Sprouted smoothie

Over the past few days I've been sprouting various seeds to use for cooking. It started with spotting mung beans in the grocery store, which I bought with the sole purpose of turning into bean sprouts. Then it snowballed after stopping at a farmer's market booth offering sprouted lentil salad, which was delicious, so fresh and fittingly vibrant for a winter food that would feel at home in snow and sun. So I am sprouting two types of lentils too. These all just sit damp in bowls on my counter and grow little tails, which I think would become stems if I didn't keep snacking.

This morning the red lentils went into perhaps the wackiest smoothie I have ever made, which isn't saying too much since I only started making smoothies with the arrival of my birthday present immersion blender last fall and haven't really gotten into it yet.

I make yogurt based smoothies. Sadly, the yogurt smelled like cheese and had sprouted mold. So I made a milk based smoothie, with frozen strawberries, banana, and the aforementioned red lentil sprouts. It all seemed a little thin, so I grabbed my handy tub of sodium alginate from the molecular gastronomy experimentation zone of the kitchen, and it thickened right up. That stuff is amazing.