Making Slow Food into a Quick Breakfast

Homemade yogurt, homemade granola. With sliced banana on top. Yes, this was my breakfast this morning. In a jar just because I have a jar fetish. Man, if I lived anywhere other than the Bay Area I'd have a chicken coop and 5 homeschooled children. But instead I have two careers and a Mazda Miata.

I do know better than anyone though, how difficult it is to eat well with zero time. As a younger woman, it was a lot of Mission burritos that kept me fueled from work to rehearsal. I could famously inhale one of those behemoths in about 3 minutes flat. My metabolism has slowed considerably since then (although my ability to always clear my plate still gets raised eyebrows and comments), and my consciousness about what I put into my body has considerably heightened. So most of my meals-on-the-go now are homemade and packed in reusable containers (preferably glass). I leave the house with my huge "actress" purse and another sack with all my meals.

I've been doing a lot of green smoothies for breakfast, a favorite recipe is parsley (italian), pear, ginger, and banana. The greens give me energy but don't always give me the ballast of satisfaction that I need to make it to lunch. So I've had this yogurt hanging around that I made out of my last batch of farm fresh milk, and realized I wasn't doing anything with it! I also have jars and jars of grains, nuts and seeds from work that can't be re-sold. So I eyeballed some buckwheat groats and some sunflower seeds, and decided to set about sprouting them to make a raw sprouted granola out of.

Sprouting nuts, seeds, and grains is actually relatively easy. I haven't yet tried sprouting green things, but I've really wanted to try my hand at wheatgrass. At any rate, here's a video on sprouting buckwheat and sunflower seeds. And my instructions:

1. Put your grain or seed in a jar or bowl and cover with water. Put a lid on the jar or lay a cloth over your bowl. You don't want any creepy crawlies getting in. Let soak overnight, minimum 8 hours.
2. Rinse your grain or seed in a colander or wire mesh strainer. Buckwheat needs a lot of rinsing.
3. Place the colander or strainer over a bowl for it to drain into, cover with cloth, and let it do it's magic for another 24 hours. If you remember or are home, give them intermediate rinses during the 24 hours.

When I had sprouted mine I didn't have time to do anything else with them, so I jarred them for future use. A day later it turned out I had the evening off of rehearsal, so that's when I set about making granola. The beauty of this kind of slow food is that it doesn't really require a lot of attention, just a few minutes each day to keep the process moving along. I'm never really as precise as all this, but here's a sprouting chart for recommended sprouting times for different grains and seeds. Another testament to my imprecision is that I don't have a recipe for my granola. It turned out a little too dry and crumbly for my taste, although once mixed in with the yogurt it tasted pretty dang good. So anyhow, here's what I did:

Ingredients (amounts are approximations):
2 cups sprouted buckwheat
2 cups sprouted sunflower seeds
1/2 cup coconut flakes
1/4 cup rehydrated goji berries
10 medjool dates (without pits)
liberal sprinkling of chia seeds

How To
1. In two batches, put all ingredients in food processor and pulse for 5-10 seconds. I like it chunky so I didn't let it go too long. You could process longer and have it be more like an oatmeal to which you could add milk!
2. Spread out on dehydrator trays at 115 degrees, and let dehydrate for 8 to 10 hours.

Okay, okay, I know most of you probably don't have a dehydrator. They're very cool though! You could also put in the oven at the lowest temperature and just let it bake for a few hours.

Germinating and sprouting makes seeds and grains more digestible, and with some grains it means you don't have to cook them to eat them. One of my favorite snacks is germinated and dehydrated pumpkin seeds. Soak in water overnight, then salt and dehydrate for another 8 hours or so. I did once have a misadventure with sprouting quinoa and trying to dehydrate and make quinoa flour. Actually everything seemed to go very well until I actually tasted it. Another sprouting misadventure involved chickpeas. Ah well, can't get them all right.




















My latest batch of sauerkraut - isn't it purty?? And the image isn't skewed, I just have a really tall jar.