food and things

[tielan]

I have 2.6kg of kumquats sitting at home, waiting to be turned into jam and pickles and preserves. If I don't do it soon (liked today/tomorrow), they're gonna be all rotted and mouldy.

Oh, I should make a kumquat cake tonight for bible study, maybe?

Kumquat Bundt Cake with glaze

candied kumquats

kumquat meringue pie (curd recipe included)

Funny story about how I got them:

1. Make peach and bourbon jam - about four jars, way more than you can eat.
2. Swap one jar of jam for "seville oranges".
3. Discover that "seville oranges" actually means "2+kg seville oranges"
4. Make seville orange marmalade - about 6 jars, waaaaaaay more than you can eat.
5. Still have seville oranges left over.
6. Swap the seville oranges for "kumquats".
7. Discover that "kumquats" actually means "2.6kg kumquats"

And I still have half a dozen jars of preserves that I am not actually going to manage to eat.

(What I really want right now? Pickled/brined olives.)

--

Other recipes for future ref.

Asparagus stuffed chicken

cauliflower cheese pasta bake

Comments

[copracat]

This sounds like the story of the man who started with bartering a hankerchief and ended up with a house except its citrus all the way down.

My citrus winter was limes and mandarins. I have marmalade, pickles, preserved rind.

If we could swap fruit across state borders I would be hunting down olives to exchange for your excess sevilles right now.

[tielan]

Can't send you seville oranges (swapped for the kumquats), but I do have seville orange marmalade if you'd like a gift? I think that's allowed?

[copracat]

Why yes it is allowed. I would love that! I will DM my address. Also let me know if you want me to paypal or otherwise send you postage.

[tielan]

I'll let you know what it costs and whether I need assistance to send it. (Shouldn't.)

[eggsbenedict]

Ahaha nice trade! Cumquats go really nicely with duck if you want to try something savoury.

Hmmmm, could I trade you some candied kumquats or jam for bricks? I'll probably buy a wheelbarrow on Saturday which should make it easier to get them around.

[tielan]

Definitely the candied kumquats! (After making the jam last night I'm not sure I'm willing to give any of it away!)

And I've got someone working for me on Saturday for a couple of hours, but we're headed out to Nthrn Beaches to pick up horseshit, so I don't know if I can also manage to wrangle his time to pick up bricks. But it would be great to get the bricks sooner rather than later.

Also, I'm currently trying to hold off a case of tennis elbow, what with it being the hockey finals and gardening season ALL AT ONCE. *sigh* So I'm not really up to moving a lot of bricks by myself right now...

[eggsbenedict]

Whatever works - don't stretch things further than you have to! (Literally and figuratively.) Just floating the idea since we don't have kindergym on this weekend and I'm excited about getting the wheelbarrow. :D

[havocthecat]

WHYYYYYYY are kumquats and other citrus fruits not native to the American midwest? Kumquats are so hard to find and they sound so good right now.

[havocthecat]

I'm going to Mariano's tonight. They're usually a reliable source of kumquats.

[tielan]

Kumquats are pretty expensive in the shops here - becoming more common with a larger Asian populace, but still pricey. But in the home gardener "crop swaps" here in Sydney there's been quite a lot of citrus swapping going on - excesses of limes and lemons and oranges. The climate being so close to 'mediterranean' works very well for citruses. Kumquats are still on the rarer side, but a few people seem to have trees.

Something that I learned a few years ago: a single home-garden tree, well-managed, may fruit abundantly in a zone where a commercial monocrop wouldn't be financially viable. And yes, it would be a really long shot for a citrus in your area, but someone might have a well-sheltered north-facing wall where a citrus could grow?