Hi again, friends! It’s me, ChiaMom™, here to share insights about my enlightened life as a stay-at-home parent of eleven, wife to my best friend and the most amazing man in the world, and 21st century homesteader at our acre-and-a-half of bliss, Chez Chia. You’ll find us just outside the urban growth boundary, raising our vegan heirloom hens, mingling spiritual practices in our on-site Baha’i/Kabbalah micro-temple, and eating nothing that we can’t source within a one-mile radius of our farm (luxury online retailers don't count, right?) Today I’m peeking at my inbox to answer questions from great readers like you. I can’t wait!

Dear ChiaMom™,

My smoothies are feeling so uninspired. What can I do to make them exciting and edgy?

-Smoothie Mover

Dear SM,

Just add chia seeds! Make sure to add them after you’ve thoroughly blended all of the other smoothie ingredients. This way the chia seeds will create a gel that adds a slimy, bumpy, stimulating texture to your smoothie. They look like miniature tadpoles-to-be, don’t they? Or, as my oldest son Pennyroyal says, vegan fish eggs. Enjoy!

Dear ChiaMom™,

I’ve tried to get my twin daughters to eat the fruity chia seed pudding I made them. Everyone says how healthy and easy it is, and I was thrilled about giving them a dessert and snack that was good for them, but after tasting it my girls cried and asked me why I hated them so much. Then they clogged up the sink trying to wash the chia pudding away. Help!

-Flustered in Flushing

Dear FIF,

It’s hard to believe, but chia seeds aren’t for everyone. Here at Chez Chia, we raise our kids to embrace any new experience, so of course my twin daughters, Unity and Togetherness, didn’t instantly reject the chia pudding like your girls. They invented chia pudding, in fact, for a homeschool science/sustainability project. They got an A, of course ;)

And you’re right—chia pudding is easy! We make it with home-pressed coconut milk from the dwarf trees in our greenhouse. After hacking the coconuts apart with a machete, extracting their milk in the hand-cranked press, and filtering it through our special cedarwood charcoal distiller, it only takes thirty seconds to stir in the chia seeds. Let it sit for five hours so the gel can form, and voila! At Chez Chia, we garnish it with rustic coconut sugar that the kids boil down from coconut pulp in open vats behind the greenhouse (with lots of help from our busy crew of undocumented workers, of course).

Since Chez FIF seems to be a more closed-minded environment than our thriving compound, try introducing chia to your clan in something your twins probably already eat—play dough, a.k.a. chia-doh! Take a pound of fair-trade fine tidal sea salt, mix it with a peck of locally milled arrowroot powder and a gallon of cold-pressed olive oil, and then knead in four empty coconut shells’ worth of whole chia seeds. (Have the twins do this; they will have a blast!) Then let the chia-doh age in a humid, 60-degree cellar for three days. Presto, it’s ready! The black dots of the chia seeds may turn off picky eaters/doh-players, but you can order artisan golden chia seeds—bred from samples recently discovered in ancient Incan ritual sites—from RansackedSacredGrounds.com. Have fun, and send me pics so I can post them!

Dear ChiaMom™,

We tried to sprout chia seeds the way we sprout our other seeds: by putting them in a quart jar, adding water to cover, and rinsing the water off every morning before adding fresh water. But the goopy gel the chia seeds made it impossible to do the rinsing step. I’d really like to try sprouting chia seeds. Is there any hope for us?

-KittyPearl138

Dear KP138,

Chia seeds are special. Don’t get discouraged! Remember the Chia Pet you got for Christmas in 1981? That can give you a hint—chia seeds love clay. But instead of using a horizontal surface, get creative. I get my brood involved by sprouting chia seeds right on their bodies. Really! We all do a spa day—even the boys—and smear our faces with the avocado-Bohemian fango clay mask I mix up. Be sure to use only avocados you’ve grown from heirloom pits in biodynamic compost. Then, while the mask is still very damp, on go the chia seeds. Give all of the kids spray bottles (made from upcycled glass, of course—you can get them from HippyLibertarianDoomsday.com) and encourage them to mist their faces every 15 minutes so the seeds stay moist. In a few days, those seeds will transform into nutritious sprouts. Your kids will snack on them right from their own faces—and each other’s! How fun! I know you’ll all have a blast. Thanks for sprouting with us!

Dear ChiaMom™,

I’m out of K-Y Jelly and haven’t had time to go to the drugstore. I want to know more about holistic options. Do you have any ideas?

-LivingMILF

Dear LivingMILF,

Congratulations on your problem! ;) It’s an easy one to have when you are married to your best friend and the most amazing man in the entire world, isn’t it? I, too, was worried about using a drug on our bodies that contained ingredients I didn’t recognize. And the solution was right in my Ball jar in the pantry.

Since Mr. Chia travels frequently to obscure countries seeking sustainable sources of weapons-grade plutonium for a secretive government contractor, we make every free second together at Chez Chia count. Every night at 7pm, after all of our eleven little princes and princesses slurp down their valerian-echinacea-chia dessert smoothies and collapse in bed, I mix up a tablespoon of chia seeds with a quarter cup of glacial icemelt that’s been warming in a sterilized jar on the windowsill. You can add a few drops of rose water, if you are feeling especially sensual, but don’t use essential oil! The oil will change the pH down there, and then you’ll need to break out the unsweetened, unpasteurized cranberry juice. I feel good about not supporting the monster pharmaceutical industry, and that good energy only adds to the productive and athletic romantic life that Mr. Chia and I share. Just between you and me, those chia seeds only heighten the pleasure. Go for it, be well, and remember: whenever you encounter difficulty or sadness, just throw chia at it. Hugs!