Of course, I had in mind those nice little alfalfa sprouts I used to find on salad bars. I actually liked those pretty well. So, I did a bit more research, learned about how to grow them, and then tried to find the seeds. I tried several natural food stores in the area, and had absolutely no luck! One place recommended that I try a local seed store, but my research had said that you should only use the ones sold for sprouting, as the ones at seed stores sometimes were treated with bad stuff to prevent mold and other problems. Plus, I learned that the reason we no longer see them on salad bars is that for a while there was a problem with E-coli with alfalfa sprouts! Ewwww! We didn't want that for sure!
All that information put me back to square one again. I was still convinced that this would be a cheap way to provide nutritious fresh vegetables, so did more research, and then some online friends suggested that I try sprouting some other seeds. Finally, I bought the seeds (Mung beans, hard red winter wheat berries, and red lentils), waited a few more weeks until I got up the nerve, then got them started.
There were lots of questions from the family about what I was doing, and why, and "do we really have to eat that?" (And the answer was "Yes!")
Tonight, we finally had our first salad with sprouts, and they actually were pretty good. Well... not great, because we're not used to them yet, but only one of the family absolutely hated them. ( I say he just needs to eat them more often until he's used to them!)
The red lentils didn't grow, but I've read some info about why that might be. I'll try them again. The others grew just great. Wanna see?
These are the Wheat Berry Sprouts:
We kinda felt like we were eating somebody's lawn with the wheat berries. They look a quite a bit like grass!And these are the Mung Bean Sprouts:
You often see these cooked in Chinese food. Hmmm... Maybe I'll try that next time!Don't ya' want to come eat at my house!?
