Nurture Your Own

Recipes: Sprouted Lentil Cucumber Curry Salad

Filed under: Recipes,Sprouts — adele @ Jun 28th, 2007

This tastes as good as it looks!

SPROUTED LENTIL CUCUMBER CURRY SALAD

Based on this recipe from VeganChef:

2 cups sprouted lentils
2/3 cup raw sunflower seeds
1/3 cup whole soaked flaxseed
1 cucumber, chopped
1 stalk scallions, chopped
1 whole tomato, chopped
2 Tb cold pressed extra virgin olive oil
2 TB fresh squeeze lemon juice
1 tsp oregano
2 tsp red curry powder
1 tsp red pepper flakes
1/2 tsp mustard powder

Just toss everything and serve. It’s really tasty and not too spicy. You can add more pepper flakes if you like it a little hotter, like me.

Highly Recommended: For those who enjoy great foods of famous restaurants, you can take a look at Copycat Recipes Cookbook. A fantastic resource of more than 750 recipes from top restaurants around the world!

Technorati Tags: recipe, sprouts, sprouting, healthy food, healthy living, healthy cooking

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Learn How To Grow Your Own JAR of Sprouts

Filed under: Sprouts — businesspeanuts @ Jun 27th, 2007

Want to be healthy the homegrown way?Now there is no more excuse for not having enough time to grow your own organic food. If you want to learn how to grow your own jar of sprouts, have a look at this great video on simple steps that even a child can follow to nurture your own sprouts.

Transcript Of The Video

I transcripted some of the highlights of the video that you can come back and read it and do it yourself.

Needed : A lid with a screen from a health food store, Jar, Beans (Lentil)

Step 1: Pour about half about a cup of beans into jar. Pour water in. Ratio for the water to be poured should be about 4 times the amount of beans. Soak beans overnight.

Step 2: The next day, pour the water out of the jar. Leave jar upside down so they drain completely

Step 3: By now, they would have started growing. Keep jar by the kitchen sink and rinse your beans once a day.

Note:

About 3 to 4 days, you can eat your sprouts. Wait until the sprouts are as long as the beans.

Benefits of eating sprouts:
1 – When they grow into sprouts, they are packed full of Vitamin C. 10 times the amount of the original beans.
2 – They also have heaps of food enzyme, which help out digestion and liven up the body.

Extra Information For All Your Sprout Needs:

Types Of Sprouts You Can Grow	Vitamins	Remarks
Lentils	B, C	Grow into sprouts and it will have 10 times the amount of vitamin C from the original beans. Rich in protein as well.
Alfalfa	A, B, C, D, E, F, K	Rich in many minerals and many enzymes that aids in digestion.
Green Pea	Rich in B vitamins and vitamin C	If you want to get a bowl of salad, green peas is a definite must-have in your salad.
Radish	High in vitamin C and potassium	Contains a rich flavour.
Soybeans	A, B, C, E	Extremely rich source of proteins.
Sunflower	B, D, E	Very rich in those vitamins as wel as minerals.
Wheat	B, C, E	For dry wheat, it has vitamin E but if you grow it into sprouts, vitamin E jumps 3X from its original state. It has many minerals as well.

Technorati Tags: sprouts, grow sprouts, eat sprouts, health food, healthy living, healthy lifestyle, organic food

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Recipes: Energy Soups – boost up your energy levels

Filed under: Recipes,Sprouts — adele @ Jun 26th, 2007

Sprouts are an excellent source of vitamin C and also contain many good B vitamins. And you probably won’t find a less expensive way to get these vitamins than from low calorie sprouts. Green leafy sprouts are also a good source of vitamin A. Sprouts are a good source of fiber, protein, and contain enzymes that aid digestion. In addition, sprouting destroys the seed’s natural preservative enzymes that inhibit digestion (see Taarak’s post for a more entertaining explanation of this phenomenon).

There are so many ways to enjoy your raw sprouts. One of the easiest way is to blend a handful of sprouts into whatever you are juicing.

Here’s a “soup” that will give you lots of energy throughout the day. All you need is a blender.

Energy Soup – Southwest Style

1 cup sunflower sprouts (put in bottom of blender).
Add juice of 1 lemon.
Stuff blender with buckwheat and sunflower greens until full.
Fill blender 3/4 full of filtered or spring water.
Add flax sprouts or any other sprout on hand.

Blend until smooth.

Add avocado and blend 30 seconds more.
Serve in soup bowls.

As my kids would say, Easy-Peasy-Lemon-Squeezy

Do you have a favourite yummy recipe to share? We’d love to try it out! I’ve also got more Energy Soup recipes and a Nori Roll.

(Please check out my recipe for Sweet Sprout Slaw.)

Technorati Tags: health recipe, sprouts, sprout recipe

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Sprouts for body-building?

Filed under: Sprouts — pratik @ Jun 25th, 2007

I must be kidding!

But after a gap of 6 months, this is what triggered me to go back into the holy ritual of growing sprouts again. Lemme rant…

I relocated to this new place a few months back & then soon proceeded on a longish vacation; by the time I settled down I realised I have been “sprout-less” for months in a row now – the longest embarrassing gap in my 6 years of promiscuous sprouting “career”. What shoveled me back into sprouting were my fitness fantasies err.. emm.. goals for the coming weeks. Yeah! Build muscles the veggie way!! Now ain’t that inspiring?

With all of 61 kilos at 5’11″ I juz had to increase my protein intake to do justice to my new-found love for weight-training. At least thats what all the fitness gurus pontificate. After a quick survey of workout diets out there, I gathered that I better clock-up 49 gms of protein a day. It seems my daily slurp of soymilk, daal (legumes) & tofu provides less than 40 gms of protein/day. And too much of them will be heaty – so maybe I should look for other options. And to my delirious surprise I discovered that pumpkin/sunflower kernels provide as much as 16 gms of amino acids/100 gm & chickpeas can be as high as 20% rich in proteins! Hence the greed a.k.a motivation to get sprouting again – pumpkin, sunflower, chickpeas & some black unhulled sesame, flaxseed, lentils, alfalfa etc.

So you ask – Why not eat the seeds off the shelf? why bother sprouting?

Well my friend, here’s the clincher (& you owe me 1 for revealing this) : seeds & nuts are all ANTI-ENZYMATIC by nature ie they resist the digestive process because digestion happens through enzymes. So if ingested as such – our body will have to supply more enzymes to digest them as compared to an equivalent amount of some other food. Its nature’s way of helping them survive the passage through the food-tract of those who ingest them (along with the fruits they are part of) so that they are expelled intact (along with the shell) & can sprout forth to propogate their species till perpetuity – ‘baptism by (digestive) fire’ you might say. But here comes the cunning men (yours truly), unscrupulously foiling nature’s bid for their survival by sprouting (aghast!) the kernels (after zapping ‘em out of the shells of course). This actually makes these nuts go nuts with so much enzyme that THEY DIGEST THEMSELVES once ingested without my body having to supply an iota of my own precious enzymes, thereby preserving my limited stock of enzymes (for myself & not for the nuts out there).

So whats the big deal? Well, our body needs all the enzymes it can produce, for its own upkeep & maintenance – the more the merrier. So in this ‘loading’ phase of my glorious body-building enterprise, I don’t intend to overload my limited enzyme pool due to the increased calorie-intake. And then my body will also recover faster after the trashy workouts.

Ahem! Now ain’t I a genius?

Technorati Tags: sprouts, enzyme, growing sprouts, body building

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Sprout Recipes: Sweet Sprout Slaw Salad

Filed under: Recipes,Sprouts — Vivienne Quek @ Jun 25th, 2007

My friend, Adele, is a great cook who can whip up a tasty meal in a jiffy. After she read my earlier posts that sprouts can treat eczema and acne, she emailed me this salad recipe. This will be really great for a light lunch or dinner.

Sweet Sprout Slaw

Choose One of the Sprouts to
- Broccoli
- Cabbage
- Long Life Mix and/or
- Any Other Brassica Sprouts

And another type of Sprouts

- Alfalfa
- Clover
- Moo Mix and/or
- Any Other Leafy Sprout
________________________________

Ingredients

- 1-2 Cups Cabbage or other sprouts
- 1-2 Cups Alfalfa Sprouts
- 1/2 cup pineapple – chopped
- 1/2 cup green grapes – halved
- 1/2 cup yogurt
- 1/4 cup mayonnaise
- 1 tsp. mustard
- salt to taste

Preparation

1. Combine sprouts and fruit in large bowl.
2. Mix up the other ingredients and pour over the sprout fruit mix.
3. Toss.
4. Serve Chilled

If I can do it, you can too. If you are one of those who enjoy great foods of famous restaurants, you must take a look at Copycat Recipes Cookbook. A fantastic resource of more than 750 recipes from top restaurants around the world!

Technorati Tags: recipe, healthy food, organic food, health food

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Eat Sprouts to Treat Acne

Filed under: Cures & Treatments,Sprouts — Vivienne Quek @ Jun 24th, 2007

Whether you are sweet 16 or a wise 38, I’ll bet you have tried every acne cream, lotion, medication if you got pimples, white heads, black heads and what-nots popping here, there and every where. If you are like most people, these treatments would probably work for a while. After a blissfully clear period, those acne will resurface to haunt you all over again.

A friend recently told me some very interesting news. Raw, fresh sprouts that I’m taking to treat eczema would have a miraculous result on acne sufferers too. She said acne can be cured for good if you can step up and take positive action. Basically, you have to pay a price to get back that glowing, clear complexion.

The price is to change your diet completely. She suggested to me that a diet comprising mainly fresh fruits, raw vegetables, raw sprouts, nuts, water, fruit juices and vegetable juices can do wonders for acne sufferers. In other words, you got to say good bye to dairy products, all meats, processed foods and of course, junk foods. I would suggest that it is better to consult your doctor before you make such a drastic change in your diet if you have diabetes and other medical conditions.

A diet with plenty of meats, processed foods and of course, junk food, stresses the 2 majors excretory organs – liver and kidneys. When your kidneys and liver are over-worked and under stress, they might have difficulty dispelling impurities and toxins from your body. This mean your skin – the largest excretory organ in the body – will have to take over some of the work load. What naturally happens is the skin will be “tired out” and become unhealthy. This would eventually lead to a host of dermatological problems including eczema and acne.

When the trees are bearing small fruits, you don’t medicate the fruits, the leaves, the branches or the trunk, you treat the roots. Same theory applies here. You need to expel the impurities and toxins so that your kidneys and livers can work at their peak again.

Eating a generous amount of raw fruits, vegetables, sprouts (such as mung bean and alfalfa) and nuts will give your organs a chance to recuperate and get rid of the unwanted elements in your body. Slowly but surely, your liver, kidneys and skin will recover from its abuse and start functioning at optimal levels once again.

So, I just added another reason to keep to my sprouts regime. Guess what, I’m experimenting with growing my own spouts now. Will definitely share more about this later.

Highly Recommended: “The Definite Guide to Acne” by Houa

Technorati Tags: sprouts cure acne, raw sprouts, sprouts

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The Path To Health

Filed under: Sprouts — Calvin Warr @ Jun 22nd, 2007

We have only one life. We should live it to its fullest. But we live in a world that is full of stress, full of toxins and full of things that presses us into the ground.

Your path to health will lead you to explore your mind, your heart and your body. We want to help you nurture your life to be as good as it can be. To be as good as it should be. But we cannot do everything. Therefore, we will be sharing with you one aspect of this – growing your own sprouts. Sounds trivial. If you do not understand the power found in sprouts, we hope to be able to begin that journey of understanding.

We are talking about alfafa sprouts, bean sprouts, radish sprouts, bean sprouts, lentil sprouts, wheat sprouts, pumpkin sprouts and more! Sprouts have one of the highest store of vitamins and enzymes. Adding sprouts to your salad can do wonders for your body.

What goodness, exactly, do sprouts bring? The key advantages occur in the sprouting process. While some might argue that taking the seeds (beans, legumes etc) gives the same goodness, there are several important things that take place during the sprouting process:

Enzymes are activated when the seed begins to sprout
Proteins convert to free amino acids as the seed germinates
Starches convert to simple sugars to nourish the sprouting plant
Minerals combine to increase assimilation
Vitamin content increases, for example, sprouts contain up to 30 times the vitamin C found in the seed
Chlorophyll and carotene content increase dramatically when exposed to sunlight (we will share more about this when we talk about growing your own sprouts)
Home-grown sprouts are inexpensive and easy to nurture

Let us explore together, this simple path to health.