Does this mean we should avoid organic food? Absolutely not. The fact that the sprouts were grown organically didn’t have anything  to do with them being contaminated with e. coli.

But it just so happens that the Damsel has been preparing a post on growing your own sprouts. Very timely, eh? This is one more example of how self-reliance can be a blessing. When you grow your own, you know what you’re getting…or not getting.

Growing your own sprouts is easy and requires no fancy equipment. In fact, you can do it with just a quart jar and an old nylon stocking. And seeds, of course.

The benefits of sprouting seeds are many. They’re quite good for you, and depending on the seeds you store, can make all the difference if you had to live off your food storage for a length of time. Alfalfa sprouts, for example, are a good source of vitamin C. If you had no access to any fresh veggies, they would be a welcome item indeed.

Nutritionally, sprouted seeds go through an amazing transformation. Look what happens to mung beans:

source

Truly amazing! Consider adding seeds for sprouting to your preparedness stash. (Buy seeds packaged for this purpose rather than farmer-seed, unless you’re sure they haven’t been sprayed with nasty chemicals.)

You can buy sprouters if you like, but really, all you need is a container and some way to rinse the seeds. Stretching a piece of CLEAN nylon stocking over the top of a quart jar and then securing it with the screw band creates a cheap and perfectly serviceable sprouter.

You can sprout most any seeds, but let’s do some alfalfa to begin with. At the Damsel’s house, we like to refer to this as “hay.” Well, it is.

The Damsel inherited a strainer-thingy that fits on the top of a quart jar, so she used that. No possibility of toe-jam flavored sprouts here.

Put 1 1/2 to 2 tablespoons of alfalfa seed in a quart jar and cover with lukewarm water. Put the top on, whether it be a nylon or what-have-you, and slosh them around a bit. Drain the water out, and replace with fresh water, enough to cover them by a few inches. Let them sit overnight.

For the next couple of days, rinse and drain the seeds every few hours, as often as you can remember. In between, put the jar in a dark corner or cupboard, because light will make the sprouts taste bitter.

See the sprouts starting to grow?

When sprouts start to peep out, after rinsing, hold the jar sideways and shake the seeds gently so they spread out along the side of the jar. Don’t fuss. They will be clumpy. Nothing bad will happen.

Continue rinsing, draining, and shaking them so they lie along the side of the jar until the sprouts look long enough to look appropriate on a turkey and avocado sandwich. They’ll look pale, but taste fine.

If you want to green them up now that they’re grownups, you can put them in the sun for a few hours without harming their fresh, sweet taste. The Damsel’s continue to get a bit greener even while they’re sitting in the fridge.

The Damsel stores her sprouts in a ziploc bag that isn’t zipped shut, but is lightly closed. They stay good for two weeks this way.

Mmm, hay!

But what kind is best?

When you go wheat shopping, you’re likely to run into a few confusing terms. Hard, white, red, soft, winter, spring . . . what does it all mean, and does it matter?

In the olden days, which by this the Damsel means twenty-plus years ago, pretty much the only kind of wheat people bought for storage was called “hard red wheat,”  sometimes called “red winter wheat” or even “turkey red wheat.” No one will tell the Damsel why the turkey thing.

Ever notice what a weird word turkey is? Turkey turkey turkey. Say it a few times and pretty soon you’re laughing for no reason.

The hard red kind is great because it stores like, forever. People love to tell the story about a guy finding some of it in a pyramid that was 2,000 years old and it still sprouted. Also, it has a high protein content so that’s good.

Other types, such as soft white wheat, are used by bakeries who don’t care about being able to store wheat for 2,000 years, and yield a–you guessed it–softer, whiter product.

So, people have stored the hard red kind, and try to make bread from it in an effort to become self-sufficient and to rotate the blasted stuff. But the Damsel admits she has seen, on more than one sad occasion, grown women break down and cry in the attempt.

It’s not impossible. But it ain’t easy, especially since the folks who eat it are accustomed to fluffy white bread rather than rough peasant loaves.

Then, in 1986, a farmer in Montana cross-bred the two types of wheat and came up with a new wheat that had both the storability and protein content of the hard red wheat and the lighter flavor and “fluffiness” of the soft white type. It’s come to be called “hard white wheat” and has gained huge popularity among wheat storage enthusiasts.

Yes, there is such a thing as a “wheat storage enthusiast.”

The hard white wheat is a lot easier to make bread with. Those same sad women who cried over their door-stop loaves of red wheat bread, cried tears of joy when they tried again with hard white wheat. It was as if their femininity was affirmed. Crikey!

Now, to be sure, some people prefer the nuttier, “darker” taste of red wheat. But if you’re a wheat buying novice, the Damsel will bet 99 turkeys that you’d like this newer “hard white” wheat. And–now that it has become more widely known and grown, the price has come way down. You used to have to pay a premium for its light fluffy goodness. No longer.

As for the “spring” and “winter” designations, there is a small protein content difference, but the Damsel advises not getting worked up about it.

So unless you are a red wheat lover, the Damsel says go thou, and buy thyself Hard White Wheat.