"Cocoa Pebbles" Cereal (healthified)

A huge childhood weakness of mine was....Cocoa Pebbles.

My mom was one of those meanies that only allowed us to have puffed wheat, puffed corn and occasionally plain Cheerios for our cereal selection. When Honey Nut Cheerios came out they were of the devil and never allowed.

Every blue moon, she temporarily lost her sanity and for a snack, not breakfast, she would let us pick out a fun cereal flavor. I always chose Cocoa Pebbles, my brother chose Cap'n Crunch. I could probably count on one hand the times that happened though.

Our mom was the one who was always running down the street after us after leaving for school with toast and oj. She was very mindful of our health and I'll always be grateful that I know she really cared. She sent us the nicest lunches-pita bread sandwiches with alfalfa sprouts and all...sadly we traded them out for pizza bagels and all sorts of unhealthy delicacies.

It's amazing though, how we learn over time, how detrimental even the things we thought were healthiest actually can be.

I'm reading "Wheat Belly" right now so I'm cringing over the years and years of damage I suppose I must begin reversing.

Hah! Well anyway, as you know, I'm off sugar completely. Well today, I cheated and had one chocolate covered strawberry. One! Then I was feeling nutritionally devoid so I drank a blueberry odwalla drink for dinner. These items might have cancelled out any success I was going to be seeing this week. Only time will tell.

So, back to my post title.

I try to incorporate coconut oil into my daily partakings and it's getting late and I was wondering how I was going do that without cooking up a meal or making a big ol' smoothie. I really like its taste since I have very little sugar I don't need anything super sweet to satisfy a sweet tooth. I decided to try to make some chocolate sauce with coconut oil, cocoa powder and xyla which is the sugar substitute I've been using and really like.

I placed about 2 tbs of CO in a saucepan on very low. It melts immediately, I added about a tbs of unsweetened cocoa powder and a teaspoon of the xyla.

It looked exactly like Hershey's chocolate syrup. Not quite as sweet but very close.
So then I started wondering what I was going to put this lovely concoction on.

On a whim, I remembered how I had read chia seeds make a nice pudding texture if soaked long enough. (I wasn't sure how long but I was thinking 5 mins or so) So while my sauce cooled, I poured 1/2 cup of unsweetened vanilla almond milk in a bowl and added 1 tbs of chia seeds. I waited a few minutes and stirred. I could tell it wasn't enough chia so I added 2 more tbs. Within minutes, the mixture was thickening up nicely. So I added my "chocolate syrup" and stirred some more.

Suddenly it hit me! It looked exactly like miniature cocoa pebbles cereal!!!!! Here I've been so deprived of any type of cereal whatsoever and I was about to delve into a perfect miniature replica guilt free?!?!?

I was rather apprehensive to taste my whimsical experiment. It was great!!!!! The seeds still had enough crunch to seem cereal-ish, the chocolate sauce was light enough, the sweetener kinda clumped a bit resulting in delightful bursts of chocolatey sweetness and overall I was pleased as pudding to have whipped up such an easy and healthy version of cocoa pebbles cereal!!!!!!!!

Can't wait for breakfast now!!!!!!!!