Or, what to make for help with your smoothie resolution.
If you are a person who thinks about food even a little bit, you have probably noticed that there are a lot of bits of wisdom and judgement floating around about the stuff you eat when you wake up in the morning. Breakfast is widely reported as the most important meal of the day. Eating breakfast is one of those healthy habits held by most of the folks in Brown University’s long-standing national weight control study – those (rare) folks in the United States who have lost significant amounts of weight and kept it off over a long period of time. Lately, eating protein for breakfast is a thing (presumably after many of us in the US realized we are eating dessert for breakfast in the form of some sweet carby goodness or other). I missed the whole “bulletproof coffee” trend (if you want more evidence that people are strange, then by all means Google it), but it was not the first (nor will it be the last) “breakfast hack”. It sort of seems like we all want so much out of life, and if we can just start the day out right, it will (presumably, hopefully) all fall into place. No pressure.
Someone in our house has this figured out. A eats the same thing for breakfast day in, day out. Home, away, Winter, Summer, the man eats his (admittedly very healthy) breakfast, feels good, and is on his way in life. I, on the other hand, am predictably disastrous at organizing breakfast for myself. Other than the obligatory cup of black tea with milk drunk as soon as is humanly possible, I cannot seem to manage breakfast in an efficient, no-nonsense way. (Maybe, according the the breakfast hack philosophy, this explains a lot about the rest of my life.) My thing is like the opposite of a breakfast hack; I do the breakfast struggle-with-small-decisions-and-feel-grumpy-and-full-of-self-doubt.
In order to address this ridiculousness, my new year’s resolution this year is to have a smoothie for breakfast every day. I have been mostly successful in this pursuit (recipes coming soon!), barring a few days of necessary rebellion. This week, I have been telling myself that the rebellion is not really off-plan if what I eat is smoothie-like, smoothie-ish, or made of smoothie ingredients. And this is where chia berry jam comes in.
This stuff is much less sugary than normal jam, but still sweet and spreadably thick, thanks to a bit of honey and some thickening action from the chia seeds. I have seen versions of this pop up on the web, but I was most inspired by this version from the lovely Oh She Glows blog. And now chia berry jam is a stable and dependable part of my mornings. I put it on pancakes (shh, don’t tell the smoothie plan), into smoothies, and, as seen here, I swirl it through plain yogurt for a healthy breakfast that nobody can deny. Now I just have to wait for everything else to fall into place.
- 1 package mixed frozen berries (mine was a 16 oz bag of raspberries, blueberries, and blackberries)
- 1 heaping tablespoon honey (or other sweetener if you want vegan jam)
- 2 tablespoons chia seeds
- Heat berries and honey in a small pot over medium heat until the mixture starts to liquefy and simmer.
- Using the back of a spoon or a rubber spatula, mash the berries until everything is a mostly uniform consistency.
- Add the chia seeds and stir for about 10 minutes, or until the mixture thickens. The jam will continue to thicken as it cools, so you don't need to reduce the liquid.
- Store the jam in a sealed container in the fridge for about a week.