Adventures with Chia

I was recently visiting SF author Nina Munteanu who is currently teaching how to write science fiction in Toronto Canada’s UofT and George Brown. It took a while to track her down—she is a true Romanian—a wandering itinerant, like me, with a gypsy heart that yearns for fun and adventure.

The day was pleasant: sunny and warm. Nina took me to one of her favorite places in the city and we walked for hours along the Credit River—well, she walked and I scampered. Meow!

We walked right beside the river. It rushed and swirled over the rocks, sounding like a joyful crowd spilling from the theatre. I scurried over litter and dirt and glanced up at the overhanging trees. They reached their arms out as if to greet, leafy canopies trembling like green and gold glitter in the warm breeze. At my level, the ground was a carpet of dark textures, home for a bazillion little creatures that stirred and rustled there. Squirrels and birds foraged, ignoring me as though I was just a stuffed cat.

Credit River

The Credit River is a fish-bearing river that flows through mixed forest for about 1,500 km from Orangeville and empties into Lake Ontario at Port Credit, a charming village in sprawling Mississauga (part of the GTA). Chinook salmon and rainbow trout live in the river and its headwaters are home to brook trout and introduced brown trout. A long linear park system with natural paths and dominated by a woodland of Manitoba and Sugar Maple runs pretty much the full length of the river.

After scampering for hours, I rejoiced at the sound of: “Hey, let’s stop for something to eat and drink!” Nina had read my little mind—or had I sent her my thoughts?

Toulouse sips pure happiness

She surprised me by not driving to a funky but sophisticated café—our usual habit. Instead, she parked in front of a grocery store! I peered up at the Starbucks-like green sign: Whole Foods Market.

What the MEOW?...

Nina grinned—the kind of sideways grin that told me that this was still part of our adventure. I faithfully followed her inside. 

If you haven’t been to Whole Foods, this organic slow-food grocery store also provides an amazingly tantalizing food and juice bar with excellent coffee and a bright open area to eat and visit.  

Deciding on a refreshing drink instead of coffee, we both chose the cherry-lime chia juice made by Mamma Chia. Chia seeds are tiny black seeds from the plant Salvia Hispanica, which is related to the mint. Native to South America, chia means “strength” in ancient Mayan.

Chia seeds

My first gulp was a burst of surprise. Composed of mostly hydrated chia seeds, the drink is like a refreshing explosion of bubble-tea—without the tea. You don’t so much drink it as swallow down the refreshing gel-enveloped seeds that crowd the drink with solid happiness. The refreshing cherry-lime tickled my palate with fresh joy and the chia “bubbles” played on my tongue.

Now here’s the best part: chia seeds are oh-so-good for you! In Authority Nutrition’s article, entitled “11 Proven Health Benefits of chia Seeds”, Kris Gunnars gives us the skinny of chia happiness:

1. Chia seeds deliver a massive amount of nutrients with very few calories (the calories are mostly locked in with the fiber, which the body excretes—along with the calories). “Chia seeds are among the most nutritious foods on the planet, loaded with fiber, protein, Omega-3 fatty acids and various micronutrients,” says Gunnars.
2.  Chia seeds are loaded with antioxidants, which protect the sensitive fats in the seeds from going rancid. Antioxidants, fight the production of free radicals, which can damage molecules in cells and contribute to aging and diseases like cancer.
3. Almost all the carbs in them are fiber, which is a win-win situation. Fiber doesn’t raise blood sugar and because of the fiber, chia seeds can absorb up to 10-12 times their weight in water, becoming gel-like and expanding in your stomach. Fiber also feeds the friendly bacteria in the intestine. Chia seeds contain 40% fiber by weight.
4. Chia seeds are high in quality protein (about 14%) along with essential amino acids, which makes the proteins more usable by us.
5. Chia seeds can help you lose weight, mainly because of the high fiber and protein, both of which increase fullness and slow the absorption of food. Protein helps reduce appetite and food intake.
6. Chia seeds are high in Omega-3 fatty acids, although the form is not the most beneficial (ALA vs. EPA and DHA).
7. Chia seeds may lower the risk of heart disease and Type 2 diabetes, potentially reducing LDL cholesterol and triglycerides (with an increase in HDL “good” cholesterol and reduction of inflammation).
8. Chia seeds are high in many important bone nutrients, such as calcium, phorphorus, magnesium and protein. The calcium content, at 18% of the RDA in a single ounce, is higher than most dairy products.
9. Chia seeds can reduce blood pressure and help balance blood sugar levels.
10. Chia seeds can improve exercise performance. Apparently the Aztecs and Mayans used chia seeds to fuel performance.
11. Chia seeds are easy to incorporate into your diet; they can be eaten raw, soaked in juice, added to porridges and puddings or added to baked goods. People sprinkle them on cereal, yogurt, salads, vegetables and rice dishes. They can thicken sauces and be used as egg substitutes in recipes.

Now, I like that! MEOW! I’m Toulouse the COOL Travel cat!

Toulouse introduces Mamma Chia to his friend Mouse

Cruise with Toulouse: Riding Harleys in Cozumel

Carnival Dream docked in Cozumel

“Get up, you lazy bones! Time to go onshore!” In her exuberance, Nina grabbed me by the tail (she isn’t always considerate when she’s excited) and cheerfully shoved me into her daypack. “We’ve landed in Cozumel!”

‘Docked!’ I corrected her from inside the pack, as she blithely rushed out of our stateroom and rode the glass elevator twelve stories down to where we would disembark. The word is docked!  Good thing I’m her editor, is all I can say.

As we got off the ship, Nina gave me a glimpse of the huge pier. Our first stop on the Carnival Dream cruise was Cozumel, an island in the Caribbean Sea off the eastern coast of Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula. Cozumel means Island of the Swallows in Mayan and it’s the largest Atlantic island of Mexico with a low, flat and densely vegetated topography, based on limestone. The limestone has created some cool karst formations. For instance, Cenotes are deep water filled sinkholes formed by water percolating through the soft limestone over thousands of years; if you’re a qualified cave diver – and foolishly adventurous – you can get permission to explore Cozumel’s Cenotes. About twenty years ago some of those foolish adventurers discovered what is now recognized as the 5^th largest underwater cave in the world. 

Toulouse checks his Harley

The Maya first settled Cozumel in the early part of the 1^st millennium AD. It was a place of pilgrimage and considered sacred to Ix Chel, the Maya Moon Goddess. In 1518 Hernán Cortés and his fleet swept in like a dark storm, destroying a bazilion temples and eventually wiping out the locals with smallpox. Those were tough times for the Mayans. According to some researchers, by 1570 only a meager 30 people survived from the original 40,000 Mayan population. Those were the dark years, when the deserted Cozumel became a hideout for pirates and refuges and other interesting eccentrics. Did you know that Abraham Lincoln almost bought the island as a place to send the freed slaves of the United States? But the drawn-out war in the Yucatan changed his mind.  Cozumel finally entered its golden years when Jacques Cousteau “blessed it” by discovering and popularizing its spectacular scuba diving in Cozumel’s coral reefs at Palancar. Even the destruction by Hurricane Wilma hasn’t slowed down Cozumel, which remains a popular tourist destination and currently boasts over 90 restaurants. The locals, a wonderful mixture of Mayan and Spanish descent, are friendly, optimistic and cheerful people with a great sense of humor and healthy outlook. Nina tells me they remind her of the cheerfully adaptive Thai people of Phuket, who after the devastation of the recent tsunami, just picked up the pieces and built it all up again within a short few years. 

Cozumel is a popular charter fishing destination and offers some of the best scuba diving and snorkeling for our “Joe Tourist”. But Nina and I aren’t “Joe Tourist”… Besides, you may recall from my last post that I’m not particularly fond of water (I am a cat, after all, free to exercise the inalienable rights of my species). We did something far more exciting – and exotic:  we toured the island on Harleys! We saw the “wild side” of Cozumel.

Toulouse chills with Willy and Carlos

On the pier we met our guides, Willy and Carlos, two regular guys in black leather jackets and tattoos. Smiling like pirates, they led us to a lonely back parking lot, where we found our bikes. Nina chose a red 1200cc Sportster and I chose a blue one. What? You don’t believe I rode one all by myself? Take a look at the picture of me on the bike at Punta Sur, one of our stops!

The tour was an exhilarating fur-raising ride along Cozumel’s cracked and warped roads with a view of its scenic shoreline. We took off from Sunset Beach and headed south through the ancient Mayan town of Cedral then continued south, salt air whipping through my fur, to Punta Celerain and the historic lighthouse at Punta Sur Ecological Park. Nina panted and huffed after me as I scampered up the 100-some steps to the top for a breathtaking view of the island’s surf and vast beach. I don’t know what her problem was: the stairs weren’t nearly as narrow, crooked, and worn as the crumbling Tower of Pisa (but that’s another story…). It was in the park that I met Charlie, the resident crocodile. Charlie’s presence in Cozumel, let alone North America, is an oddity. If you know anything about natural science, you know that crocs are normally restricted to the “old continents” of Africa and Asia. North America and South America support alligators. The way I remember it is: “Nile” rhymes with crocodile and “Amazon” starts with an “a” like “alligator”.

It must have been the fresh sea air, because my stomach started to growl. Nina’s followed soon after and Willy got the message. We quickly mounted up and he navigated us along a windy back road to the main highway and the “wild side” of the island to “Coconuts Restaurant and Bar”. We dined on authentic Mexican cuisine at this funky seaside eatery and watched the locals cavorting and laughing. The open-air restaurant resembled something from an old James Bond movie, thatched palm-leaf roofs decorated with t-shirts from across the world and support poles tattooed with business cards. Fearing the retarded dog that decided to park itself near us, I wandered off to the beach below, lured by deep sea-green surf, lava-shaped rocks and the sweet aroma of local herbs. Of course, no one told me that the beaches here allow partial nudity! Bonus for me. Nina was “put out” though; she’d panicked when she couldn’t find me.

After she found me on the beach, she shoved me back into her backpack where I stayed as we continued the last leg of the tour through Mezcalitos, and west toward the main town of San Miguel, where Willy showed us—well, Nina (I was still socked in the backpack)— where he lives. We then rode through San Miguel’s bustling downtown and finally returned to the pier’s back parking lot.

Nina relented (she can never stay mad at me for long) and let me out of the pack when Willy produced two bottles of Corona Beer to celebrate our cool 5-hour tour. It was a blast!

You can book your Harley Davidson Tour with Willy and Carlos through Sand Dollar Sports. sds@sanddollarsports.com From Canada call: 972-966-0616; from USA call: 1-888-737-6399; from Cozumel call: 987-872-0793 or 987-872-1884; fax: 987-872-6158.