Every year, one of our lovely (and most stylish) customers lets us know she’s finally done all she can with her cumquat glut.
And every year, I can’t say no.
I refuse to let go of the preserver in me.
Just because I’ve got no time to stand around slicing them for marmalade or scooping out their pulp with a teaspoon before crystallising their skins, doesn’t mean I don’t froth with excitement whenever I’m offered a glorious glut of something as precious as backyard cumquats.
But every night last week I left the cumquats behind in the cold room.
And then, finally, I remembered to bring them home, but was too tired to prepare them, or make room for them in the fridge, or even look up recipes for inspiration.
After several nights of watching them watching me from the kitchen table, I couldn’t take it any longer.
So, dragging from my spent brain the recall that ‘gin slurry’ could be one possible outcome for the little blighters, I took a bowl, the box of cumquats and a sharp tipped knife to the couch and stabbed every last one. Multiple times.
No, I didn’t cut myself.
And yes, I think there was probably a better decision to be made than pricking cumquats with a butchers knife while resting my brain a la Netflix. But last week wasn’t a great week for decision making.
My final (flailing) act of preservation was to cover the lot in sugar. There. Something’s been done to stop their rot. Not the finest hour (or outcome, or attitude) for this once exuberant jammer.
But that was last week. This week would have been cumquat marmalade all the way.
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