Ethnically-Diverse New York City Subway Car at Rush Hour

Yes! Success! My little sprout container is working like a charm, and a candy-shop-full-of-beans is sprouting as we speak. Mung beans. Adzuki beans. Cow peas. Chickpeas. Lentils. Beet and broccoli sprouts. I threw them all in there and they're riding the train from seed to sprout like an ethnically-diverse New York City subway car at rush hour.

Mung beans, also called Chinese bean sprouts in the States and green grams in Europe, are originally from India (where they are the most prized lentil) but are now grown extensively in southeast Asia, South America and Australia (and in my kitchen in Atlanta, Georgia). A handful of mung bean sprouts has two-thirds of an adult's daily requirement of vitamin C. Protein-packed, energy-dense and sweetly crunchy, mung beans (and these other sprouts as well) are a vegetarian's dream. I threw a bunch on my just-picked-from-the-garden-salad last night of tatsoi, arugula, buttercrunch and deer's tongue lettuces, collard greens, Swiss chard, lemon balm and cilantro. Mmmmm. For those of you not yet harvesting from your kitchen garden, growing sprouts is a great way to "dig in" early.

I'm new to this seed sprouting effort, so I don't have a lot of recommendations for you yet. The big lesson I've learned so far? You absolutely have to rinse the seeds twice a day in order to keep them from getting moldy. That's where I suppose the seed sprouter device (mine was about twenty bucks) comes in more handy than simply sprouting seeds on a paper towel (although you can do that, too, apparently). The device has holes in it so rinsing is easy and air circulates freely.

And so, I'm searching for a source of bulk organic sprouting seeds (I'll be going through lots of seeds every week, if I keep this up). This site looks promising.

I'm reading up on the different types of "grain legumes." Here's a particularly interesting site from France.

And I'm rinsing. Twice a day.