I’ve been working on a post about our trip to Puerto Rico and as I was sorting through all my photos, I couldn’t help drooling over the shots of our breakfasts we had at our little B&B, The Dreamcatcher.

I’ll go into more deets as to why I adore this very zen bed + breakfast in my bigger post, but the breakfasts truly blew us away. AND, surprise – it’s a vegetarian hotel! While the hubs and I do of course enjoy a big side of bacon, we were excited to see what kind of dishes they’d serve up.

Every morning we got to choose from a variety of options, and one day I thought I’d shake things up and order the chia pudding with granola and papaya. I’ve thrown chia seeds in my overnight oats, but had never eaten a straight up chia pudding bowl before. Honestly I have this aversion to eating (or posting) things I think are too trendy. Isn’t that weird? Seems like as a blogger I should do the opposite, but I dunno, I like to be on the fringe of things I guess. So because of that I’ve avoided the whole smoothie-bowl or chia-bowl thang…

…until this yummy moment, that is:

It was so simple, and so delicious – all while being pretty healthy to boot! And where has papaya been all my life? What the heck!? So good.

Since I craved this bowl as soon as I got home, I thought I’d see if I could whip it up in my own kitchen. Turns out – I could! It was really close to the real thing, so I was pretty dang proud of myself y’all. I hope you give this a try, especially because you can personalize it to any taste, adding fruit, or yogurt, or maple syrup, etc. Now I get why these breakfast-y bowl things are so popular. 😀 I’m on board!

Ingredients for Granola
1/2 cup coconut or olive oil
1/2 cup honey
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp salt
3 cups old-fashioned rolled oats
1 cup sliced pecans
1/4 cup sunflower or pumpkin seeds

Ingredients for Chia Pudding Bowl
1/2 cup chia seeds
2 cups almond or coconut milk
1 tsp vanilla
1 tbs honey
pinch of cinnamon
fresh papaya chunks
coconut (optional)

To make the granola, heat the oven to 300 degrees and line a baking sheet with parchment paper. Mix together the oil, honey, cinnamon and salt, then add the oats, pecans and seeds, stirring well until all pieces are well-coated. Spread the oats onto the baking sheet and spread into an even layer. Bake for 10 minutes, then stir the granola, then bake for another 10 minutes until the granola is golden. Store in an air-tight container and you’ll be set for the week!

To make the chia pudding, simply combine the chia seeds with the milk and vanilla and store in the fridge overnight – it needs at least 6 hours for the seeds to soften.

Top the pudding with the fresh papaya, granola, honey and cinnamon. YUM-O. You can also top with coconut, which I intended to do but totally forgot. 😮 Enjoy!