It’s the early eighties ~ 1983 or so. We’re at the grocery store, cool and brightly lit, it seems like a very enormous place. I’m still looking up to see most of the goods. My head just comes up to counter level…. I am small. Maybe 5 years old. We’re at Waldbaum’s Food Mart, on King Street.
There are open bins of individually wrapped candies. Brach’s. I know for a fact my sister has plunged her hand and taken a few on previous trips. Classic kid stuff.
But my petty crime takes place in the produce department. It is sprout-related.
I grab a box ~ the clear plastic square kind that is absolutely packed with sprouts. I marvel at their densely-packed configuration. It’s impossible to just take a few. I cram a handful in my mouth.
Euphoria. I need them.
The thick dense forest of tiny green shoots is satisfying. So satisfying, I can remember everything about this moment of elation, in my study, forty years later, thousands of miles away.
Not all kids go straight for the sugar. I craved sprouts.
I ate the whole box.
I returned to the scene of the crime a few more times in the years to come, a repeat offender in this act of juvenile delinquency. Not too much though. It’s hard to eat a whole box of sprouts without being noticed.
*****
While living in the Bay Area in my early twenties, frequenting the Farmer’s Market on the Embarcadero, a friend and I tried wheatgrass for the first time. “It’s like drinking a lawn,” she noted.
Eating that box of sprouts felt like funneling a pure dose of fresh growth ~ potential energy ~ directly into my system. Did I mention the euphoria?
Years later, I learned just how full of nutrition sprouts actually are. But all the nutritional data in the world could never express that felt experience of taking this energy in ~ light, crunchy, green, densely packed.
It’s so clear to me, from everything I now know about nutrition, how this deep craving for sprouts reflected exactly what my system needed. I wasn’t excited by candy, or milk, or tomatoes, or bagels, or even cheese.
It was all about the sprouts.
I was raised vegetarian and spent years being super picky. I didn’t like cheese. We didn’t eat tofu. I only ate eggs in a very specific way, and felt squeamish about a whole lot of kinds of foods. Vegetables were cool for the most part. Bread and butter, crackers and butter, pasta and butter were the staples, of course. I can see now that I was probably lacking in protein and fat, overall.
Sprouts (especially taken in mass, as in this incident) were like a superhighway for protein (and plenty of other essential micronutrients) to get into my system.
I still love sprouts. And micro-greens now too. They are simultaneously earthy and light. There is a springy, uplifting quality about them.
I don’t cram them in with quite the level of abandon that my wee 5 year-old self did. Sometimes I think about it. But I assure you, I love these little energetic powerhouses with all my heart and soul. We throw them on top of pasta, stir-fry, soups, and into smoothies. We use them in sandwiches, wraps and salads. We don’t eat the whole jar in one serving. A little goes a long way.
Lots of people love a little crunch and find themselves reaching for chips, crackers, toast, croutons. I’ve been known to enjoy all of these, of course. But if it’s nourishment you’re after, there’s no comparison. Sprouts will give you a crunch, and a host of other necessary goodies, such as antioxidants, not found in chips!
Sprouts are a super way to get some fresh greens into your meals at any time of year. They are a lesson in abundance ~ 2 tablespoons of the tiny seeds, properly attended to, can fill a quart jar in a matter of days. Pretty amazing. Pretty inspiring, really.
My favorite these days is a mix of fenugreek, radish and clover seeds. Broccoli sprouts have anti-cancer properties. The process of sprouting increases available protein, vitamins and antioxidants. It increases bio-availability, meaning our ability to absorb the nutrition within the seed.
The potential energy contained in a seed is astronomical. This article from November 2015 reveals a successful cultivation of a plant from seeds buried for 32,000 years, thanks to the effect of permafrost (and some ancient Arctic Squirrels).
Israeli scientists discovered and successfully sprouted a 2000 year old date seed that they found in an ancient storeroom.
Seeds hold some serious power, my friends. They connect us to ancient ~ or perhaps timeless ~ intelligence. They serve as bridges across space and time. Just as the memory of consuming that box of sprouts, now 40 years ago, lives in me still to this day.
