Lifestyle Columnist

"More coffee?"

"Yes, please, and how about dropping a bagel into the toaster for me?"

After years of whittling bagels and homemade bread to fit a standard toaster, we finally broke down and spent $9 for a wide-slotted toaster. Why do we put off such simple pleasures?

It's been two weeks now and I still find myself luxuriating in the unaccustomed simplicity of warming a bagel. I took some containers to the table while the toaster worked.

"What's that?"

"Cream cheese and alfalfa sprouts for on my bagel."

No comment from the breakfast table. My soul-mate has long ago learned to ignore my preferences in foods. And when winter seems interminable, it's time for sprouts. Frustrated gardeners can scratch the itch to plant by sprouting edibles on the kitchen counter.

No doubt you've read that all the virtually miraculous health benefits of broccoli are concentrated in broccoli sprouts. Even the commonplace alfalfa sprouts have an amazing range of vitamins, and add fresh crunch to a sandwich or a bagel that no lettuce could ever.

This intermittent impulse rekindled in me this time when I spotted some pretty green mung beans at the bulk foods store at White Oak. They're good for sprouting, my friend Marquita said, so I bought some and in less than a week had bean sprouts worthy of any stir fry.

That did it. When my favorite supermarket said they can't get radish seeds any more, never mind broccoli, I went online and found Dan's Garden Shop. I ordered broccoli seeds (good for sprouting or growing in the garden), alfalfa seeds and, finding them inexpensive in bulk, a pound of radish seeds.

A pound! Picture a full-sized juice can. Well, it was only a bit more than half full, but that's still a lot of radish seeds. I'm trying to picture the raising and harvesting of radish seeds. They bolt when the weather gets hot, and the flowers turn to seeds, that I know, but with maybe a dozen seeds in the top of a radish plant, can you picture how long it would take to fill a juice can?

Not to worry besides sprouting them, I'm giving them to friends and plan to plant them outdoors as soon as we finish spading.

I wish I'd thought to order cabbage seeds. They're good too, less spicy than radish, but with a tiny bite. Mary sent me some from Germany once brand name: Biosnacky in a "spring mix" that contains cabbage among the alfalfa, radish, and clover seed.

I felt like my life was complete when Marquita gave me some sunflower seeds in exchange for some of the broccoli seeds. I soaked them overnight, and within 24 hours, the first white probes had breached the softened seed on their way to becoming "sunnies."

I bought a couple more sprouting containers (ordinary one-cup Rubbermaid storage boxes fit perfectly the perforated plastic lids I bought years ago at a health food store) and on an icy-windy March day, had a veritable garden of sprouts lined up beside the sink.

They're crunchy on soups or salads as well as in sandwiches I like them so much, I usually yank out a snack when I refresh them twice a day.

And the taste of tangy radish sprouts always remind me of an evening with Jean, home from college, chatting across the kitchen counter.

As we talked, we pinched sprouts, dipped them in salt, and before we knew it, had harvested the entire container the way on another evening we might have polished off a box of ice cream.

Chemical changes take place during sprouting that apparently reduce the carbohydrate content of beans and seeds, and boost production of Vitamins A and C and antioxidants. You can sprout virtually any dried bean in your kitchen, although some more easily than others.

I haven't tried them, but lentils and dried peas are supposed to work well. I sprouted rye berries once for a bread recipe. It was OK, not memorable, and presumably delivered more nutrition than ordinary whole grain bread. My hunch is that heat is going to compromise some of the benefits, and you're better off eating raw sprouts.

You can avoid the danger of salmonella in ready-to-eat sprouts by growing your own. Don't use seeds packaged for bird seed or planting in the garden, however. Sometimes they have been treated with risky chemicals.

Sprouting is not difficult, but you do have to allow a little lead time before incorporating sprouts into a recipe -- say, at least a week. And if you have to go out of town, you need to instruct the neighborhood teen who feeds your cat how to water and drain sprouts.

* * * * *

"Why would you put strawberry cream cheese on a rye bagel?"

"Oh. Yuck, it's that rubbery nonfat kind, too. The lids must have been switched I thought it was plain. Phooey, these aren't alfalfa sprouts either; they're radish. Oh, well, so new recipes are born."

He neither replied nor reached for the sprouts. Good thing, too, because this was a combination that's not going to catch on.

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