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Friday, February 19, 2010

Chia Goodness
via McSweeney's Review of New Foods
Submitted by Marina Koestler Ruben

I purchased the cereal Chia Goodness because it claimed to be "the most nutritious seed ever." (Its price was commensurate with its perceived self-importance.)

But I had trouble when I added milk. My first two attempts at chia prep yielded a gray glue dotted with equally gelatinous bulbous spheres. Think putrefying frog eggs or the evil, shrunken, dirty-dishwater stepsibling of bubble tea.

Chia sat blandly on the tongue with the crunch of kiwi seeds and the smooth casing of mini-eyeballs.

Drat. This was the latest in a string of my inadvisable purchases: hemp oil, açai juice, quinoa beverage. I had thrown each away. My husband, Adam, created a rule. In our newly no-waste household, you buy it, you eat it—particularly if you paid more than seven dollars for a small bag of cereal. I wanted to be chia-free, but how?

Fortunately, there was a double batch of cranberry-ginger chia muffins, as per an online Chia Goodness recipe. Better yet, I didn't have to make them. Adam volunteered, declaring with glee that he himself also contained the most nutritious seed ever.

That weekend, Adam made the muffins. The directions, in effect:

1. Salvage your decision to buy Chia Goodness by trading the remainder of your disposable income for muffin ingredients, including high-end crystallized ginger.

2. Combine ingredients. Obey an online typo that prompts you to add an extra two cups of water.

3. Wait. And wait. And wait and wait. While the outsides dry out and burn, the muffins' insides will stay unbearably gluey.

We gave our leftover muffins to my parents, who gave them to their Labrador Retriever, who died. (To be fair, the Lab had a preexisting condition. But the muffins couldn't have helped.)

Now bankrupt, disempowered, very hungry, and muttering "Chia Badness" under his breath, Adam sent an angry e-mail to the makers of Chia Goodness. He made our position clear: We did not like it in a box, with a fox, or as a chia-cranberry-ginger-water-water-water cocktail.

Quickly thereafter, Chia Goodness replied. They were sorry, so sorry, for our misfortune.

Be on the lookout, they wrote. In compensation, you should expect a free shipment of Chia Goodness.

We moved.