no-mi-zuke, perilla seeds pickled in soy sauce. Their popping texture and refreshing aroma is so nice that I try to make it every year as possible. Perilla seeds pickled in salt is also a good preserved food. Both of them go well with freshly cooked rice.
Cosmos flowers are now in full bloom and fragrant olive trees will start smelling soon. Persimmons and chestnuts are in season and it is a good time of the year to enjoy autumnal delicacies. Now in my garden, clear blue dayflowers and vivid but gentle magenda Polygonum longisetum (it's called "inu-tade" in Japanese) makes a beautiful color combination. While it is nice and warm like these days, I'm preparing for the winter. I hope you will enjoy the autumn and have happy days. See you next time. Bye!
