Sprout Your Own Salad

Our great-great-grandparents would have turned green with envy if they could see the huge produce sections of our typical modern supermarkets.

It's true - having access to such an abundance of yummy fresh veggies and salad ingredients all year long is great for healthy eating - but it may not be the best for the Earth.

Next time you shop, take a look at where all this food is coming from. Mexico, Chile, Ecuador, Morocco... many items are shipped from thousands of miles away. Even domestically produced produce is frequently trucked hundreds or thousands of miles to its final destination. Considering that most salad veggies consist of 90% or more water by weight, this represents a tremendous amount of fuel burned just to keep our salad bowls filled.

One way to get around this is to grow your own. Home-grown veggies don't just cut down on greenhouse gasses - they're much fresher, which means they're tastier and healthier, too! Just one problem if you live in a cooler climate - it's pretty hard to garden in the winter.

Fortunately, there's a solution to the seasonal salad dilemna: sprouts! Sprouted veggies are easy to grow, tasty, and packed with vitamins and minerals. They're great both raw and tossed into stir frys, or even in meatloaf or smoothies, depending on the type you grow.

Getting started is easy. All you need is a glass jar (wide-mouth quart or larger Mason jars work great), some cheesecloth, a rubber band and seeds to sprout.

You can turn just about any kind of veggie seed into sprouts. Alfalfa is the most popular, but if you want to avoid the toxic saponins associated with them go for clover seeds instead. Anything in the cabbage family is great. Mustard or radish sprouts will provide a nice zip to your plate, as will onion. And sprouting beans and grains such as lentils, garbonzos and quinoa will make them more nutritious and cut down on cooking time.

Pour a tablespoon or so of the small seeds, or half a cup of the larger ones, into your jar and cover well with filtered water. Let them soak overnight. In the morning, fasten some cheesecloth over your jar with a rubber band and drain. Rinse with more filtered water, drain again, and let them sit in a darkened location with the jar propped so excess moisture can drain out.

Be sure to repeat the rinse and drain procedure twice a day so your little sprouts don't start to rot. Within one or two days you should see a little swelling at the bottom end of each seed. This is the tip of the radicle, or embryonic root, of the seed. Now you have sprouts! Some sprouts, such as garbonzos, lentils, and grains, can be used at this stage. Others can be allowed to grow for a few days longer, until the seed leaves are developed. If you're using them as greens, you'll want to expose them to light during the last day to encourage chlorophyll formation. This will turn them a nice green and add to their nutritional value.

Once you're used to it, sprouting your own salad takes very little time and is a great way to add interest and nutrition to your winter salad plate!