My Quick/Easy Sprouting Technique for Desperate Times

Experience has led me to a quick, easy, and cheap way to do sprouting. Remember that when the next prolonged electrical power outage occurs, everyone will soon be desperate for food.

Forget your outdoor garden, unless you plan on guarding it day and night.

All you do is stock up on dried lentils from any supermarket, buckwheat groats from some supermarkets (e.g. Whole Foods) or from Chinese and Korean grocery stores, and maybe sunflower seeds, available at health stores and on the Internet. Of course, you can sprout mung beans, alfalfa seeds, etc. also. But be sure to really stock up, because sprouts may be a major source of food for the family and for starving neighbors who won't shoot you if you give them some food.

Here's the quick/easy sprouting process -- no messy cheese cloth.

At your local Chinese or Korean grocery store, buy this brand of kim chee, a fermented vegetable mix which is quite beneficial to proper digestion and general health, but buy it in the large stout jar that you see on the left of the three jars pictured in the advertisement on this web page:

http://www.kimcheepride.com/about.cfm

This jar is sized and shaped ideally for sprouting. Moreover, it has a plastic (non-corrosive) lid with a smooth top surface. Put your sprouting seeds into the clean empty jar and fill it with tap water to soak for half a day. Then hold the flat smooth top of the lid over the mouth of the jar and slowly turn the jar upside down. Very slowly slide the top of the lid off center very slightly from the mouth of the upside down jar until air is just barely able to get sucked into the jar as the water trickles out. It only takes about 20 seconds to pour off the water in this manner, and none of the seeds have ever escaped when I do it this way. Then turn the jar right side up, wiping the lid top across the mouth of the jar to deposit the remaining seeds back into the jar. Place the jar of wet seeds on your counter, and use a fork to wipe the seeds from the wall of the jar into the bottom of the jar. Take a small brown paper bag and shorten the length of the bag by cutting several inches crosswise off the top of the bag.

Now cut several very small holes in the bottom of the bag. Place the bag upside down over the jar, so that the seeds can sprout on your sunny counter top in relative darkness, but with necessary air circulation. Furthermore, the heat from the sun shining on the heat absorbent brown paper will help to elevate the temperature of the seeds to, say, 70 degrees or more, which is conducive to sprouting.

I found that I never forget to rinse the seeds about four times a day because my eye always catches that upside down paper bag on the kitchen counter. When the seeds have sprouted sufficiently, you can take the bag off and let them get some sunshine to green them up a bit. Then, when they have sprouted enough, partially fill the jar of sprouts with water and shake in some baking soda, which will prevent mold from growing. In fact, I use baking soda to kill the mildew in the shower stall and also, I soak my cut up fresh coconut in baking soda and water for a couple of hours before storing it in the fridge, otherwise the coconut gets that red mildew spotting.

After a couple of hours, rinse out the baking soda water several times with fresh water, drain the sprouts, put the jar in the fridge with the cap on. Each time I harvest some sprouts from the fridge, I give the jar of sprouts a cold water rinse/drain, and put the jar back in the fridge, otherwise they tend to dry out after a few days.