SPROUTING SUCCESS - WHAT'S STOPPING YOU?

STARTING POINT of all sprout cultures - MAGIC MUNG BEANS

                                  END POINT of all sprout cultures 

              The PROUD SPROUT SALUTE from my travel bugs, Kim's culture 
and Moo Eng's. Oh PLEASE ...they keep posting pixs and getting me all riled up.

 They have fat and juicy bean sprouts and have been showing off their dishes. 

BOO-YAH ... here is Moo Eng’s original fried noodles 

Moo Eng also made chicken curry with bean curd and heaped them onto her "mee hoon" (rice vermicelli noodles) for a robust lunch.

Yep, Moo Eng has now added spring onions to her repertoire of home-grown greens. Spring onions sharing pot with her 15 year-old Japanese bamboo plant. I think her Japanese bamboo needs more nutrients!!

OLE! YUMMY ... Kim’s stir-fried sprouts with prawns and salted fish

I am ashamed to show my SIZE 0 sprouts, they are skinny, limpy and droopy! Worse than Moo Eng's anaemic-looking bamboo plant, my sprouts look like they are in rigor mortis.

      Both Moo Eng and Kim have recently invented a novel way of growing even  crunchier better sprouts - they grow the beans on baby napkins in a colander, with a weight on top. Oh …I am NOT letting them beat me at sprouting. So I tried again and again. Hence, this is Sprouting Sprout Project 4.0. Follow this procedure for successful sprouting.
Day 2: After soaking overnight, place soaked beans on paper/towel/baby napkin (CLEAN UNUSED!) . I use the popular "Good Morning" towel that is so common in Malaysia. Use a colander as the base so water drains off properly and you don't get stinky sprouts grown in stagnant water!

Grow in the dark with a small weight on top. Next to my Qigong book for "qi" (optional).

Day 3: YES, they are alive and sprouting. Run tap water over them twice daily, cover with cloth and keep in the dark

OHHHH… Good Healthy roots. 

Day 4: Ready for harvest

Viola, a bouquet of mung bean sprouts 

HAHAH .. Kim and Moo Eng, see here, who needs a sprout  salute when I have a bouquet! I reckon I ''ll be giving sprout bouquets as presents instead of flowers. So much more practical and functional, don't you think? Flowers wither, but sprout bouquets can be cooked and eaten for the birthday dinner!
So here is Sassy JAM's original no fuss recipe with 0 herbs and 2 spices (if  you consider salt and pepper as spices). Sprouts and grated carrots mixed in wheat flour and water,

and fried in oil.

TA-DA ... how do you like my SPROUT FRITTERS? I got out my favourite plate which my mother gave me, add a dash of flowers and served them for tea. 

Gizmo man was very polite, "Sorry ✋, I am on a diet." 

Savvy K just went, "What is it 😱? I am NOT eating that 🙅‍♀️."

So FULL of nonsense🤦‍♀️ , those two. I ate them myself. The fritters, I mean, not the flowers.

      

 Burp ... EXECUTE me please (that's how Savvy K pronounced "excuse me" when she was little).

Project Sprouting Sprout 6.0 - Got the PROUD SPROUT SALUTE at last. The SOP (Standard Operating Procedures) belongs to Kim and Moo Eng so THANK YOU my Travel Bugs.

NOTE: Sprouts are considered as wonder foods. Rich in fibre, folic acid, Vitamin C  and K. 

Sprouting increases flavonoid and Vitamin C content by 7 and 24 times respectively. 

SO WHAT'S STOPPING YOU FROM SPROUTING?

BEAN SPROUTS WILL SPROUT AS THEY PLEASE

        Growing bean sprouts in a kettle is ingenious. This lady is ecstatic, she keeps saying “really beautiful!” She is pulling out sprouts like a magician pulling out rabbits from his hat. Really, it is endless. She is so cute and "gushing" about her sprouts. It's just sour grapes foe me. If I had kettle sprouts like her, I ll be bragging till thy kingdom come.

        Bean sprouts are a versatile vegetable and eaten raw or cooked, they contain good antioxidant, protein and vitamin content. The magic phrase is “they are very low in calories.” With the current lock down, partial lock down, circuit breaker or whatever else each country wants to call it, people have started to grow their own vegetables. There has been a host of videos on sprouting mung beans from kettles

to  plastic bottles

        Doesn't it look so easy? I imagine even the school kids do this as a class project. Surely a scientist like myself should produce quite delectable sprouts. Thus, Project Sprouting Sprouts 101 started:

       Day 1 – soaking the mung beans and the roots appeared. Experiment going good.

        Day 2 and 3 –  sprouting as planned, one project by the window with sunlight and another in the dark next to my bathroom. We scientists take no chances, you know Murphy's Law - "Anything that can go wrong will go wrong." We need Controls, double-blind tests and experiments in duplicates.

        Day 4 – Disaster I think, my sprouts were as skinny as the size 0 models on the runway. And the one in the glass bottle smelt like they grew in Shrek s swamp.

        So I had URGENT “whats app conferencing” with my travel bugs. Both ME and Kim showed me the sprouts they had grown. OH…I WAS AS GREEN AS THE MUNG BEANS. They were LONG, FAT and JUICY. 

ME's fat sprouts

        They said they used the same mung beans, and from the same supermarket brand too. Something’s fishy here, I think ME got her beans from the stranger that sold beans to Jack (remember Jack and the beanstalk).

Kim's sprouts standing at attention

 KIM said I was daft growing them in the sun, they are to be grown in the dark. ME added that I was even more stupid as sprouts need drainage and if left them in even a bit of water, they rot. But I did followed their SOPs (standard operating procedures) strictly.

        Ahh ... yet ..Project 101 failed, perhaps it is time to hang up my lab coat.

        NOTE: To rub it in (my sprout sprouting skills) further, Kim sent me this video of sprouts doing the ballet with the caption, “how your sprouts growing ah?”

   

 “Who needs enemies when you have friends like these.”