Ann's Air Gardens

Just Like Clockwork

A year has passed and another leek flower has opened for me. 

   

 Apparently, what causes leeks to bolt is a sudden heat wave.

I consider leek flowers a delicacy and would grow them all year round if I knew how.

Because I don't have much viable garden and space for outdoors, and normally do not stay in one place long enough to see through a normal growing season, I buy leeks at the produce store and stick them in glasses of water on the window sill or next to my AeroGarden planters.    This one had been neglected and grew a curvy stem about a yard long before I noticed the bud, which was what saved it from becoming leek soup.

 

Have Lemons, Make Lemon Custard

 

Since my lemon tree was heavy laden with ripe fruit when I left on vacation, I brought as many lemons as I could carry with me.

Usually, I make custard in the rice maker, but having learned that one can also bake bread in a rice maker, I reasoned that I could also make custard in a bread machine. 

If that sounds like circular reasoning, for once I cannot resist saying "the proof is in the pudding."  One could write a dissertation on the fallacies found in trying to differentiate between custard and pudding. Much of it lies in technique.

My technique is to dump it in the bread machine (or rice cooker!) and press the bake button.

More precisely:

Put chunks of butter in the bread pan.  Lay a slice of bread over it. Obviously, I am using the multigrain loaf that I baked yesterday which is #8 in the KBS instruction manual.

 More butter.

Pour the following well-blended ingredients over the butter:

2 eggs

2 cups of milk

2 T bread flour

1/2 cup sugar

Juice of 1 medium lemon = 1/3 cup

1 t vanilla

Bake only cycle 50 minutes in breadmaker (rice maker has automatic shut off)