Friday, March 26, 2010

Sprouting


Growing sprouts is antasty, convenient way to add some fresh veg to your day.

You can get a great selection of seeds here at Sprout People.

Start out by soaking a tablespoon of alfalfa seeds over night in a mason jar.

You will need these handy screens to use this method.

In the morning, use the smallest screen to drain the water from the jar. Make sure you get all the water from the jar.

I like to lay the jar on the side so that the seeds are spread out and are getting air. If they don't get enough air, they can die.

Here is my jar sitting in a bowl at an angle to let excess water drain and also allow air to circulate.



















Once or twice a day, run water in the jar, swish around and drain. Again, making sure to get all water from the jar.

After a few days, you will need to switch to a bigger screen so that you can let the seed hulls through the holes in the screen. After about five days, you will be left with lovely sprouts.

Here is my jar with fully grown sprouts!~ Some like to let their sprouts sit in the sun for a day. I'm not too picky.














Dump your fully grown sprouts from the jar into a large bowl. Fill the bowl with water and swish around with your hands. This will separate the sprouts from the seed hulls. Grab small handfuls of sprouts and put in another bowl. This will leave the seed hulls in the larger bowl. Let them drain or pat dry with a paper towel. Then put in your storage container.


Alternatively you can put the sprouts in a salad spinner. The seed hulls will fall through the slots in the spinner while the sprouts stay in the colander. Dump the seed hulls out. You may need to rinse and dump a few times.

Once most of the seed hulls are out, spin your sprouts dry.
















Store the sprouts in a container with a lid in the fridge or they will dry out.

Make a sprout salad, just add some tomatoes, cucumbers, and salt and pepper to a heaping handful of sprouts.

Put some on a salad, use them in a sandwich instead of the usual lettuce or fill a wrap with sprouts for some crunch!

Monday, March 22, 2010

Raw Food Diet


Time to give it another go. It's been a while since I have felt myself and not needed 10 hours of sleep to feel rested. I have been moody, can't focus and did I mention tired?

I will make this post a list of intentions with recipes. Hopefully this will make it easy for me to stick to the plan.

Every morning start with a green smoothie.

Snack on fruit (apple, banana, orange, melon etc.)

Drink water!
Carry raw bars/nuts/fruit etc with me at all times.

Lunch is a salad with either a pate or raw nuts/seeds or a wrap or seaweed roll

Snack again on fruits
Drink kombucha, on tap at Whole Foods. I have strawberry in my fridge now and it is so delicious!

Dinner will be a raw food dish of some sort. Ideas below:
Taco
Pasta
Sandwich
Salad with mushrooms
Nachos
marinated veggies
Raw cereal
raw burgers

Recipes to make or things to do:
Grow sprouts
Make onion bread
Make zuch chips
Make pate
Make Crackers

Soak almonds for almond milk

Stick to it even when cooking regular foods for my family. That is the hard part, making food for the other 4 members of my family and trying not to eat it!

Here's to day one.