Over the last few months I have got back into growing salad sprouts. Back in the 70's, we were all into it, and I used to grow alfalfa spouts. I recently found packets of sprouting seeds at our local ACE store and thought I would give them a go again as something fun to do. ACE sells fancy plastic sprouting trays and boxes but I just use a jar with a square of stocking material held over the top with a rubber band. Just like I did in the 70's. ( I am afraid that I have reached the age in life, that I need to point out that I am referring to the 1970's. Not my 70's!) I expect I can buy sprouting seeds online as well but I do not mind supporting our local hardware store to help keep them around.
Sprouting is a simple process. You just soak the seeds first for about 8 hours, and from then on, rinse and drain off the water again a few times a day for about 4 days. I use a small Talenti ice-cream container for sprouting. It is easy to remove the stocking mesh covering and put the container lid on the jar for storing the sprouts in the refrigerator until I use them for sandwiches. A heaped teaspoon of seeds fills up the Talenti container with spouts and you can get several heaped teaspoons in each packet of the seeds that you see in the photo. The packet of seeds cost me about $5, so the cost of each lot of spouts works out at about 70 cents each. Better than buying them at the supermarket.
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| These sprouts still have a day or two to go. |
I enjoy following a few blogs written by retirees around the world. They are usually gardening, frugal types. My people. It is noticeable that over the last decade we are all getting older and that the bloggers are cutting back on the size of their gardens and the heavy work they can make. Big vegetable gardens, with plots of potatoes and corn, are now being cut back to a raised garden box and herbs in a few tubs. I think that this sprouting of seeds on the kitchen bench would really work well for us oldies who want to be more self sustaining without too much physical effort. Mind you, the youngsters of the family can have a lot of fun growing them too. Maybe I need to think about making my own yogurt again. We all used to do that in the 70's too.
Aloha
