Skip to main content

Sprouting!

I had been thinking about trying sprouting after I read about the benefits in Nourishing Traditions: The Cookbook that Challenges Politically Correct Nutrition and Diet Dictocrats, but I hadn't got around to doing anything about it, until I saw a few posts on Craving Fresh, in which Emma raved about how easy and yummy they were.

I bought a little kit from the Nanango Markets, you don't have to get a kit, I've seen some other posts with some great simple systems (here and here), but I liked the idea of this kit and it was only $15.  I also bought some seeds to sprout, I like to support local stalls.

Anyway, the kit is a glass jar with a plastic lid that has drainage holes and a little stand so you can lean it facing downwards to encourage drainage.  For each of the seeds I soaked them first (overnight for the large ones and a few hours for the small ones) and rinsed them twice a day until they were big enough to eat, then put them in the fridge and started a new batch.

soaking the chick peas overnight

waiting for them to sprout
So far I have tried alfalfa, chick peas, mung beans, and a mix of wheat, adzuki and mung beans that I got from a health food store in Gympie.  The funnest part is watching the sprouts develop, its like having a window into the secret world of seeds that you normally don't get to see as they are underground and out of sight.  I have found the alfalfa was the easiest and yummy on crackers with homemade cream cheese.  I've continued to sprout alfalfa for salads and sandwiches and it is by far my favourite.

The chickpeas are very tasty too, but went a bit smelly, I only have time to rinse them twice a day and I think they needed more rinsing in summer.  The mung beans were nice too, but took longer to develop to eating size and then they filled up my little jar so quickly.  They are good raw as well as tossed into stirfries or steamed veges.  The wheat/adzuki/mung bean mix was ok, but the adzuki beans take longer to sprout and I wasn't too keen on the wheat - it forms 3 roots and looks like a little bug!  I think I prefer to sprout single seeds/beans.  I'm not sure how they will go in our humid summer weather, so I will just have to keep trying and see what happens.  I might have to leave the chickpeas for winter though, they are very tasty, so I'd like to be able to sprout them successfully.

the alfalfa sprouts were yummy on crackers with homemade cream cheese
the mung beans after soaking
What do you sprout?



More sprouting progress here.

Comments

  1. Thanks for the mention :)

    That's a neat system with the drainage lid. And I like the fact it's in a glass jar. Glass is always my preference over plastic.

    ReplyDelete
  2. oh, this looks fun! I came across your blog researching ginger beer. Hello from Melbourne.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Thanks, I appreciate all your comments, suggestions and questions, but I don't always get time to reply right away. If you need me to reply personally to a question, please leave your email address in the comment or in your profile, or email me directly on eight.acres.liz at gmail.com

Popular posts from this blog

Chicken tractor guest post

Sign up for my weekly email updates here , you will find out more about chickens, soap and our farmlife, straight to your inbox, never miss a post!  New soap website and shop opening soon.... Tanya from Lovely Greens invited me to write a guest post on chicken tractors for her blog.  I can't believe how many page views I get for chicken tractors, they seem to be a real area of interest and I hope that the information on my blog has helped people.  I find that when I use something everyday, I forget the details that other people may not be aware of, so in this post for Tanya, I tried to just write everything I could think of that I haven't covered in previous posts.  I tried to explain everything we do and why, so that people in other locations and situations can figure out how best to use chicken tractors with their own chickens. The dogs like to hang out behind the chicken tractors and eat chicken poo.  Dogs are gross! If you want to read more about chicken tractor

The new Eight Acres website is live!

Very soon this blogspot address will automatically redirect to the new Eight Acres site, but in the meantime, you can check it out here .  You will find all my soaps, ebooks and beeswax/honey products there, as well as the blog (needs a tidy up, but its all there!).  I will be gradually updating all my social media links and updating and sharing blog posts over the next few months.  I'm very excited to share this new website with you!

Garden Update - July 2013

This month I'm joining the Garden Share Collective , which was started last month by Lizzie from Strayed from the Table , to allow vege gardeners to share their successes and failures and generally encourage everyone to grow more of their own food organically.  This first month, I'll give a detailed update on everything that's growing in my garden, for anyone who hasn't been following for long.  I'll do my normal farm update on Tuesday as well. If you've just joined me, welcome to my vege garden.  I recently wrote about gardening in our sub-tropical climate , so if you're wondering about the huge shade structure, that's for protecting the garden during our hot, humid summers.  At the moment though, the garden is full of brassicas, which grow best here in winter, and are suitably frost-proof.  The garden is about 12 m long by 5 m wide, and surrounded in chicken mesh to keep out the chickens and the bandicoots.  The garden has spilled out around the edg