Sprouts and Sprouting

Sprouting is a very important area of my life.  On any given day, you will find various sprouts growing at my place.  It could be the beginning of the sprouting process over the kitchen sink, I could be eating those sprouts, or planting them. You can sprout just about anything, from legumes to grains. I will explain the sprouting process for you which is so easy a second grader can do it.  Certain sprouts are more nutritious than others even though it’s hard for me to put any particular one on a pedestal.  Broccoli sprouts and wheatgrass, for example are considered ‘superfoods’ because they contain so many nutrients that help fight cancer cells from becoming malignant.  Think of it this way… if one vegetable comes from one seed, and you eat a handful of those seeds or sprouts, you are eating a handful of that particular vegetable!  That, my friend, is a ton of good stuff.

 Try not to get frustrated when just starting out, you cannot mess this up! Don't worry, you will get it. I always find it so exciting everytime I see them grow. It's a magical experience each time and they are so tasty and jam-packed with energy because they are a living food. You will also see your role in the cycle of life, how it is so relevant and everything is all connected.  In this section I will discuss how to sprout and all the things you can do with them, maybe even a recipe or two!  First I would like to share some amazing facts and stories about sprouts.

Sprouts are living foods and living foods are essentially, whole, unprocessed, organic plant-based foods which are full of vitamins, minerals,enzymes and essential fatty acids.  Eating food that is alive promotes a healthy mind, body and soul.  To me, it makes perfect sense that when you eat things like sprouts or raw foods that haven’t been heated to lose their nutrients, you will feel more alive!  A seed is considered the "storehouse" for all the nutrients that we need to stay healthy and feel great.  The sprout is where the seed starts to multiply and develop those vitamins and minerals.

In my opinion, learning how to sprout and continuing that practice is of the utmost importance. Not only will sprouts give you more than you need with nutrition, but it jump starts the process with learning how to plant and create a garden. Place any of these little guys in some good soil and watch them grow, grow, grow! http://www.sproutpeople.org/ is a wonderful website with more information about sprouts than any human being could possibly know. Check em out! There is also a nutrional chart that may be of interest if you click here.

HOW TO SPROUT

All you need is a jar with a lid and a mesh screen for air circulation and drainage.

1. Choose what seed, bean, nut, or grain that you want to sprout.

2. Fill the bottom of the jar (about ¼ inch) with your chosen seed. Remember the sprouts will multiply when they start to grow.

3. Fill the jar half-way with filtered water, cover with the mesh screen and a rubber band. I use the ball jars that have the lids to hold the screen on. Let the seeds soak overnight or for 8-12 hours.

4. Drain the seeds and rinse with filtered water. Let them continue to drain at a 45 degree angle. This can be done by placing a rack in the sink; I usually just tilt the jars over the side of the sink but it’s important for the seeds to not sit in water. This could result in the seeds not germinating or rotting.



5. Rinse a couple times a day with filtered water and drain thoroughly; shake the water out if you feel like it. Continue this process and within a couple of days you will have sprouts! For storage, just place the lid on the jar and keep in the refrigerator.



Storing your seeds and sprouts:

Seeds can be stored for years, even centuries. I read that when King Tutankhamen’s tomb was opened they discovered kamut seeds that were stored for over 3,000 years. Guess what?! They sprouted. There are many ways to save and store your seeds. I use ball jars with the air tight lids and temperature is an important factor. You want to keep them in a cool, dry place.

Once your seeds are sprouting, you can usually keep them fresh in the refrigerator for about 2 weeks, or you can plant them and watch them grow! Happy sprouting!

Sprouted Quinoa Salad
You will need:

2 cups sprouted quinoa (white/red)
1/2 cup white/red grapes (quartered)
3 stalks of celery, finely diced
1 bunch of cilantro
1 handful of mint
1 handful of basil
1 green onion (including the whites)
1 cup of cashews (soaked for 4 hours)
1/2 fresh lime juice
2 Tbs. olive oil (first cold-pressed)

Preparation:
Soak and sprout the quinoa. Your choice for red or white, I love them both.
When quinoa is ready, stir in oil and lime juice. Let sit for an hour for flavors to absorb. Then add remaining ingredients except the cashews. In a food processor or coffee grinder, crush the nuts for a garnish on top of salad.
** For those of you who would like, feel free to steam the quinoa. It is a hit both ways!
** If you're wondering why the need to soak the cashews, I always soak my nuts because they are easier to digest :)

Vegan, Raw & Living Foods

Well, we have turned the page to a new year and what better way to start the new year than upping the ante a little more? I am in a transitional phase in my life that involves many exciting avenues. I have always been pretty well-rounded or so I'd like to think; involved with a number of activities, hobbies, and interests ranging from the politics of our food and where it comes from to hula hooping (my new passion). So how did I get to a point where I am currently working on a 21 day juicefast? What led me to pursue a thorough detox and change my whole lifestyle? Or am I just plain crazy? Let me back up to my really foggy days.... 

Throughout college while working on my Psych degree I always felt that I was a little different than most folks. I went through the motions though, working in a bar(s) which paid the bills sufficiently, and then some. I was a shopaholic, I partied way too much, and I treated my body like crap. I didn't exercise; I figured walking to class everyday was enough! I ate junk, I drank alcohol like the majority of college kids do, and I was depressed all the time. I just figured it ran in my family, so what if something seemed missing? I probably wasn't going to find it.

One day I was talking to a co-worker who had a 2 year old daughter. She said she had taken her to the doctor because she was having problems in her downstairs region. Well those problems turned out to be an early onset of puberty. To make things more horrific, the doctor told her that it isn't uncommon for girls to be having their menstrual cycle at such early age due to all the antibiotics they pump into the meat we are eating, specifically chicken.

What!!!??? I had vaguely heard of how nasty the meat and dairy industry was becoming, but how it was affecting people was absolutely unacceptable. So yes, I gave up the meat. Almost overnight. Well, I gave up red meat, chicken and pork. But not without a farewell dinner, just so I remembered what meat tasted like, I guess. I ordered myself one last steak. I was working that evening waiting tables, so I shoved a piece of that steak in my mouth so fast it lodged in my throat and I almost choked to death. I didn't know what to do, everyone thought I was kidding but I was really scared. I almost started to black out and looking for a chair, I remembered I could do the Heimlich maneuver on myself. Fortunately one of the cooks came running over and smacked me on the back hard enough to propel this piece of steak that I had inhaled into the trash. Needless to say, I had some epiphanies that evening. After calling everyone I knew and telling them I loved them dearly, I began my journey.   

                                                                             

I was talking with a friend the other day about how you don't just make dietary and lifestyle changes over night.  She reminded me that I wasn't even vegetarian when we met 4 years ago in that I was still eating seafood.  I grew up eating fish and fish was good for you, right?  My fondest memories are fishing with my father and catching what was going to be my dinner.  These days, I know how polluted the waters are on this Earth, not only with chemicals like mercury but plastic.  Plastic!  There are actually huge areas in the Oceans that are constantly swirling masses of trash and plastic.  When I found this out almost 4 years ago, I was told about the one in the Pacific.  Just recently I found out there is one in the Atlantic as well.  Unacceptable.  So, how does plastic get into the fish?  Well it just sits there in the water and yes, eventually it breaks down little bits at a time.  The fish are eating those little bits of plastic thinking they are plankton therefore ingesting all the chemicals that all that trash is made of.  And then we eat that fish.  Two words: Food Chain.

I was also eating cheese.  Ugh.  I cannot believe that the day has come that I am honestly grossed out by dairy products.It was the single hardest thing for me to give up. I ate cheese on Everything! I ate it by itself. Snack snack snack. Well one day it dawned on me that for the same reason I gave up meat I should not be consuming dairy products.  I did watch a film titled Go Further which I highly recommend.  It presented the fact that all those antibiotics and filthy factory farming practices that cows are being forced to endure for meat consumption is the exact same process for milk/cheeses.  Eureka!  I couldn't possibly be a part of that system anymore and I don't want to be sick anymore.

Okay so at this point in my story I was more or less a vegan, but I cheated here and there. There was always vegetarian pizza!  So here I had another dilemma.  Although I was trying to eat as clean and healthy as I could, I was still eating just as much processed junk food as the next gal.  All those processed veggie burgers and vegan mayonnaise with unnatural ingredients.  Breads that may or may not have been made with some egg or dairy.  I would rationalize because I was addicted to this kind of food.  Maybe I'll step it up a notch tomorrow, which wasn't working either.  I still felt crappy, lethargic, depressed.  I wasn't educating myself well enough until I started to learn how to really read the ingredients.  I was looking at the ingredient list, but I wasn't understanding them.  What the hell was maltodextrin anyway?  I knew any yellow #3 & #4 couldn't be good for me.  Enriched sounds good right?  Wrong.  

Upon realizing that the same companies who owned all those packaged "edible food-like substances" also owned those organic packaged "edible food-like substances".  So yes there is a market for processed food packaged and labeled "health food", but that doesn't mean that it's good for you.  These companies don't care that you aren't educated as a chemist to understand what all those ingredients are and how they got in that cute little box. The only thing they care about is that you are buying those products.  So what if they have addicting preservatives and additives in them?  Chemicals and genetically altered ingredients that are killing you, slowly of course, so you will buy more before you kick the bucket.

I was on a mission:  To be as informed as I could possibly be.  But I still needed my health in order to stay on this mission and put this information into practice.  I stumbled into a new world that seemed so alien to mainstream society. Unfortunately, we have stumbled so far off the path that the Earth has naturally given us to follow.  Something as simple as growing your own food seems like an oddball thing to do.  When I started learning about raw and living foods everything clicked right into place for me.  Raw, living, and natural vegan foods felt like the missing puzzle pieces in the bigger picture of my life.  I dove right in.  I went to the library and checked out the only three or four books they had on raw and living foods, one of which was Brian Clements' Living Foods for Optimum Health from the Hippocrates Institute.  I read it cover to cover.  This is when the amazing stuff started happening.  I was listening to the radio one day and there was going to be a seminar on the living foods lifestyle here in town.  The woman giving the talks came from the Hippocrates Institute and I thought Wow! How ironic that I just finished this book and I'm searching for knowledge about this new lifestyle and voila!  Well I dove deeper.

That summer it was easy to eat great raw and living foods because we are part of our local CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) and we get a huge box of veggies and fruit each week.  It's seasonal, fresh, and local, organic produce that will feed a whole family. Yes I ate some cooked food too, but it really sent me on an amazing adventure because for the first time I was feeling amazing! I knew where my food was coming from. Let me tell you, there is nothing like handing the man who grows your food your money, opposed to someone behind a desk or in a lab making the decisions of what you eat.  Looking back on some pictures from that summer I was radiant, my skin was clear and I had lost weight. For the first time in my life I can say things like this and it feels great. I feel great!

For me it only seemed appropriate to seek out one of these facilities and find out what all this detoxing and cleansing stuff was really all about.  I found the Living Foods Institute in Atlanta and signed up for the Educator Certification Course.  While working and saving up for the classes I tried to prepare myself for some mild detoxing but nothing can prepare you for what you will embark upon while really learning how to listen to your body. Now I'm working on my first 21 day juicefast and it is an amazing transformational experience. I am always surprised at the detoxification levels that I experience because I consider myself a fairly healthy person. It's funny, with all my psychology and holistic healing background I never made the connection with emotional therapy. Now that I have made that connection, it all makes perfect sense to me!

I hope with my story, I have shown that we don't get to a certain point overnight.  We may choose to pursue a new lifestyle, but these changes take hard work, dedication, and education.  I want this blog to be an educational tool for anyone who may be on a similar journey or anyone changing their eating habits.  I plan to discuss a variety of issues relating to health and wellness and I hope that if you have read this far, you will like to read more.









It's a New Day, It's a New Year, It's a New Life.....

What a wonderful time this is, to be part of Something, not only larger than life, but connected in such an unprecedented way with others. I am estatic to share part of the shift. I'm not just talking about the New Year, although it is a great time for renewal and regenerating many aspects of our lives. I am actually referring to the increase in awareness that I am witnessing with people each and everyday. Now, I haven't always been this positive about such things. I have my days. We all do. But let's face it, we can't continue to ignore what has been happening on this planet and how we got to this this point.

I'm not here to preach or provoke; just get you to ask some questions. You may find some questions may test your comfort zone, but at least you're thinking. After all, we are still human and that is what we do. We think.

The Conscious Kitchen is in effect! Please feel free to venture down this path with me :)