I promised a few people that I would do a blog post about sprouting. I will also do one about milling at some point.
As any regular readers of my blog will know, I am pretty into sprouting. I've read a lot of books and done a lot of research and practice on it. It's an every day part of life in our household now. More and more people are learning about the benefits of eating sprouts, but not many people here in Northern Ireland do it, or know where to get the ingredients necessary for sprouting. It has taken me literally hours and hours of research to be able to find retailers of sproutable grains that deliver to my address. In the US you can buy whatever you please to sprout at cheap prices. Here, a little more effort is needed. But I have noticed over the last year that our country is slowly becoming more aware of the growing circle of sprouters and raw foodists. Tescos have recently started stocking a whole heap of ingredients that I had to search out before. If Tescos are stocking it, then people must be buying it.
So why do I sprout? Well, in a country where most of our fruits and vegetables are grown half way across the world, packaged and sent on long trips and stored sometimes for many months before being put out of the supermarket shelves just before they go mouldy, it can be hard to get hold of really fresh produce, at a reasonable price. I do grow veg in my back garden but I can not grow enough to feed my family, year round, in our back yard. The beauty of sprouting is that it is extremely nutritious, extremely easy, extremely cheap, and you don't even need a garden to do it. We can grow enough green stuff via sprouts and sunflower greens to feed our family for a few pounds a week. That's five people. Not bad.
What is sprouting? Well, its basically the process of taking a seed, nut or pulse, and making it sprout. These sprouts would usually grow into new plants, but we eat them just after germination. I think that the average NI diet is extremely lacking in seeds, nuts and pulses. Many people here hardly eat fruit or veg, never mind seeds. The seeds used for sprouting can be eaten at the seed stage - sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds, lentils, peas, etc. So why bother sprouting them? The sprouting of a seed starts a natural process. When a seed sprouts it produces enzymes which aid its digestion when eaten. Our pancreas produces enzymes to digest our food. But the pancreas is not designed to produce enough enzymes to digest everything. It is merely made to top-up our enzyme levels when we eat something hard to digest, such as meat. The majority of our digestive enzymes should come from the raw food that we eat. Any raw fruit or vegetable will contain enzymes. But many people eat little or no raw food, and so their bodies are put under strain, trying to produce enough enzymes to digest a very dense meaty, carbohydrate-full diet.
So sprouts are easy to digest, and aid the digestion of other foods. Not only that, but per calorie they are the richest source of vitamins, enzymes, minerals and protein. They nourish the entire body and enhance the immune system. During the sprouting process seed fats are converted to essential fatty acids and carbohydrates, and proteins are converted to essential amino acids. Both of which are sorely lacking in many western diets. The vitamin content also increases dramatically in comparison to its dry state.
Sunflower seeds can be sprouted (use hulled seeds) or grown into sunflower greens (use un-hulled seeds). Sunflower greens are high in everything that the sprouted seed has, with the addition of chlorophyll (anything that you sprout long enough to grow green leaves will contain chlorophyll). Chlorophyll is known to regenerate the blood stream and is also a powerful blood cleanser. Chlorophyll is basically liquid sunshine. The sun shine is what makes the plants leaves go green. Sunflower greens can be grown indoors without soil, but are better grown in soil trays outside in natural sunlight. They consume nutrients from the soil and are therefore higher in nutrient value than greens grown without soil.
When we buy our vegetables in the local supermarket we are basically eating something which has come to the end of its life. Sure, raw veg from the shops is better than no veg at all. But sprouts and greens grown at home are eaten whilst still alive. They are harvested and eaten straight away. They have had no time to lose vitamin or enzyme content. You literally could not eat anything better for you. There are many many books that promote the use of sprouts, greens and wheat grass juices to heal the body of many ailments, including cancers. I think prevention is better than cure. What is considered by most health professionals in today's society to be a healthy diet, is actually a very poor diet. Of all the animals on the planet we are the only ones to cook our food, or to package it and toxify it with chemicals. But now days this is considered to be normal (I am not, by the way, promoting the consumption of raw meat - so anyone who watched that episode of Wife Swap, please don't think I'm that crazy, LOL). Animals eat their food as it grows. They do not seem so be suffering from all the illnesses that have taken hold of the human race. I'm pretty sure that what we are putting into our bodies is killing us.
Anyway, before I start to sound like a paranoid control freak, let me summarise by saying this. Our family eats a lot of sprouts and greens. It is cheap, tasty, healthy and nutritious. Since eating lots of raw foods and sprouts my metabolism has sped right up, which is a bonus. When we eat more of this food we all sleep better, have higher energy levels, greater clarity and concentration, and just generally feel much better.
Sprouting is easy. Here are a few photos for those who are interested in learning more, and also a few links.
You do not need to buy specialist equipment to sprout. However, I use this
sprouting tier a lot of the time. You can also use
jars,
hemp bags or just a glass dish and a colander. All work well. I like to use the hemp bags for sprouting sunflower seeds. I use the tier more for the smaller seeds such as alfalfa. I use the jars for the seed mixes, and if I am sprouting a lot of large seeds (chick peas, lentils, mung beans etc) I just use a colander and bowls.
In this photo you can see 3 tiers each containing just one tablespoon full of seeds. One tray has alfalfa, one has broccoli seeds, and the other has red clover seeds. From one table spoon you can grow a whole tray. These are the seeds on their first day, unsprouted.
Here in this sprouting jar we have a
biosnacky gourmet mix of seeds. I buy many of my sprouting seeds from
biosnacky. That packet of seeds cost 99p. I would get about 4 full jars of seesds out of that, so it goes a long way. You can see that there are only a few seeds in that jar, but in a the next photo you can see that they have grown to fill the whole jar.
Most of the seeds need to be soaked over night before straining (as in this photo). Then it is simply a case of rinsing them three times a day and draining them thoroughly until they have grown. You can eat most of them within a day, or you can let them grow until the leaf stage. The same seeds will taste different depending on how long you let them grow. We just keep harvesting ours as we need them, and leaving the rest to grow on longer, until they are all gone. Most of them take about 4 days to grow to an optimum size and taste.
Here is a photo of the sprouts after about 4 days of growth. You can see how one table spoon of seeds produces a full packed tray of nutritional goodness. And they taste amazing. I love eating these smaller sprouts. Sunflower sprouts are also a favourite of mine. Whilst Dan likes lentils, wheat and mung beans sprouted.
Here are some newly harvested sunflower greens. Little Barney picks these during the day and eats them straight from their growing trays! I doubt many 3 year olds consume as many sunflower greens as he does. I absolutely love these and they are so cheap to grow (about 12p a tray). We use them in salads and sandwiches mostly. The sunflower seeds are grown in soil for 1 - 2 weeks (depending on the weather or warmth). They must be harvested at the two leaf stage. We have accidentally let them grow another set of leaves but they taste better picked younger. I buy my
sunflower seeds here. Another day, if people are interested, I can post step by step photos on the sprouting process. But now I have to leave it because there is a queue for the pc!
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