Alfalfa Sprouts

I made my own sprouts, you guys! It is so easy. Let me tell you about how I did it.

I put two tablespoons of alfalfa seed in a jar (in retrospect, this was WAY too much. Not only did I end up having to split the crop into three different jars as they grew, but now I have way more sprouts then I can actually eat on my own) with 8 tablespoons of water. General rule is 4 times as much water as you have seeds. Cover the jar with some cheese cloth or stocking material and soak the seeds overnight.


After 8-12 hours, drain and rinse the seeds, roll the jar around a little to get the seeds evenly spread out, and place the jar kind of on its side and sort of upside down in a dish (it will sort of leak water so you want to make sure you have something to catch the water with).

Rinse and drain the seeds a few times each day for 5-6 days. Use high water pressure to keep the sprouts loose, or you can take them out of the jar when it's starting to look kind of crowded in there and break them up by hand. You may end up having to transfer some to new jars because there isn't enough room for all the sprouts to grow together. Eventually your jar will look like this:


And then you can take them out of the jar and eat them! Yum! You can also de-hull your sprouts, which this website is really great at explaining.

Vegetarian Minestrone

Mmm, soup. I recently lost my soup pot, which I found to be a major tragedy, but I finally got around to getting a new one. You guys, this pot is huge and awesome! I love it. So, now I'm making soup. This is based off a soup on allrecipes.

Ingredients
1 tbsp butter
2 garlic cloves, diced
1/2 or 1 whole onion, chopped
4 cups vegetable stock, or 2 cups stock and 2 cups water (or the water you just boiled a bunch of corn in, if you're me) - you may need up to 5 more cups depending on how watery you like your soup.
1 (14.5 ounce) can diced tomatoes
1 large potato, cubed
2 carrots, chopped
2 tablespoons Italian seasoning
1 (15 ounce) can kidney beans
3 cups fresh corn kernels
1 large zucchini, sliced
2 cups uncooked pasta of your choice
A couple dollops of salsa
Cheese to taste (parmesan or other yummy distinctively-flavored cheese)


Process
1. Melt butter in your awesome soup pot (if you don't have an awesome soup pot, what are you waiting for?)
2. Saute garlic for a second then add onions and saute until they smell awesome (this is the best part of cooking anyway, right?)
3. Add stock, tomatoes, potatoes, carrots, seasoning
4. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer for 15 minutes.
5. Add corn, zucchini, beans, and pasta, and simmer for another 10-15 minutes until the veggies are tender.


Yay for easy soups! Yay for SF being cold enough in the summer for me to want to make soup! Haha.

Sweet Corn

I now have a 16 quart stock pot, so I made a LOT of corn.


That's all.