What to buy for sprouting

[Guest guest]

Suz said:

>I'm still pondering what to buy for raising sprouts.

The " Sprout

House "

was highly recommended by another CRONie, so I

recommended it to a

friend

who bought one. She had no luck with it whatsoever,

but I don't know

if

that was the Sprout House or my friends' lack of

talent. I loved the

look

of the Teldon sprout gizmo, but wonder if $195 is a

bit far-fetched.

Hugs

Suz

Suz, I have a sprout house. I find it is fabulous for

growing wheatgrass. The holes allow the wheat sprout

roots to take hold, and this is a superior product for

this purpose. Of course, not everyone wants to buy a

wheatgrass juicer and drink wheatgrass and other

cereal grasses juices.

However, for everyday sprouting, my best success has

been with a wide mouth 1 gallon CLEAR plastic

container, purchased at Walgreen's for about $4. Of

course you can buy this anywhere.

I purchase women's hose (don't tell anyone)--the short

leg kind (I'm not an expert on this topic)--I get this

at Wal-Mart: the label says " fashion knee high

sandalfoot--95% nylon, 5% spandex " --3 pair for $1.

If the cashier asks me any questions, I tell him/her

that I am buying them for my wife (I'm not married !)

The hose goes over the mouth of the wide mouth plastic

container, secured tightly with rubber bands.

There you have it, a superb sprouting machine. I have

a bunch of them, and have practically converted my

kitchen into an indoor vegetable garden. This " device "

works perfectly.

Use about 1 T of seed for 1 quart of sprouts,

depending on how long you will grow the sprouts. Of

course a wide mouth quart plastic container works just

as well, but soon after getting into sprouting you

find that you want greater quantities.

For leafy green sprouts, put 3-4 T of seed into the

clear plastic gallon container. Cover the mouth with

the hose, secured with rubber bands. Let the seed

soak for about 12 hours, or just overnight. In the

morning, turn the container upside down and get rid of

the water. Then fill it up again with water to rinse

the seeds again. Then just keep the container faced

down, tilted at an angle, in your kitchen sink. Once

in the am and once in the pm, fill the container with

water to rinse the sprouts, and then place faced down

at an angle again. In 5-7 days you will have

luscious, perfect sprouts. The last few days, place

them in indirect sunlight for a while to make them

turn dark green, by developing the chlorophyll in

them.

Here are some super seeds to sprout:

1. Fenugreek---after long and hard deliberation, I

have decided that fenugreek is the king of the

sprouts.

It makes a thick, meaty sprout, with dark green tips.

Very delicious. You can really sink your teeth into

this meaty sprout. Has become a core vegetable that I

eat almost every day.

2. Red clover--better than alfalfa sprouts. They

turn bright green when exposed to indirect sunlight.

3. Cabbage

4. Broccoli---broccoli sprouts contain at least 10x

the cancer preventing phytochemicals that regular

broccoli contains. Plus these sprouts are tasty.

They have a little tendency to stay wet, so make sure

not to water them for many hours before " harvesting "

them, which consists of taking them out of the plastic

container and putting the sprouts in a zip loc type

bag.

5. Radish (if they are too spicy for you, cook them

for less than one minute in a very tiny amount of

water, and most of the spicyness goes away).

6. Red and green lentils (cook these sprouts)

7. Many types of peas (the red pea lettuce sprout is

particularly good).

8. All types of whole grains (whole wheat berries,

whole rye berries, whole buckwheat groates (with the

dark brown hull ON, this will grow to make buckwheat

lettuce), triticale, quinoa, whole oat groates,

barley, etc. Then, cook these sprouts, or make the

one and only " Sprouted Wheat Bread " , which has ONLY

ONE INGREDIENT (sprouted wheat berries), and is the

finest bread in the world (IMHO).

9. All types of beans/legumes---cook these.

Sprouts are the freshest foods you can eat. You can

eat the leafy sprouts WHILE they are STILL GROWING !

Almost all sprouting seeds that are sold are certified

organic, so no pesticide worries here.

Sprouts generally are MORE nutritious than their

vegetable counterparts. Sprouts can make up the

largest percentage of the vegetables you eat. I eat a

very large sprout salad every day, consisting of

multiple types of sprouts.

The leafy types of sprouts have the greatest nutrient

density (amount of nutrients per calorie) and lowest

caloric density (the counterpart) of ANY foods.

As such, I believe that sprouts could win the gold

medal in the nutrition olympics.

It would be hard for me to imagine a CRONie who does

not have his/her own indoor garden of the freshest

vegetables on the planet. Maintenance of your sprout

garden takes very little time, certainly less time

than choosing your foods at the supermarket, standing

in line, taking it home, washing it and hoping you've

got most of the pesticide residues off, and preparing

the food.

There are many types of seeds not mentioned that you

can sprout: daikon radish, purple cabbage, beet

seeds, etc.

Satiety in the diet becomes much easier with sprouts,

because you can eat large quantities of these very

nutritious foods without taking in a large amount of

calories.

Sprouting has improved my diet and CRON program

immensely.

So why eat vegetables that have been grown hundreds or

even thousands of miles away from where you live,

whose freshness is always somewhat or greatly

compromised, guaranteed to contain at least a little

pesticide residue, when you can grow your own

organically grown, super nutritious vegetables in your

own kitchen, and harvest them while they are still

growing.

Bessen

rjb112@...

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