Sprouted hummus tastes awesome and it’s good for you. It’s a double win. I made a batch the other day and have posted my recipe below. Feel free to make all the adjustments you want based on how you like your hummus. Whatever you do though, I really recommend switching in the sprouted garbanzo beans for the canned ones. You retain some extra nutrition, the texture is lighter and fluffier, and the sprouts give the flavor an extra dimension of complexity.
What you need:
2 Cups of Sprouted Garbanzo Beans
3 Tablespoons of Tahini
2 Cloves of Garlic (minced)
3 Tablespoons of Olive Oil
1/2 Teaspoon of Salt
Juice of 1 Lemon
Simple Directions:
1. Mix everything in a food processor.
2. Eat it.
I ate it with some homemade pita which was surprisingly easy to make. I recommend giving it a shot.
October 31, 2009
By growing and eating your own sprouts, you get a nutritious meal with a side of cold hard cash piled higher than a pastrami sandwich from the Carnegie Deli. To demonstrate, I put together a little comparison for you. I decided to compare sprouts with some lunch items. This is when I would be more likely to eat a bowl of sprouts as a meal and I figured it would make for a more realistic comparison.
To figure out the sprout cost, I started with a 10 lb bag of seeds for about $32.00. This is about 20 cups of dry seeds (give or take). To make 1 cup of sprouts, you need about ¼ cup of dry seeds. With the help of some basic math, you can figure a bowl of sprouts setting you back about 40 cents. You can buy yourself some sprouts by clicking here.
So check it out…
Sprouts: $0.40
Subway’s $5 Foot-Long: $5.00
Burger-Centric, Fast-Food Value Meal: $5.00 (approximation)
Arby’s 5 for $5 Special: $5.00
Little Caesars Hot-N-Ready Pizza: $5.00
From a lunch perspective, sprouts can save you about $4.60 per day. This translates to the following yearly savings based on how many days per week you eat sprouts for lunch.
1 Day: $239.20
2 Days: $478.40
3 Days: $717.60
4 Days: $956.80
5 Days: $1196.00 (damn!)
What’s that you say? Ramen is cheaper? Well, at about 30 cents a bag, you would be correct. And you could probably slurp up a bowl of ramen every day for lunch for a full year and live to tell about it. By the end of that year, that would net you an extra 26 bucks to go blow at the track. But, that comes at quite a cost. You miss out on all that great nutrition.
So there you have it. Every time you eat sprouts, you win at life a little bit more.
Do you have some hot money saving tips that rival the one given above? Spread the word in the comments section below.
October 27, 2009
For growing bean sprouts (e.g. chickpeas, lentils, etc.) you need not worry about building a sprouter. Just clean out a pickle jar and find a rubber band and a clean piece of cloth. Soak the seeds in water over night then empty the water out and give them 2 rinses per day for 2-3 days. Rubber band the cloth over the opening in the jar and store it tilted upside-down between rinses.
Other sprout types, like alfalfa and fenugreek, require some extra equipment. You could purchase a small sprouter for about $100, but one thing that I like about sprouts is that they are cheap. Spending an extra $100 didn’t quite fit into my game plan. I have also read that they can be grown in a basket inside a plastic bag. While this is a cheap solution, it will leave my kitchen window sill looking like I forgot to put away a bag of groceries. Or worse, I may accidentally refrigerate my sprouts and leave out a bag of groceries to spoil in the sun. So with all this in mind, I set out to build a sprouter of my own.
In the following set of instructions, I will show you how I built my sprouter. This is actually its second incarnation. I quickly found out that version 1.0 was flawed. First of all, I made it on a wooden frame. This turned out to be a choice hang out place for a few varieties of mold. Second, I did not leave much room below the screen for roots to hang down. I had envisioned them growing more upward and less downward but wound up with the opposite. The roots all piled up on the bottom surface and collected water. Again, good for the mold, not for the sprouts.
The new design will be be a big upgrade. While I will likely continue to strive for the perfect design, I should be able to get by with this for a while. Well enough with the chit chat – here’s what you need.
Materials
-Screen: Get a fairly tight weave, but not too tight. The roots need to fit through.
-Screen Door Framing and End Connectors: This will be the frame of the sprouter. Grab something that looks like it won’t rust.
-Screen Spline: This is a rubber strip of material that holds the screen in place.
-Clear Acrylic Sheets: These are used to make the enclosure for the sprouter that will help retain moisture. I made this one out of four 14.5″ x 11″ plates. The top and bottom I left in tact and cut up the other two to make the sides.
-L-Brackets (Plus Nuts and Bolts): I used these to connect the acrylic plates. This may not have been the best or easiest method, but it was the first thing that popped into my head while wandering Home Depot so I went with it.
Tools
You will also need a few tools for this project.
-Hacksaw: For cutting the screen frame.
-Drill: For drilling holes to connect the L-brackets to the acrylic.
-Acrylic Cutter: I found some tool on the rack that is used to score the acrylic. It was only about $4.
-Screen Tool: There may be a more technical name for this. Anyways, its a roller that you use to push down the screen spline and hold the screen in place.
Building the Sprouter
Step 1: Cut the pieces of screen frame to size. To fit the enclosure that I had planned, I cut two 12″ lengths and two 9″ lengths.
Step 2: Connect the four pieces of frame with the end connectors.
Step 3: Rest a section of screen over the frame. Starting in a corner, force the spline into the channel of the frame. Continue until the screen is pinned in place then clip off any access spline. Now it should look something like this:
Step 4: Now to build the enclosure. I used full 14.5″ x 11″ acrylic plates for the top and bottom. For the two long sides, I split one plate directly in half to make two 14.5″ x 5.5″ plates. I cut the other plate into two 11″ x 5.5″ plates and just tossed the scrape in the trash. To connect the four sides and top, I first used the L-brackets to line up some places to drill holes. I marked some spots with a Sharpie. I stuck two brackets on each top edge and one on each side. It looked a little something like this:
Step5: Now just throw it all together. You can use whatever to prop the screen up off the base. I used some brackets off an old curtain rod that I found in my toolbox. I will come up with something a little classier after taking this bad boy for a test drive.
June 21, 2009
