Chocolate Chia Porridge (Dairy Free)

WOW! It's been a CRAZY hectic mad whirl of work, study, family, illnesses, more work and study here the past couple of months! I've been totally delinquent in my blogging! So sorry all!

So I've enrolled and started studying at the Institute for Integrative Nutrition - soon I'll be ready to take on clients as a qualified Health Coach - its SUPER exciting!! :) But extremely time-consuming! There's so much to learn and I'm loving every minute of it. If any of you are interested in a career where you help people live their best lives as your job, check it out at: http://www.integrativenutrition.com/ and tell them I sent you! Or contact me. I've also met an amazing amount of wonderful new friends through this course and am constantly learning from my co-students! A list of some great new blogs and pages I've discovered will be at the bottom of this post.

For those of you who are interested in all the health and nutrition information, I will be starting up a website and a blog very soon for the Health Coaching business, so when that's ready I'll let you know. From now on Chookie's Cookin' is going to be solely healthy Thermomix Recipes. Other tips and tricks and info will be on my other blog and site.

But the good news is that I'm back with something really easy and super delicious and sooooo good for you! ;)

I first saw this when we were doing our Thermomix stall at the Atherton Show this year when Jo from Quirky Cooking showed me how she makes her version. She found the original recipe at Homemade Healthy Happy here and following is my version.

Chocolate Chia Porridge with Strawberries and Bananas (single serve)

Ingredients:

2-3 TBSP Chia seeds

1 cup almond milk + extra to pour over (I use Quirky Cooking's Rice Almond Milk)

1 tsp cacao powder

1/4 tsp maca powder

1/4 tsp vanilla bean paste

Sliced strawberries

Sliced bananas (mine were from the honey farmer - organic local sugar bananas!)

Small handful raw cashews

1-2 tsp raw organic honey (from the farmer up the road! :))

Method:

Stir together the Chia seeds, almond milk, cacao powder, maca and vanilla bean paste, and leave to soak for 45m-1hr (if you leave it longer its not a problem).

Slice fruit and stir through with nuts, and top with extra almond milk and honey drizzled over.

There really is no limit to how creative you want to get with this. You can sprinkle with goji berries, add cinnamon, cacao nibs for crunch, other nuts and seeds such as sunflower seeds and pepitas, drizzle with coconut cream. Or you could soak the seeds in fresh apple juice, and stir through shredded green apple, silvered almonds, sultanas, some kefir or CoYo (coconut yoghurt) and honey for a Bircher inspired wet Chia muesli (which I plan to have VERY soon!).

Some awesome new blogs/pages I've recently started following:

Co-Inside Wellbeing: http://co-inside.com.au/ - Curtis and Candice Aiken are just so fantastic and vibrant, love this page!

Happy Healthy Abundant: http://jianiteo.com/ - Jia is amazeballs!!! She's so inspiring and enlightened.

Nourish Co: http://nourishco.com.au/ - Rebecca's company is just beautiful - taking care of companies with heart who are taking care of others! Mindful marketing at its best! 

And a beautiful collection of inspiring pictures at The Love Yourself Challenge: http://theloveyourselfchallenge.tumblr.com/

Have a fabulous weekend!

Love and Health, 

B xxx