Yesterday I bought a tree. A kumquat tree.
The first time I’ve had a kumquat was back in 2001 when I went on a river cruise with my grandparents celebrating their 50th wedding anniversary. We went along the Danube river from Passau to Vienna, Bratislava, Budapest and back within seven days. The cruise was luxurious and every evening involved a three course meal with things I hadn’t even heard of before, including several desserts involving or garnished with kumquats.
I fell in love with them.
Since that time I’ve looked for them everywhere and only very occasionally managed to find them from fruit and vegetable stalls, but always very expensive and often not very ripe.
Fast forward a few years and I’m in the UK and rediscovering cocktails. One of my favourite cocktails had always been the caipirinha, however, replacing the lime with kumquats changes the drink into something much more delicious and it’s something I don’t think I’d have ever thought of myself.
I had looked at getting a kumquat tree before, but have only ever seen them in Germany and taking one on the plane to the UK seemed silly to me.
Last Saturday I saw one at a local florist and reserved it until yesterday’s payday. £30 isn’t the world for one and it will pay itself back through the kumquats that will grow.
I am a very proud kumquat tree owner.
2 Comments
Ooooh, a whole world of kumquat options will open itself up to you.
So I’m hoping! First of all I need to read up more on how to look after it, only scraped the surface with a couple Google searches yesterday!
Have you ever had a citrus tree?