Winter Sprouts

A couple of weeks ago a ordered Rodale's Stocking Up by Carol Hupping. It's a great book - it covers all sorts of food storage options, from freezing to canning to drying, and looks at not just fruit & veg, but also meat, poultry, fish, dairy, grains, seeds and nuts. One of the final chapter discusses sprouting, so we've been giving that a try lately. Not only are they tasty, but they're good for you and ridiculously easy to do, once you get into the habit of multiple rinsings during the day. The book provides a table for sprouting various seeds, grains and legumes, with how many rinsings per day, how long to let the sprout grow, flavour comments, etc. According to Stocking Up (p. 561):

When you sprout beans, seeds, and grains, you're unleashing their full nutritional potential. Wheat and millet sprouts, for instance, contain more than 5 times the vitamin C of their unsprouted counterparts. The amount of vitamin B grows substantially as bean sprouts grow, and most sprouts double their original protein content.

We have tried buckwheat and a couple of different types of lentils so far. The lentils are the easiest to grow, and most familiar flavour & texture. I would like to get some mustard/radish seeds to try for that extra zing, and Dave would really like to try sunflower seeds, as we both love sunflower sprouts. I currently have the seeds in clear mason jars with plastic mesh lids (to aid in draining), which works fine for short sprouts, but I think I'd need some kind of tray for the sunflowers.

Today, I used the sprouts in our luncheon "hamlette": a friend of ours gave us a chunk of Irish ham this week, and I've been turning it into hash and omelette-type food for our lunches.

Hamlette

1/2 cup cubed ham (this is ready-to-eat ham)
2 large mushrooms, finely sliced
1 celery stick, finely chopped
1 tsp dried crumbled oregano
dash fresh ground pepper
dash Louisiana Hot Sauce
two eggs
1 tsp fresh crumbled Parmesan cheese

Fry up the ham in small cast-iron pan over medium low to warm it up, add the mushrooms & place lid over pan. Once mushrooms are mostly cooked, add celery & cover again for about 2 minutes. Add seasonings and mix into meat & veg. Break eggs over the mixture (but don't scramble them in), and crumble Parmesan on top. Cover again and cook until you are happy with the consistency of the eggs. Split between two people over toast. You can add a splash of catchup if that's you're leaning. Enjoy!