Crackers n' Sprouts

Last night was healthy food night to my husband's dismay.  As he took his second and third spoonfuls of soup, he asked "so, what's in this?"  I know he was kinda hoping that any second now, one of the ingredients I mentioned would be a 'meat' component that he just hadn't encountered in a spoonful yet.  Well, sorry to say he was disappointed last night.  We had Alton Brown's Garden Vegetable Soup for supper with Peter Reinhart's Thin Wheat Crackers from his book, Whole Grain Breads.  For the soup I used red potatoes and frozen corn and green beans.  I thought the soup might be bland with no spices.  However, it was very tasty, but maybe the fact that I used Seitenbacher's Vegetarian Vegetable Broth & Seasoning to make my broth helped the flavor.  I love using this broth mix to make my vege broth when I'm in need of some.  The broth is very tasty.  Anyway, the reason I wanted to have soup for dinner last night, was so that I had a soup on which to try my sprouted adzuki beans. 

Back in February or early March, Michelle at BigBlackDogs held a giveaway and I won the HomeTown Seeds sprouting kit.  I was so thrilled and amazed that I had won anything.  I never win anything, EVER.   I'm having so much fun sprouting my different seeds.  I have hard red wheat, buckwheat, mung bean, soybean, daikon radish just to name a few of the seeds that came in the kit.  It's so simple to sprout these seeds.  I just soak the seeds overnight in a wide mouth canning jar (you can use any jar though), drain the seeds next morning, and then rinse and drain the seeds 3-4 times daily for 2 or 3  more days.  I keep the jar on its side in an open closet or in the kitchen somewhere that's not in direct sunlight.  When my adzuki beans were ready they looked like this:

I've been trying to find any info I can on the web about seed sprouting and I haven't found alot, but I did find some useful info at sproutpeople.  According to what I've read various places, the sprouts are ready when the little tail sprouting from the seed is ~ 1/4 inch long.  I don't know, maybe that varies by type of seed you're sprouting.  I really liked my sprouts in the soup!  Hubby said they were a little strong in flavor and overpowered the other flavors in the soup.  Just ignore him.  He was just grumpy because there was no meat in his soup.  Here's our soup:

With the 'wheat thin' crackers

I made from Peter Reinhart's book, Whole Grain Breads, this was a perfect 'meatless' meal for me!  I was very pleased with my use of these sprouted adzuki beans.  I plan on using the rest of the sprouted beans in an Ina Garten potato salad recipe.  I'm going to omit the celery and sub the sprouts in place of it. 

Thank you for visiting my blog!  If you happen to have seed sprouting experience, let me know your favorite ways to use sprouts? 

Note:  When using agave nectar in making Reinhart's 'Wheat thins',  the dough came together much easier and the cracker was sweeter and softer.  Another batch, this time using brown sugar, produced a much crisper, less sweet cracker, but the dough was more difficult to bring together.