There are five steps we want to suggest as follows:

1. Study macrobiotic principles to see if they make sense to you and if they are something you want to use freely and creatively in your own life.

2. Supply your kitchen with macrobiotic food.

3. Prepare macrobiotic meals daily.

4. Eat your macrobiotic meals with appreciation while also practicing good chewing.

5. Live the life you want, creatively, adventurously, with gusto and without hesitation, using macrobiotic principles as your guide.

The above five are the foundation of a macrobiotic practice.

Green of the plants allows us to have oxygen. It makes food possible, too. If the plants aren’t green, you and I are sunk. Without the green chloroplast cells in the plants there would be no whole grains, vegetables or beans. No animal meat either for the carnivores among us. No sushi in Los Angeles. No caviar for a queen’s crackers. Animals have to eat plant food before someone can eat the animals.  And darn it, junk food requires green, too!

It’s funny, I grew up hating science, but now I thoroughly enjoy reading books about photosynthesis, the process by which the plants convert sunshine into stored energy, converting it into their own carbohydrates, protein and fat to feed themselves. They have no intention to feed us, we just wait around until they grow, and then we grab the plants and eat them. Thank you, plants, I happily accept my dependence on your efforts. What delicious sunshine you are! Actually, the photosynthesis books give me the feeling that I am reading something very spiritual. For what could be more life-giving than green and photosynthesis?

Now that spring is rearing its green, I’m reminded of a little poem I wrote when I was 18:

spring
like a faint green smoke
snakes through bare trees
in the distance

It was originally an attempt at haiku, but I was never disciplined enough to pull off haiku. I’ve always been a lazy writer. But one who loves green.

3 cups organic applesauce

1 cup organic apple juice

3 Tablespoons kuzu

1/2 teaspoon grated lemon zest

1 teaspoon vanilla

1/8 teaspoon sea salt

1/4 cup currants

1/3 cup roasted and coarsely chopped almonds

1. Bring applesauce and sea salt to a boil, covered.  Take care when removing the lid as the thick, hot applesauce will “sputter” out of the pot.  Use the lid as shield to protect your face when opening the pot.

1. Dissolve kuzu in apple juice.  Stir into applesauce, cooking over low flame until kuzu turns clear.

1. Turn off heat and stir in lemon zest and vanilla.

1. Ladle into individual serving cups and garnish with currants and chopped roasted almonds.

A Definition of Macrobiotics by Herman Aihara

“Macrobiotics amounts to finding our physiological limitations and trying to live within them. This is the cultivation of humbleness. When we think that we can do anything we want, we become arrogant. This arrogance causes sickness.

When we are living within our physical limitations, then our spirituality is free. Macrobiotics seeks freedom in spirit. Freedom exists in our spirit – so we can think anything. But biologically, physiologically we are unfree. We can wish to eat anything we want, but we cannot do it and still live within our natural physiological limitations.

Disciplining physical unfreedom is the foundation of spiritual freedom. God didn’t give us unlimited biological freedom, but appreciating and taking into consideration our unfree physical condition leads us to greater freedom, both physically and spiritually.”

– Herman Aihara

author of Acid & Alkaline
Basic Macrobiotics
Learning from Salmon
and other books

On this my 61st birthday, I would like to give you the gift of sharing something of my parents with you. I am such a fortunate man to have had Vernon and Charlotte for my parents. Their example of how to live in the world, how to treat others, how to make one’s way through life’s challenges, and how to raise their children, my 2 bothers and 2 sisters, to become solid and decent human beings, remains to this day the firm ground beneath my feet. My father was a success through his own will and determination. Nothing was given to him to make his life easy. When he was 12 his father died, and my father started working hard at little fruit stand in Kansas City, Kansas to make money for himself and his mother. She ran a boarding house to make ends meet. My father remained with the little fruit stand for 60 years, as it decade by decade turned into a major supermarket chain in the Midwest. When he retired, he was a vice president. My father showed me that you could be successful without having to cut others down or betray them. He earned his success by very hard work, honest living, enduring great hardship, and through loyalty to his company and family. He was a fair and just man. In honor of his sense of justice, I named my first son Justin. My father passed away in 2008 at the age of 93. He still had his sharp mind, and his attitude of honor and respect for all people around him, from all walks of life, never faded.
My mother was the intellectual, artistic one. She gave her children a sense of  humanity. In her home, racial slurs or putting other religions and cultures down was never heard. She came from a poor Irish- American Catholic family. Her mother died when she was 1 year old, and she was raised by her paternal grandparents until her father remarried. When she was a little girl, other kids from nicer neighborhoods would spit on her as she walked to school because she was poor and Catholic.  This experience and other suffering as a child and young woman made her a deep, strong and kind mother. She loved literature and writing. When all of her 5 children were raised, my mother went back to school. She graduated from college when she was 70 years old. She passed away on her birthday, Christmas Eve 1990. She used to tell me when I was a little boy, “I’ll always be with you on Christmas Eve.” She has kept true to her word.
I am so very fortunate, so incredibly blessed that Vernon and Charlotte were my parents. On this, my birthday, September 22, 2010, I am happy to share something of them with you. I love my parents, and I understand now what they tried to show me by their example and guidance, which I often rejected in my youth, and I will do my best to live the rest of my life in honor of them. I miss them every day but their beautiful lesson of being true human beings is with me always. Peace to you, the reader of these words, on this day, my birthday, and every day of your life. – David Briscoe

Here’s a pic of Cynthia at the airport with our plane, that we were on fir 14 hrs(!), behind her.

Umeboshi is useful  in both the kitchen and in the medicine cabinet.  This little wrink led salty and pickled fruit is a dynamo.

In the kitchen its tangy flavor adds pizazz and zing to many dishes and dressings.  In the medicine cabinet, it arm wrestles hangovers, diarrhea, the flu, headaches and upset stomachs.  It is a mercenary for the ‘bad guy bacteria’ that make you sick, and at the same time a champion for the ‘good guy bacteria’ that keep your engine purring and your blood quality from running amok.  If Eve had offered Adam an umeboshi instead of an apple, well, I think the history of mankind may have been decidedly different!

A unique marriage, through the fermentation of a simple trio of ingredients, creates the health-giving properties of umeboshi.  The star of the show is a small, often misunderstood fruit called ume (ooh-may).  For starters, it was mistranslated along the way as “plum,” when actually its closest kin is the apricot.  The skin is lightly fuzzy like an apricot, not smooth like a plum.  It is harvested while still firm and green and is very sour, even when it is ripe.  The second ingredient is purple shiso, a plant from the mint family with unique antiseptic properties.  It is prepared and layered in the crock with the ume and gives the final umeboshi a natural reddish hue.  Shiso is also known as ‘perilla’ or ‘beefsteak’.  Shiso can combat food poisoning, viruses, colds, inflammation, indigestion and asthma, to name a few.  The high quality sea salt is a key player as well, creating a sodium-balanced alkaline environment for ‘friendly’ bacteria to make a home and raise their families both in the crock and within your body when ingested.

SPECIAL LESSONS AND THANKS REGARDING MY HOMEMADE UMEBOSHI

My great teacher, Cornellia Aihara, taught me the value of these small incredible pickled fruit and how to make them.  Many products such as umeboshi, miso, and shoyu are primarily available as imports from Japan, but Cornellia encouraged her students to to be self sufficient and ecological by teaching us how to make many specialty foods at home.   “Importation too wasteful,” she’d say to us, and “What if boat stops coming? What will you do?”

This spring shortly after moving and distributing my compost, I was amazed to discover ume seedling everywhere I had distributed compost.  Baby ume trees sprouted in my garden, in the flower beds and even in the tall flower urns flanking our front door.  At Cornellia’s macrobiotic school, the Vega Study Center, we also had ‘volunteer’ ume trees that planted themselves in various marginal places on the property.  She claimed that the seeds had sprouted from discarded pickled umeboshi. I listened but was skeptical.  I thought, “Surely, there must be some mistake.  How is it possible for the seeds to sprout after being salted and pickled?”

My thoughts returned to her story when I saw the little trees sprouting everywhere I had added compost.  I hadn’t thought too much about it last fall, when I tossed the damaged or mashed umeboshi into the compost bin.

These umeboshi had been sorted out three months after their entry in the pickle crock.  (In the fall, the umeboshi are removed from the crock and spread out on baskets for three days to dry.)  What a hearty little fruit!  The life force housed within the pits survived composting and even three months of pickling.  Cornellia was proven right.

Another lesson is how Life, Nature, and Community are so beautifully integrated within the process of making homemade umeboshi.  Most of us do not have the opportunity to share with others in harvesting and producing food as a group.  The picking, cleaning, stemming and pickling of ume at the Vega Study Center, was a community affair, made easier and fun by everyone’s help.  My favorite ‘ume time’ was harvesting the fruit.  Imagine ladders, plenty of buckets, jokes and children playing tag in the orchard.  Completing the task was cause for celebration with a picnic.

Umeboshi are not difficult to make, as nature does most of the work, but since each ume must pass individually through human hands during numerous processes, many hands make lighter work.  The initial process begins in June when the ume fruit is picked from the trees.  Next a tiny stem must be removed from each piece of fruit.  Then the ume is washed and soaked overnight.  The following day, the ume is drained and dried in baskets before it is placed in the crock with layers of sea salt.  In July, after the shiso is fully grown and harvested, the ume must once again be removed from the crock, drained and then layered with rubbed, salted shiso.  Two to three months later, the crock is re-opened and the umeboshi is spread out on bamboo mats or baskets in a single layer to dry.  For three days, each individual plum must be turned once per day and preferably brought in at night to avoid the dew.  Finally it’s back to the crock where they can rest until pulled out for eating. The skin and flesh of each umeboshi is soft.  If they are not handled gently and coaxed out of the crock, the umeboshi will tear.  So you see, there is a great deal of care and attention that each individual ume receives.   And now you can understand why umeboshi are not cheap at the store!

For their contributions, I would like to give special thanks to my friend, Keiko Tokuda, for helping me move the heavy baskets of umeboshi upstairs from the basement and arrange the umeboshi on the mats to dry.  I would also like to thank our friend, Meiko, for her generous supply of beautiful organic shiso from her garden, essential to the making of these umeboshi.  These good memories and their generous spirit flavors these umeboshi.

Click here to order my homemade umeboshi

“HOW TO MAKE UMEBOSHI” VIDEO

Many people ask if they can study umeboshi-making with me, but unless you live nearby it would be difficult, because the entire umeboshi process takes place in stages over many months.  But I am starting production of a “How To Make Umeboshi” video.  This way students all over the world will be able to learn.

HOMEMADE MACROBIOTIC FOODS COURSE

This fall, I will offer an advanced course in traditional macrobiotic homemade foods.  You can come and learn hands-on how to make white miso, tempeh,  natto, amasake, seitan (wheat meat), takuan (daikon rice bran pickles), steamed rice bread, ohagi, tekka, shiguri miso, and many other gems of the traditional macrobiotic kitchen that are usually bought in stores, if they are available, at very a high price.  But they are not as hard to make as you might think, and they taste so much better than anything you can buy.  Making these products at home can be something you make for your family to enjoy, can save you money or could even turn into a shared group event and celebration.

MY HOMEMADE UMEBOSHI CAN BE ORDERED

UPDATE: The current supply of homemade umeboshi is completely sold out. The next crop will be available in 2011.