Earl Grey Hot Chocolate Chia Pudding

& staying true to my values

Hi! Welcome to “good mood food” from Kale Me Maybe’s Carina Wolff. If you’ve made it here and aren’t yet a subscriber, come join! You can expect recipes, musings, and faves in your inbox every week! Paid subscribers get even more on Saturdays — right now I’m doing a 30-minute budget meal series! Learn more about the paid tier of my newsletter here. You can also try a week for free!

CATCH UP!

What a week. I’ve been loving my day-to-day so much recently — I finally feel like my personal life is in harmony. I spend my time with my incredibly precious baby and developing recipes for my cookbook — it’s a dream come true. But obviously, I look outside my little bubble and feel incredibly disheartened and disturbed. This isn’t anything new, of course — we dealt with a scary ICE presence in LA last year — but with this level of violence, it’s just getting scarier and scarier. And the attitude toward immigrants in this country… it’s not okay.

I shared these resources on my Instagram stories, but I donated to The Immigrant Law Center of Minnesota and The Community Aid Network MN in an effort to do what I can.

I also saw a post that suggested using the contact forms on your representatives websites versus calling them, which I thought was a great option. Otherwise, I’m sure you’ve seen a lot of people sharing the 5Calls app, which makes it easy to call your reps.

Something I’ve been thinking about lately is how becoming a mother has actually strengthened who I am. Sharing yourself online is a vulnerable thing, but when I feel compelled to speak out against injustices or lean into my values, I picture making my son proud. And when stuff gets scary online, I get to log off, spend time with him, and then come back to it with a renewed sense of energy. I think less about what people think about me and more about how I can stay true to myself and how I can make the world a better place. I choose to remain optimistic when it comes to the future, even when it feels really, really hard to do so.

THINGS I’M LOVING

My wonderful Doula Lexie told me about a snack she has been eating lately, and now I, too, am obsessed. It’s just a bowl of pomegranate seeds with dark chocolate, and there’s something about the crunch of the cold pomegranate seeds mixed in with the creamy chocolate that just hits. I’ve been using the Trader Joe’s Dark Chocolate Chips because that’s what I had at home, but I recently switched to my other favorite, Just Dates, which are date-sweetened.

I shared these nursery decals on my stories, and they were such a hit, I thought I would share them here as well. We moved our framed art away from the crib so as to not pose a safety risk, and I ended up ordering these stickers on Etsy to place over the crib instead. I had them sitting in our closet for months thinking they would be hard to apply, but they were ridiculously easy. You just peel and stick, and you can even peel them off and move them around if they’re not right the first time. But they seriously just go on so flat, and I love how they look!

When I think about what I’ve been reading and loving lately, it’s Alisha Ramos’s Substack, Downtime. I love all her recommendations, and she strikes such a good balance of sharing her favorite things without it feeling like overconsumption. She shares great products, but she also has book recommendations, habit suggestions, etc.

RECIPE!

I finally got around to making Earl Grey Hot Chocolate this month, and damn, was it delicious! I knew it had to be my next chia seed pudding flavor, and it did not disappoint.

Making this chia seed pudding is simple — you steep some Early Grey tea bags in milk, and then you mix it together with some Greek yogurt as your base. I like using Greek yogurt rather than just only milk because it makes it nice and thick, and then you also get the perks of protein and probiotics!

I topped the pudding with a little shaved chocolate one morning, and then the next morning, I topped it with berries. Both were delicious! I think cacao nibs would be a great choice here as well.

Earl Grey Hot Chocolate Chia Pudding

Ingredients (makes 4 servings)

• 1 cup milk of choice

• 3 Earl Grey tea bags

• 1/4 cup cocoa powder

• 1 cup Greek yogurt

• 1/2 cup chia seeds

• 1/4 cup maple syrup

• 1/2 tsp vanilla

1. In a small saucepan, bring your milk to a low boil. Remove from heat, and add the tea bags. Let steep for 5 minutes, and then press down on the tea bags to release more of the tea flavor. Remove the tea bags, and discard.

2. Add cocoa powder to a medium bowl, sifting the cocoa powder to get rid of any large chunks. Add the infused milk and Greek yogurt, and mix together until smooth. Add in the chia seeds, maple syrup, and vanilla, and mix together until everything is evenly incorporated.

3. Transfer to the fridge, and after 20 minutes, give it a good stir to prevent clumping. Don’t skip this step! Let sit in the fridge overnight, or for at least 4-6 hours.

IN CASE YOU MISSED IT!

Last week, paid subscribers received a recipe for a Harissa Tomato Chickpea Bowl as part of my 30-minute budget meal series! Tomatoes and chickpeas get roasted with harissa and served over quinoa with a garlicky yogurt sauce and lemony onions!

Just a reminder that anytime you become a paid subscriber, you get access to ALL of the past recipes in the archive. You can always do a free 7-day trial as well!