Sprout update

I must be hard up for material if I'm typing about sprouts again. Just a couple of notes. Yes, one tablespoon of seeds per tray is too many. Yes, radish sprouts are spicy and your preschooler may not like them. Yes, it is definitely worth the effort to grow your own sprouts instead of eating commercially grown sprouts that are grown using fecal-contaminated water (yuck).

Now, some notes on a topic that is not related to sprouts but does follow the thread of do-it-better yourself - homemade bread. I purchased the book Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day and I have been baking loaves of plain and also parmesan & sun-dried tomato bread and we have been loving it. This really beats the loaves of crusty bread that Costco sells and we can have this bread every day of the week, all it takes is a little bit of mixing and some dough resting time and presto - bread for slathering, dipping and dunking.

dough and improvised pizza peel

here is the dough resting

bread carnage - what remained of the loaf, sorry I forgot to photograph it before we cut it up and horked it down

Terrariums: a little green in a white winter

Claire and I made a few terrariums just before Christmas. We made one for each of her teachers and a couple for us too. I think they looked really nice and I want to make some more as soon as I can find more appropriate glass containers at Goodwill. Here are a couple of photos of our work in progress and also the finished product.

Here's Claire doing the decorative work. She was in charge of putting down the layers of rock and charcoal at the bottom of the container and she also put the decorative rocks around the plants. I put down a painters plastic drop cloth in the kitchen and we made a big mess which was easily carried right outside when we were finished.

Here are the finished products:

The two on the right were given away and the other two are growing quite well in our house. I want to make a few more terrariums before we move. I think that the terrariums may be a good way for us to bring some green into our lives in a way that is compatible with four cats. The glass Ball jar has a small conifer and moss in it that I dug up in the backyard. The other three containers were planted using miniature tropical plants from my favorite local garden store.

Sprouts

I don't really know why I woke up thinking about sprouts this morning. This is a bad week to start this experiment as I may have to travel to Idaho at the end of the week but I think Scott and Claire can probably remember to rinse sprouts while I'm gone. I picked up a bag of seeds last week at the grocery so I've been itching to get the sprouter out. The seeds are certified organic (seems like a good idea) and are a mix of alfalfa, radish and broccoli.

Years and years ago, when I was a vegetarian, I purchased the Northrup King Kitchen Crop Sprouter. Strangely, I found the receipt in the box. The Sprouter was purchased in 1999 at a hardware store. It hasn't been used in a while. I'm so glad I hadn't sold it at a garage sale or taken it to Goodwill. I just hate it when I get rid of stuff and then need it later. That is true pack-rat mentality peeking through. No wonder I usually keep things long after their usefulness fades. You never know when you'll want to grow alfalfa sprouts again.

So anyway, it has been so long since I've used the Sprouter I can not locate the directions. So I searched the web. I found a neat photo and some interesting links here and also a nice blog post about the Kitchen Crop Sprouter (see link below) where you can see some photos. I was hoping to find more instruction on using the Sprouter, but I guess I'll just wing it.

The seed photo mentioned above reminded me of my thrift find for the month of December.

It's a cloth bird feed bag. The logo isn't printed squarely on the bag so I've been thinking about ripping the seams, cutting the bag down and using this image as the front panel of a grocery tote bag. I have found that four canvas shopping bags are not sufficient. I end up storing merchandise returns or library books or mittens and hats in them and before I know it I've only got one or two in the car ready for carrying groceries. Maybe next week I'll whip this bag up.

Debz Talkin: Growing Sprouts and Juicing Carrots & Apples