Chia Bars – Super Energy
After reading about the Tarahumara, Native NW Mexico endurance runners, and their use of Chia seeds, my wife and I started experimenting with creating a calorie dense, super nutritious block for lightweight high energy hiking and jogging fuel.
We eventually settled on the recipe below because of its effectiveness at staving off hunger and longer term supply of energy to our muscles than anything we found on the open market (in 2011).
We guesstimate each “ice-cube” size block to be about 200 calories.
One block will give enough energy supply for a couple of hours hiking or ¾ hour jogging, dependant on intensity.
I used 6 blocks during my 50 mile crossing of the Olympic Mountains in a day. See Posting.
Chia Bars Recipe – By Ingrid and Martin Musson
Slowly melt 1 cup of unsweetened carob chips
Mix in the following ingredients:
1 cup Chia seeds
1 cup ground Coconut
½ cup ground Almonds
1 table spoon of Coconut Oil
Salt/Sea Salt to suit
Mix all the ingredients together and pack into ice trays.
Freeze them, then remove from ice trays when frozen.
Wrap each block in greaseproof paper and bag ‘em.
Keep frozen till required.
They’ll last several days in Washington’s climate unfrozen/thawed.
Let them thaw before biting into them !!!
None of this is scientific in any way and purely subjective.