The FastDay Forum

Thank you all for your warm welcome - I have been burbling along and so far have 6 fast days successfully under my belt.

I'm not sure I've put this question in the right section of the forum ... I would like to know more about bean sprouts.

I decided to get a pack of dried beans and grow my own at home. I'm sure I would end up chucking away loads if I got one of those big supermarket bags!

http://www.wikihow.com/Grow-Bean-Sprouts-Indoors
I followed these instructions and grew some in a jar.

beansprouts by Tatterling, on Flickr

They have come out really teeny compared to the supermarket ones - do they look done yet? They arms and legs don't seem to be getting bigger and they are starting to get leaf sprouts in addition to root sprouts - yet the bean body still remains quite large and firm.

How many calories would you count them as? Taking the example of mung beans calorie king website cites
100g raw mung beans = 347 cals
100g sprouted mung beans = 30 cals

This obviously makes a big difference to whether I should have them on a fast day.

I would appreciate any advice or suggestions for future reference (I have already weighed and measured my Monday rations )

Thanks - Amethyst

The weight of the water absorbed by the beans tells the story here.

From the numbers it seems that 11 grams of sprouted beans is calorically equivalent to 1 gram of raw.

To grow them bigger:

http://chefinyou.com/2010/06/sprouting-mung-beans/

Or here for some interesting statistics and reasons why rinsing is needed:

http://www.sproutnet.com/Encore-Bean-Sp ... r-Recycler

(Thanks for causing me to learn something.)

That's a good point ADFnFuel thank you for your feedback. I hadn't realised they had taken in so much water - they were only submerged overnight the first time - then a quick rinse and drain twice daily since.

I didn't weigh the beans before I started - that would have made it a lot easier to comprehend what was going on!

The first link is interesting - Next time I will try a slight modification and put a weight on top, get them to form a tangled mass, and maybe they won't be so spindly ....Even spindly they are tasty, so I'm sure they'll find a home in a stir fry or salad.

The water consumption of commercial ones is really quite scary! And on top of that, to think so many of them probably end up in the bin as they aren't used up in time.