Progress so far...

Prior to receiving an Easy Sprout from SproutPeople, I attempted create my own Easy Sprout type growing vessel.  I drilled holes in the lids and, with a fine blade, scroll sawed slots around the bottom of  two round, quart-sized Sterilite containers with locking lids.  Both the drilling and sawing left behind jagged shards of plastic that I was afraid would eventually break loose in the sprouts.  After a lot of scraping and sanding, I washed the containers and let them air dry overnight while a package of leftover broccoli and radish seeds soaked.  The both lasted through three rinse cycles before each hit the floor and broke open in two different incidents. Lesson learned: keep sprouts out of reach of children.

While waiting for the funds to become available for organic sprouting seeds and a real Easy Sprout, it dawned on me that the bags of dry beans in the pantry would work for sprouting.  I soaked a half cup of pinto beans and a half cup of black beans overnight.  The next morning I put each into homemade containers and rinsed every 12 hours.  Now, I mis-read SproutPeople here, they said that 48 hours was as long as they liked their sprouts to grow, and I read it to say that this was the longest they should go. So, 48 hours later, the pintos had almost all sprouted 1/4 - 1/2 inch.  The black beans had done nothing and smelled fermented.  We through out the black beans and cooked the pintos with rice, garlic, tomatoes, and seasonings and rolled up the mixture in tortillas.

The next two batches went the same way.  The black beans didn't do much of anything but I took extra care in draining them thinking that this was why the last batch smelled fermented.  After 48 hours, I put both into a pot and boiled until soft with some spices and put the soup in the fridge for the next day (we'd already eaten dinner that night.)  The black beans didn't smell as bad as the first batch but there was still a hint of fermentation.  The next day I through it all out, it looked discussing and didn't smell much better.  That night, I joined the SproutPeople Yahoo group.  It was here that I realized that bean sprouts could go longer than 48 hours.

The next morning, having given up on black beans, I divided the cup of pintos that had soaked overnight between the two containers.  This time I was going to let them go seven days, rinsing every twelve hours.  Two days into it, a real Easy Sprout arrived along with a pound of Mother's Mix from SproutPeople.  I immediately set two tablespoons of the mix to soaking and added them to the Easy Sprout the next morning.  Last night (day six) we de-hulled the pintos and used them in place of canned beans in chili.  Tonight we are going to figure out something to do with the mother's mix.

Two batches of pinto bean sprouts in the homemade containers and the mother's mix in the Easy Sprout.

De-hulled pinto bean sprouts about to become chili.

Mother's Mix as of this morning.

1/8 cup of black-eyed peas that soaked overnight.

2 Tablespoons of Mother's Mix in the homemade container.