“Peach-boshi” – Making Umeboshi with Peaches? (Part 1) by Cynthia Briscoe

“Peach-boshi” – Making Umeboshi with Peaches? (Part 1)
by Cynthia Briscoe

The peach is my all-time favorite fruit.  I’m sure this is the result of childhood memories of climbing the peach tree with my Missouri farm cousin and picking only the ripest, juiciest,  red-cheekiest, sun-warm peaches right off the tree. We delighted in the heavenly stickiness dripping from our mouths and down our elbows as it stuck a day’s worth of summer play dirt to our shirts.  To even think of picking peaches while still hard and green would never have entered my mind back then.  But recently I spied small green peaches lacing the boughs of an abandoned peach tree.  Valiantly, the tree had survived neglect and drought and yet still generously offered the kindness of fruit.  Undersized from lack of water, at first I thought the small green fruits might be unripe apricots

.  But no, the apricots had already come and gone.

I remembered Mr. Muramoto, author of ‘Healing Ourselves’ had creatively substituted apricots, for lack of ume, and created what he called “apri-boshi”.  “Hmm…why not try green peaches?” I thought.  And so this experiment has begun.