Tactile Pleasure – 5:00 Fridays

On Monday, Chinese New Year, I took Bird and Deal to the Asian market to get some barbecue pork buns, a family favorite, and some Chinese candies. We, rather I, am all about whooping it up for every holiday and silly reason, so of course we had to have Chinese fare for dinner. Deal even takes Chinese in school so he was filling us in on all of the Year of the Dragon deets (in English so our poor monolingual ears would understand).

We walked around the market oohing and aahing at all the red lanterns and exotic goodies screaming out from the shelves. I suddenly felt the need to have 700 chopstick rests and soy sauce dishes in every novel shape and brightly glazed color. We walked through every single aisle ogling the array of food. A few things made their way to my basket, like fresh chilis in oil and a bag of fresh fortune cookies. I fondled many sauces and crinkly bags of noodles but left them for another time. The fish department is always a highlight of this market so we moseyed over there to see what was iced up in its scaly bug-eyed splendor. Deal was happy to find no live crabs dancing on the floor like the last time he was there. Bird was bummed about that because he likes to see his little brother squirm. The meat department was a lesson in anatomy, and I was pleased to not see any livestock male parts wrapped in plastic. I wasn’t prepared to answer questions about size.

The produce department was a safer bet, with most items ranking among things we had eaten, would eat, or recognized. We carefully chose some magazine perfect baby bok choy, chili peppers, cilantro, daikon radishes, apricots, and kumquats. None of us had tried a kumquat before so we decided to give it a go. When Bird and Deal saw the marble size bright orange orbs piled up they couldn’t resist reaching out to touch, and for once I didn’t stop them. A handful of kumquats is a tactile pleasure. Bird held a few in his hand and asked, “Can we get some, Mommy? I want to try these.” Deal chimed in too, repeated asking, “Can we? Can we? Can we?” as if it were a three-foot long pixie stick he was selling me on. This is the kind of thing that makes me swoon. I love that my sons are eager to try new things. They are great eaters and seek pleasure in the adventure. I love those boys.

So we bought the kumquats.

We looked up online how to eat those little orange orbs. Wash, massage, eat. No peeling. Eat those suckers whole like grapes and spit out the seed. The first one was bitter. But the next one was sweet, and they are juicy buggers for being so tiny. They suited our need for adventure, and we could say we tried a new thing. As soon as I tasted my first kumquat I knew it would be better in a cocktail than as a snack.

But somehow “kumquat” and “cocktail” in the same sentence sound frisky. I mean, really, kumquat sounds like a dirty word, right? Am I alone here?

Tactile Pleasure
4-5 fresh kumquats (plus 2 more for garnish)
1 teaspoon turbinado sugar
2 ounces vodka

In a cocktail shaker, muddle 4-5 kumquats with turbinado sugar. Add vodka and ice. Shake it up. Strain into a rocks glass filled with ice. Plop in a couple extra kumquats to make it look pretty.

Since it sounds dirty, it better look pretty.