Best Sprouting Info EVER

Well, so far anyway :) This person put together A CHART! I love charts like this. When they make life so much clearer and simpler. Everything you wanted to know about sprouting on one page: Well, OK not everything, that would take books. But all the basics, and that's really what I want to know when I'm trying to prepare food.

http://www.betterraw.com/2011/08/sprouting-chart-and-guidelines.html

Sprouted Grain Salad

This recipe is tweaked from one out of "The SparkPeople Cookbook" called Lentil and Bulgar Salad but doesn't really look or taste much like it at all. The original recipe is here: http://recipes.sparkpeople.com/recipe-detail.asp?recipe=2241028

Minutes to Prepare: 15
Minutes to Cook: 10
Number of Servings: 8

Tips
Sprout Lentils 3 days before making this salad, wheat berries 2 days before, or earlier but kept in fridge.
This salad does have quite a bit of protein so could be a light meal in itself. We ate it with salmon, which was good each on it's own but didn't work well together for me. Carlie liked it as it was, but I would eat the salad as it's own meal next time.

Ingredients
Salt, 1 tsp
 Black Pepper, 1 dash
Celery, raw, 1 stalk, medium
Basil, 1 tbsp
 Garlic, 3 cloves
 Lentils, 1 cup
 Onions, raw, 1 medium (2-1/2" dia)
Spinach, fresh, 2 cup
Wheat Berries, dry, .5 cup
 Beans, black, 1 cup
 Bell Pepper, 1 large (3-3/4" long, 3" dia)
White Balsamic Vinegar, 2 tbsp Olive Oil, 2 tbsp
 Zucchini, 1.25 cup, sliced
 Heritage Tomatoe 1 medium chopped
Walnuts 1/3 cup

Directions
Place 2 cups spinach in a large bowl and set aside

 Put sprouted lentils in a medium-sized saucepan, cover with water, and bring just to the boiling point. Turn the heat down, partially cover, and allow to simmer without stirring for 5 minutes. While those are cooking, chop the veggies. Add the minimally sprouted wheat berries to the pot with the lentils, and let cook 5-10 minutes more till lentils are soft but not mushy. Drain well, and then transfer to large bowl on top of spinach, to wilt spinach lightly.

While the lentils and wheat berries are cooking use 1 of the Tablespoons of Olive oil to cook most of the the walnuts (set a handful aside for topping), red onion, garlic and basil until the red onion starts to clarify, then add the zucchini and cook just until it's softened a bit.

 Add black beans and everything else to the lentils, except tomato chunks. Mix gently but thoroughly. Cover tightly and refrigerate. Just before serving, top with tomatoes and a few walnuts

Sprouting Wheat Berries

Repurposed Ricotta Cheese Container

Since I'd used up a container of ricotta cheese the night before which had a nice little basket in it, I decided to repurpose that container and basket for sprouting. As you can see from the photos, it worked well for the wheat berries (tho a few did get through at the beginning before they started to swell) I decided to eat 1/2 of them as minimally sprouted to see what that was like, and left the other half out to continue sprouting, to see how that goes. They were chewy and a nice addition to my breakfast, in a way that my body will be able to process more efficiently, and from what I've read are a safer way to eat grains for diabetics. I'm still experimenting with it, but so far my blood sugars have been fine even when eating a breakfast on the higher end of my carb goal, and presumably that is because they were grains with a higher protein count such as quinoa, and because I'd sprouted them. I'll keep testing and see what happens.


There are a lot of videos and even books about sprouting wheat, why you would want to do it, how to do it, various stages and why they're good, etc. This article has a lot of great information and is a pretty easy read: http://www.keeperofthehome.org/2011/04/getting-started-sprouting-wheat-berries.html

Here's a few videos I found helpful:
Clear and simple instructions: http://youtu.be/QX21C-tUSIc

Quick and easy description video about how to sprout wheat: http://youtu.be/Gesb9ZzBjz4

Video about the health benefits of wheat grass (which is apparently what you get if you let the wheat keep going after it sprouts): http://youtu.be/__DxSzcfMSo

I'm not a dietitian so I'm not going to go into why it's good to sprout various grains, beans, nuts, etc. However the link at the top of this blog entry does, and I would suggest reading it if you're looking for some answers.

One thing I've learned is to leave 3 times as much room for water as wheat berries because they will absorb the water and they will expand. I found this very helpful because it expands about 2 times it's original size by the end of the first 10 hours, and even more in the last 10. You can sprout it longer than 20 hours, but I was only going for a small amount of sprouting, called minimally sprouted wheat berries, for some breakfast cereal.

I also looked up how to sprout lentils (http://web.stagram.com/p/281779536124382744_220092754) and quinoa because I've got a lot of each in the pantry, and this guy had some really clear and simple videos that gave me the confidence to just go ahead and try it. This one is my favorite because he talks about how there are a variety of sprouting methods: http://youtu.be/LvPJvxxfJps