**RECIPES** Drinking Chia Seeds (without gagging)

**UPDATE**

I have CKD stage 3b and have learned that I have to watch my intake of chia seeds. 

Before you ever try something new in your diet, make sure to talk to your medical care team.

 Chia seeds are a great source of fiber, highly nutritious, high in antioxidants, a good source of protein, and omega 3. 

You can get a nice fix of seeds by mixing them into food, cereals, and baked goods.

Or - and this is the quickest way to ingest them - you can drink them. People make chia water or add chia to their juices. 

Personally, I have a slight aversion to the texture of soaked chia seeds. I can deal better with them in a juice because it reminds me of drinking aloe juice with the pulp. Otherwise, I just feel like I'm drinking globulets of something. Ick.

So here is what I came up with and want to share with anyone interested. I dump the chia (about 2 tablespoons twice a day) into about 8 ounces of water and drink it down before the seeds plump. 

Of course, I do have to swish some follow-up water to rinse away any residual seeds from my mouth and teeth but I don't mind. 

Because I'm not crazy about wet seeds, I bake them into this cookie recipe. (My alterations below the recipe.)

Apologies to Allrecipes but showing an image was easier than typing out the recipe because my brain is on off-mode today.

Source Link 
Allrecipes.com

My alterations & notes:

• I omit the raisins so my cookies are flatter. Adding an extra tablespoon or so bulks them up or you can add more oats.
• I omit the coconut flakes and double up on the seeds. I go overboard with chia, flax and sunflower. I also add about 2 tablespoons of ground flax.
• I once cut back slightly on the dry sugars. Instead of 1 cup each, I did about 3/4 cup each. And...
• I once substituted half the brown sugar with a golden monk fruit sweetener. This is the one time that I couldn't tell a huge difference in substituted sweetener.
• I once used 1 2/4 cup brown sugar (half light/half dark) and 2/4 cup white sugar for a total of 2 cups of sugar in the recipe. This was good but I really had to watch the bake time!
• As with any recipe, don't let the butter get too soft for creaming. I did this once and my cookies literally melted and stuck to the parchment. I couldn't even scrape them off and ended up wasting all those precious ingredients...
• I tried adding a tablespoon of blackstrap molasses once and this gave the cookies a darker bake and a slightly sweeter texture. Watch your bake though, the extra sweetness can shorten the time in the oven.
• This recipe can take a LOT of chia seeds. They are small enough that they don't over-bulk the dough.

This recipe is pretty forgiving and I've found you can play with a lot of the ingredients as long as your basic dry ingredients remain about the same.

The chia seeds kind of pop when you bite them

That's just one way to get a lot of chia seeds (and make your sweet tooth happy) but if you want to keep it healthier, stick to the waters. 

I do my first hit of chia water in the morning before I eat or drink anything else. I take another hit at night before bed (or earlier if I want to curb snack cravings). 

Knocking back the seeds this way is so much easier for me than dealing with wet clumps of them.

NOTE: I didn't find this out until I was prepping for this post. Apparently, if you have renal issues... 

oh, me, me!

:-(

...you should read up about ingesting lots of chia. Sucks for me. I will be checking with my docs since I am just borderline because of the sarcoidosis...

Peace

--Free