Weird Food: chia seeds

I've been reading about chia seeds on food blogs and healthy eating blogs for ages now, but I hadn't tried them until this week. Until quite recently they were reasonably difficult to get hold of in the UK - or they were expensive, with the only bags I'd seen being massive £12 ones in Holland & Barrett. But now they do little 100g bags for around £2, and so I decided to take the plunge and buy some.

I was inspired by Laura's raspberry chia seed jam, and so that was the first thing I tried. It wasn't really a recipe - I just mashed about 100g of raspberries, added 5g of chia seeds, and stirred it all together. Left in the fridge overnight, the chia seeds did their thing and made it quite gelatinous in texture, very much like a slightly runny jam. It's delicious - I didn't add any sugar because I had gorgeous sweet British raspberries, but it is quite tart so if you decide to have a go you might want to add a bit of icing sugar to taste.

I think I'm going to try mixing some chia seeds with Kara chocolate coconut milk (one of my new obsessions - it makes the most incredible hot chocolate!) for a chocolate pudding-type thing...we'll see how that goes!