Cultivate Sprouts

I’ve already begun working towards this goal. Lately I’ve become obsessed with raw food in general, sprouting in particular. I currently have several jars lined up in my kitchen with various things. Not using any sort of store-bought sprouter, just mason jars with a little nylon cloth held over the mouth with a rubber band.

Right now I have lentils and buckwheat and some beans. I cannot believe how fast the lentils began to sprout! Buckwheat is pretty much a single-day job. It’s become a sort of habit to always have some either sprouting or dehydrating.

This would help me in both my low-oxalate diet and my acid-alkaline balanced diet.

I’ve been doing this for about 6 months or so now. I just do it in old peanut-butter jars with a rubber band and piece of cloth on top. It’s easy to do in my backpack, even as I travel, and really makes for way better salads. Kind of hard to do when I’m in a hot climate, though, I don’t always remember to rinse often enough. I’m always on the lookout for new things to sprout, though. I recently did quinoa, it was good but not quite worth the effort.

I don’t especially like the taste of most sprouts. I think I had some notion of being able to pull out a healthy snack that I created “on demand” from my trusty crop o’sprouts – without stopping to consider the fact I’d be more likely to munch on a handful of parsley or something.
Maybe I was thinking “micro greens”, like some fancy salad… but I grew my own lettuce this year and gave almost all of it away.
“Fiddle dee dee”, as Scarlett would say… This was one of those “better in concept than reality” ideas.

I just started doing this. I am using a mason jar that I had, some screen that the woman at the hardware gave me because it was such a small peice, and a mixture of salad sprouts from the health food store.

It is SO easy. I soak them in water overnight. Then every day for five days I rinse and shake the water out twice a day. They sit on my kitchen counter and look wonderful.

So, now I am designing a sprouting kit for kids to sell/give as gifts this winter. It will have the jar, screen, sprouts & directions all packaged together. Kids LOVE to grow things and how fun to GROW FOOD. I am SO EXCITED about this project. Email me if you would want one. jacqueline at moxieworks dot net.

My favourites are mung beans and lentils.

They’re especially great in the winter because they’re so rich and vitamins and regular produce can be so expensive.

Yay for sprouts!

Over Christmas, with busy-ness and travelling, I stoppped making sprouts. I plan to relaunch my sprout intitiative in the New Year!

My sprouts are doing fine even in winter. I have a system that’s well established so I’m calling this done and continuing.

I picked up a packet of purposed sprouting seeds, broccoli from the healthy health food shop at Spitalfields market a while ago. TRied a small batch and they’re very strong tasting compared to most other sprouts. The other feature is that the roots split up into tiny fibrous hairs forming a mat quite early on in development which can look alarmingly like fungus but it isn’t. If I could get better quantities locally then these would become a staple alongside alphalpha, lentils, fenugreek and chick peas.

Oh dear – my aduki beans have gone smelly :-(
Well, something needs to be done.