Uncle George's Place - Home of the Living Food

Some people go to St. Lawrence Market to buy fresh lobster out of the tank or to get the butcher to pull down one of those ginormous ham bones strung up by a hook and free floating like a pinata waiting to be struck. Me? I go for the sprouts.

Down in the basement of the main market building, set in behind the main space bakery, is the home of the living sprout. Grown in small containers in hydroponic conditions or soil grown are sprouts like broccoli, spicy lentil crunch, vitality blend, rapini, mustard, red cabbage, super power blend. Granted they look pretty similar - tiny reedy shoots with little kernals on top - but they taste pretty unique from one another and you have to try different kinds until you decide which one enhances the flavours you tend to prefer. There are also packages of sunflower sprouts and golden pea shoots as well as bags of baby salad greens and arugula.

Sprouts are living foods. Store bought fruits and vegetables, while nutritious in their own right, begin losing their vitamin content as soon as they are picked. Add time and mileage to get to the store and what you're eating has lost much of the finesse it had when still attached to the tree or resting in soil. Sprouts are complex in vitamins, proteins and enzymes. And they taste pretty fine and crunchy tossed into a salad.

So make a trip to St. Lawrence soon for a sticky bun from the north market and a visit to Uncle George's down in the basement of the south market.

Comments

[Duane]

Awesome! I love good sprouts.

[Jenn]

I love the sprouts, too! We buy them all the time at the St. Lawrence Market, not to mention their delightful dips!

[Tachyon360]

Sprouts are great with lots of things, and I personally like a mix of broccoli sprouts, lentil sprouts, and sprouted wheat berries. (Why they call grains berries is beyond me.) Excellent on Galician rye bread with aioli and your choice of whatever else.

That said, sprouts aren't some kind of super health food. Though it's true that vegetables lose their nutritional value over time in storage, it's equally true that unless they're reduced to grey-yellow, shriveled, fibrous husks (obvious exaggeration there), their net nutritional value will be greater than that of sprouts. The reverse is true for seeds. On a seed-per-seed basis, sprouts and seeds have comparable values, but seeds have greater nutritional density. Sprouts are excellent for flavor and texture, but don't bank your nutrition on 'em.

Of course, with *that* said, it's very easy to make your own sprouts. There's a webpage that has a very nice set of general instructions (http://www.jasonunbound.com/sprouts.html) that you might want to look at, but there's also a method I've seen used in Poland to sprout radish and watercress. Basically, take a smallish bowl that's not especially deep (but certainly not shallow), fill with cotton wadding, pour on some cool water so that the cotton is pretty wet (but not drowning), and sprinkle the seeds on evenly and liberally. They'll sprout nicely within a few days, and then you can just pick 'em one large pinchful at a time.

[Shiralee]

Hi there -

I just wanted to let you and other food-minded bloggers out there that the Art Gallery of Ontario has just started up a blog that centres on art, food, life with recipes, reviews and well you get the idea.

Come visit if you have a chance - we can be found at www.artmatters.ca/futurenow

Many thanks and take care,
Shiralee