Finally, a successful harvest

Since arriving in Halifax late last August I have tried growing a variety of plants with the intention that they may eventually provide me with some type of edible content. For the most part, this has been a monumental failure. The plants that have grown haven't really provided that much edible content, and good number of plants have become infested with spider mites and thus had to be terminated. Consequently, after almost ten months of active growing I have harvested not much more than a few sprigs of thyme and a bean or two.

Given this backdrop of failure, I am quite pleased to let you know that tonight I was able to successfully use some bean sprouts that I have been growing for the past few days. Somehow I was able to turn 30 cents worth of mung bean seeds into enough bean sprouts for a stir-fry for all three of us.

While the bean sprouts don't exactly look like those that you might purchase in a store, I was generally satisfied with their flavour and texture (though they didn't have much of either). Given the relative ease with which I was able to grow these bean sprouts I am quite certain that I will have to give this another shot at some point in the future, though only when I know I will be interested in using a batch of bean sprouts.

While I was growing the sprouts I took a few photos. The first photo is of an early stage of the growing process. At this point the beans had been soaked overnight and then had the water drained.



Twice a day I rinsed the beans and returned them to my closet. Eventually I had to move the operation from an empty jam jar to a larger container as beans had overgrown the original apparatus.

After a few days the sprouts began to look like more traditional bean sprouts, though without the same uniformity that is so common with machine grown sprouts.



This final photo is of the sprouts just before they were added to the stir-fry. All-in-all, less time/labour costs, I think I saved about $1.20 by doing in myself instead of buying bean sprouts and managed to secure for myself an immense sense of personal satisfaction.

A Few Quick Notes 326

-We had another beautiful, if cool, day today. Strangely, even though the sun appears to be out in full force the temperatures seem to peak at about 20 (or just below), which is fine, but not as warm as I would expect given how the day looks.

-Neil and I attended a frisbee practice this evening. Unfortunately, only four members of our team made it, so it wasn't really much of a practice. While the practice side of things was lacking, it was quite nice to be outside and active for a portion of the evening.

-In the second Asian grocery store I visited today I was able to buy a few mung beans with which I am hoping to grow beans sprouts. I ended up buying all of the beans the store had available for a whopping 30 cents.

At the moment the beans are soaking in water in my closet. I guess if all goes according to plan I should have fresh bean sprouts in about 3 days, though I think that is somewhat optimistic.

-I came across an article in the Guardian today that put me on to the fact that the British Library has scanned all kinds of 19th century newspapers, some of which can be viewed for free, while others are available for a small cost. If you are interested, check it out here.

A Few Quick Notes 325

-We had another beautiful day in Halifax today. It seems that things have become a little more summer like here than they were last week, though if the forecast can be considered even partially accurate, it seems that we will be back to rain and grey skies by the weekend.

-We ended up losing our Ultimate game on Sunday, though we came within a few points at the end of the game. Unfortunately, for some unknown reason, most of seemed to be playing much better during the second half than in the first half. I know that I was particularly sluggish in the first half (a problem that I have had in both games this season).

A few days ago our schedule for the next three weeks was released. For some reason unbeknownst to any of us we have been scheduled for a double-header next week. Aside from the fact that a few of our players had already suggested that they would have trouble making any Sunday evening game, a number of aren't looking forward to the prospect of playing two games in a row.

-After Sunday's game a number of went to a teammate's house for a post-game barbecue. While sipping on a beer and waiting for the food to be ready I learned that at least on member of our team presently lives on our street, another will be moving into our building shortly, and that the owner of the house used to live on our street. What is particularly impressive about all of this is that our street only a block long and by no means a major thoroughfare. I guess this says something about the desirability of our location.

-Earlier today I started thinking about bean sprouts. I am thinking that if I can find some mung beans at one of the local Chinese grocery stores I may try to grow my own bean sprouts. Fortunately the few internet sources I have read on the topic all suggest the same sprout growing technique, which is nice, because on a number of occasions I haven't found web-based sources to be so consistent.

-I am not quite sure why I have been blogging less this month, but it seems that I have been. I think it may be a sign that I am not spending enough time at my computer doing work. Hopefully I can turn things around starting today/tomorrow.

-On Monday one of the nearby grocery stores was closed for 'renovations.' When I went to the store today I didn't really noticed what had changed. Eventually I realized that one of, and maybe the only, changes was to the contents of each aisle. It seems that most of the dry goods have been re-arranged. This is somewhat annoying as now I don't know where anything is. Maybe tomorrow I will have to head back to do a more thorough search and scope out the locations of my favourite items.