Originally Posted by lurkingforacure

I bought mine from two online suppliers, both get them imported from Italy. The lovely cranberry flowered ones are beautiful, make a ton of blooms, but not one bean....at least in our garden. The black and white flowering ones, though, they produce very well. We planted the cranberry favas in 4" pots indoors and then transplanted outside...those gave us no beans.

The black and white flowering seeds we sowed directly into the ground and they are still producing a little but have really tapered off. We are in central texas and it gets very humid and hot here, very early. I don't expect we'll get many more beans, to be honest.

I was reading Ken Hodges' webpage about favas, and he said you can sprout the seeds and the sprouts contain FIVE times as much levodopa as eating the beans! I don't know about the pods, though, they are supposedly very rich in the levodopa. Here is what I have learned so far about acutally using them:

1. the immature pods and beans have the highest levodopa content, unless you sprout them;

2. the tough skins covering the beans inside the pods have practically no levodopa, so removing those before eating will not significantly decrease the levodopa content (but removing them is a real pain, not worth it to us);

3. you get the most levodopa if you lightly steam the pods and beans and eat immediately (again, unless you sprout them)....steaming reduces the levodopa content about 10% and if you set the cooked beans aside to cool...you'l lose a lot more levodopa (I think Ken's site said something like 80-90%); And I can confirm this to be case: one night we ate them pretty much right after they were cooked, had very beneficial effect (see my first post on this thread)....when we ate them after they had cooked and cooled, the effect was much less (realizing, the reduced effect could be attributed to many factors, including a building tolerance to the fava, but I question whether that could occur in just a few days...)

4. washing and cutting the bean pods into bite-size pieces for a few hours BEFORE cooking will cause the exposed ends to turn BLACK and they are unsighly and very unappetizing (so much for prepping dinner in advance)!

We are going to try sprouting this weekend, should be interesting as the seeds are huge, I have no idea what kind of container we will use, but shall dutifully report back. If anyone has sprouted the fava before, please share anything you learned from the experience, thanks.