Another Sprout Story...

So I am totally rolling with this bean sprout garden. It takes about 4-5 days from bean to sprout, and when they are done they go into the fridge until I'm ready to use them, and I restart the garden. We eat brown rice a few times a week and the sprouts are a perfect addition. We grow just enough to use without getting tired of them, and if we do have extras, lucky for me chickens love them too.

My original plan was to also sprout alfalfa seeds. We love alfalfa sprouts but they are hella expensive at the grocery store, and now there are all kinds of cootie problems with commercially grown sprouts so I'd rather to grow my own. Unfortunately I could not find alfalfa seeds at sprouts, but they did have chia seeds. Having been the proud owner of a chia pet (classic "bull" style), I knew they looked very much alike, and if Sprouts had them in the bulk seed bin, they must be for eating. I never ate my chia pet's sprouts because I was worried about chemicals & stuff being used on the seeds and/or pottery. So I took the chia seeds and the mung beans home to start sprout gardening. What worked great for the mung beans did not pan out for the chai seeds. Duh! Of course not. Chai seeds do not settle on the bottom of your jar after each rinse, waiting to sprout. As soon as you get them wet they turn into a sticky blob, which is perfect for smearing onto a terra cotta bull but not so much for a jar sprouter. They stuck to the side, bottom and mostly to the mesh screen. Fail! Oh well. I have since learned that chia seeds are extremely nutritious without sprouting. They are better for you and have a much longer shelf life than flax seeds. You can sprout them, and some day I will, but until then we can reap the benefits by just sprinkling them onto our food. Good to know.

Tiny Little Garden...

I have been wanting to try sprouting my own sprouts for a long time. Like literally 20 years. For some reason, I never tried very hard to make it happen, but this year it made it to the "List of Things To-Do" and now I wonder why I waited so long. It could not be easier to sprout mung beans into the most delicious bean sprouts I have ever tasted. Maybe I never tried it because I figured a bean sprout is a bean sprout, and I don't buy them that often so why even go through the trouble. I was wrong. It is no trouble. I think part of it was I assumed I would forget to water them (a frequent problem in my gardening attempts), but since I kept the sprout garden right by the sink, and I visit the sink like a dozen times a day, it was no problem at all. So worth it. If you even like bean sprouts a little bit, you can get into this.

 Start with some mung beans. I got mine at Sprouts. This bag of beans costs less than two containers of bean sprouts and will probably make about 20 times more. You also need a very clean wide mouth jar, a small piece of cheesecloth or something similar (I happened to have a spool of tulle ribbon about 4" wide so that's what I am using),  and a rubber band. Put enough beans in the jar to cover the bottom, then cover the jar with the cheesecloth and rinse the beans a couple of times in cool water. Drain off the water & let them sit next to your sink til it's time to water again. Keep the jar out of direct light (I just propped a Tupperware lid up against the jar to cast a little shade on it) and rinse 2 or 3 times a day til your sprouts are the desirable size. I like to sprout them until tiny leaves form because I think they look like little snakes. Once you taste these, you will never want to buy sprouts from the store again.

mung beans

it's a tiny garden!

ready to eat, or wait a couple days and get 'em nice & big