Monthly Archives: January 2012

I have been interesting in sprouting my own seeds for quite some time and finally had the guts to do it. I tried three times, my first two times being unsuccessful and finally I made beautiful sprouts that I’m excited to whip into tasty recipes!

First I tried sprouting chickpeas. And they had potential! But I left them sprouting for too long and I should done a little more research on them first.

My second attempt was with flax seed but after researching, I realized that flax seeds become extremely mucousy when they are in water so they are terrible candidates for the sprouting method I am using.

Finally I sprouted mustard seeds and the results are great! They have a slightly spicy taste which is a nice surpise as well!

What is sprouting?

Sprouting is growing a sprout from a bean, seed, or nut.

Why sprout?

The benefits of sprouting your beans, nuts and seeds are countless! Number one, sprouting ensures that the food you are eating is alive and that it’s nutrients are building instead of depleting as with most produce in the grocery store. As soon as you start the sprouting process, the grain becomes alive, filling with vital nutrients for you to consume later on! Also, because they are alive, they are packed full of digestive enzymes that make them easy to digest so that the nutrients enters your blood stream easier without too much strain…they also make other foods digest easier!

Sprouting can produce food with up to 400% more protein than lettuce and over 3900% of the beta-carotene than lettuce. In addition, sprouts are extremely alkanalizing and disease and other ills have a very hard time surviving in an alkaline body.

I seriously suggest looking into the links about the benefits of sprouting that I’ll provide at the bottom of this post!

But even after all this health news, I found that the best part of the process was that it was fun to take care of my little mustard seeds and watch them grow into big healthy sprouts in just a matter of days!

How Do I Sprout?

Well, I’m glad you asked! Here are the instructions:

You need a sprouting jar. These jars are dirt cheap and have a screw on strainer lid.

1. Add 3-4 tablspoons of your seed of choice (I chose mustard seeds but alfalfa works too, not to mention a plethera of other seed varieties)
2. Rinse the seeds by adding water to the jar and then straining them (with that nifty jar lid).
3. Fill the jar up with water and let the seeds soak overnight.
4. In the morning, rinse the seeds again and let the jar rest upside down or on a upside down angle, in the sunlight (or at least by a window).
5. Do this again at night and then repeat these last two steps for the next 4 days.
6. By day five of the rinse and rest process, the sprouts should be ready!
7. Take them out of the jar and place them in a big bowl filled with cold water.
8. Try to spoon out the excess non-sprouted mustard seeds, but don’t worry if you cannot get all of them.

You can eat them in any dish you would normally have sprouts in like salads or sandwiches. Next week I will be posting the delicious recipes where I used the sprouts so stay tuned!

You Can Sprout…

Sprouting Seeds

Sources…

Sprouting Benefits

Thanks for reading!!