superfood* of the week: CHIA

Raw foods is a crazy underworld. Did you know everybody eats pudding made of chia seeds instead of using them to grow hair on their vaguely-racist chia Obama? Anyway you can read all the chia hype but basically they have more omega-3s than flax and you can use them the same as flax, like for fake eggs and stuff. The other thing about them is that when you soak them in liquid something crazy happens with their soluble fibers and it forms a mucilaginous little nugget around each seed. Yum!

So then you can make a gel out of them and use it to bulk up high-calorie things, which end up not getting diluted, because the gel doesn’t dissolve, see. So you could have twice as much vegan hollandaise but it would still taste the same. I have not attempted that application yet since I think the seeds would look unappetizingly like spider eggs even if you ground them up first. I am hooked on the chia pudding though. You just mix chia seeds with fakemilk (2T to 1 cup) and let it sit until it mucilaginizes (30 minutes or so). Also you add whatever other tasty things like vanilla, agave, or cinnamon. Or cocoa powder. Or you can puree a date in the milk beforehand. Or some frozen strawberries. Or use this recipe which is quite delicious. Then in the morning you thin it out to a nice puddingy consistency with some warm milk or water and add some fruits and you are miraculously freed from the tyranny of oatmeal.

I think it is more energizing than oatmeal and I stay full until lunch, it is a MIRACULOUS SUPERFOOD. Look at its little gelatinous globules!

To summarize the rest of the week.

Disastrous things that went directly into the trash thereby wasting a lot of expensive nuts and dates and a lot of blender- and food-processor-washing time:

• Ani Phyo’s raw carrot cake
• Ani Phyo’s trail mix cookies

I think I was lulled into a false sense of raw-dessert-success with the ganache cake. I still want to make a raw cheesecake though. I just need a million dollars worth of macadamia nuts. It is unfair that the government subsidizes meat and dairy with my tax dollars. They should subsidize NUTS.

Things that are good though:

• Raw nut cheese, which is just soaked nuts and lemon juice and garlic in the food processor. Then you put a glob on your salad and it is instantaneously exciting.

* The term “superfood” makes me want to itch my skin off. Superfoods are so annoying, I don’t know why I am compelled to try them one after the other. Goji berries? Taste like DIRT. Expensive superfood granola? Delicious but then you feel like your heart is going to explode. Agave nectar? It’s just sugar! Who are these people who make this big deal about giving up sugar and then they are guzzling down agave? Oh, I did that? Right, well. Hemp seeds? Those I have not tried yet but I totally want to.