How I Got Back Into Sprouting
By Ellen Walsh

Going to college in Boston in the late 60s early 70s was a very interesting time in the evolution of the organic and natural foods movement. First of all, the word organic was a magical word. You didn't hear it very often. When you said you had something organic, people asked you what that meant. When you spoke of it, interested listeners smiled at you with awe and wonderment in their eyes. However when you spoke about eating only raw, sprouted organic whole foods, usually your best friend's eyes glazed over, and your parents wondered if you had just run out of money and were starving to death for lack of ability to go purchase a good ole steak.

Now I didn't discover sprouting in a small way, I discovered it in a big way. I moved into the mansion of Dr. Ann Wigmore, lived completely on raw foods, sold organic oranges out of the basement, and learned everything there was to know about sprouting, and became an effective voice for its virtues. I not only drank wheat grass juice, I grew wheat grass.

None the less, there was a very decisive "in crowd" surrounding the whole movement. It was a very informed, totally absorbed group of individuals divided between two camps: the macrobiotic movement, and the raw whole foods movement. Both groups got all their supplies at the local Erewhon organic store. A typical day was to need something very badly at the Erewhon store, so you could find a reason to drift over to the bulletin board and join in on some lively discussion about why the macro biotic people would die young, or why the raw sprouted whole foods people didn't know what they were talking about.

In all fairness to the Sprouting movement, strange things happened to the macrobiotic people. For example, one of their arms would swell up, so they came over to live at Dr. Ann Wigmore's for a while, and when they got better, they either moved out and went back to Macrobiotics, or they converted to the Raw Sprouts Whole Food side.
We won a few, we lost a few.

However, eventually I had to make a real living, because although I loved the life, I also moved on. I became a traveling musician and moved around a lot, so I eventually gave up trying to maintain sprouting. During those times, you couldn't just go to a store and buy sprouts like you can today. Specialty stores like Erewhon were few and far between. You could barely get a cup of tea served to you unless you were willing to wait 10 minutes after the coffee people got their coffee !

Back then you had to make a choice between going all the way, or no way at all. It was hard to live it half way.

Today, it's different.

Take Rita, for example. She is my Sproutlady.

Rita lives in upstate New York, and sells me her sprouting supplies, so I can sell them to you in our On Line store, here at the NutraFoodies site. All the seeds, nuts and beans for sprouting are organic, and she gets them from local farmers, which I like a lot. She leads a balanced life with sprouting. Ironically, she started out with the macrobiotic diet, but after her children were born, she phased that out, and phased sprouting in.

It turns out that when she and her husband were first dating in April of 1986, they had dinner with Sproutman Steve Meyerowitz in his Manhatten apartment, and were hooked.

Although she loved sprouting and the raw whole foods concept, she made a decision early on not to be obsessive with food, and let everybody in her family make their own choices. She starts her own day out each day with a light soup broth with sprouts in it. Everybody in her family eats whatever they want, but they all have sprouts sprinkled over their salad everyday. She is terrific with the psychology of her kids, and realizes that what she needs to do is lead by example, and not be obsessive with what choices everybody else around her makes. We do it the same way at our house.

Sprouts are very nutritious, containing nutrients, vitamins and needed enzymes for a healthy functioning body. They are delicious and add a delicate flavor to your salad and stir fries. Sprouting is easy, and can be a part of your everyday life.

We will be featuring articles and recipes on the web site as to how to sprout, and what to sprout. It's easy. We're going to come back from the Natural Products Expo West next week and post a bunch for you to get started with.

Stay tuned for the next installment.

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