What is with me and sprouts these days…

I am loving sprouts lately!  I just can’t get enough of them.  I love mung bean sprouts, alfalfa sprouts, and soaked/sprouted wild rice.  Yes, there are controversies about wild rice.  But, I’ve never had a problem digesting it.  I have never lost energy when I ate it.  The way I look at it, it’s better than white rice.  I make all my own sprouts.  It takes a little preplanning.  However, they do keep in the fridge for a while if you take care of them.  Shortly after I started this, I bought a little cheap sprouting set up.  It consists of a solid base tray to catch water, two clear plastic slotted trays to hold the sprouts and a top cover with slots to allow air circulation.  I love it.  I’ve used it for buckwheat, mung beans, sunflowers, the bigger seeds.  I always wanted to make my own alfalfa sprouts.  I thought, how am I going to put my alfalfa seeds in those trays that have such large slots.  They’ll just wash through the first time I rinse them.  I need a better system.  I thought and thought.  I thought of my 80 something year old Grandma.  She is not a raw foodist, per se, (she does eat a lot of fresh fruits and veggies throughout the summer and up until my visit with her last year she could run circles around my kids.), but she does have a lot of old school interesting ideas.  She’s like a MacGyver.  She has a solution for everything.  So, I start looking around… What so I have?...  Canning jars…. OOOOO!!!  I have this netting here… and this canning jar… and these elastics… Grandma would be proud.  I soaked my alfalfa sprouts over night.  

 Drained them… Rinsed them again twice (this set up is so slick).  What do I put them on?  I can’t just stick them on a plate because the remaining water can’t drain out.  Hmmmm… A bowl!!  So I got a bowl out.  Ugh, it’s still creating a seal.  What do I have?  I looked around for something.  I have this unopened baggie of drywall anchors that came with something that we’ll never use.  Well, let’s save the landfill and put them to use.  I set them out in the bowl in such a way that the jar was going to be supported by them on four parts.  It works great!!!  

 View from the top!!

 Sprout jar hanging out :)

I’m kind of anal about rinsing my sprouts (fear or bad germs), so I rinsed them every three hours or so through the day and just left them over night.   

After a couple of days, I had beautiful sprouts that I put on sandwiches, put in salad, I even came up with this cool recipe.  I love it anyway.  Give me anything with cut up tomatoes, peppers, and garlic and I’ll love you forever lol.  

Alfalfa Sprout Salad
2 tomatoes, cut up (you can remove the seeds or keep them in for some fluid at the bottom of the bowl you can drink after… ok maybe you don’t understand my obsession with tomatoes lol)
1c alfalfa sprouts
Half a red, yellow, or orange pepper cut in chunks(not a green one, they aren’t ripe yet and contain toxins)
2 green onions, cut
½ tsp minced garlic
1 tbs cold pressed olive oil
1 tsb chopped jalapeño or less if you don’t like spice, more if you want it spicier, I use more ;)
Salt to taste. 
This recipe is good either right away or even better if all the veggies marinate in their own juices together in the fridge for a while. 
You can also use wild rice or mung beans, quinoa, or whatever sprout you want in it…. Raw food freedom!!
Enjoy :)