Hello, and welcome to EAT IT, the nutrition department of POSSESSED. My name is Jason, and I have a story I'd like to share. Recently, I went to my local running shop and asked the guy if he had Maurten gels. He frowned. 'What do you want those for?' I told him I wanted them for energy on long runs. He frowned even more. 'We've got them, but why don't you just buy the cheapest ones? They're all the same.'
This isn't a scenario I've fabricated for the sake of this introduction. I was really told by a guy who owns a running shop—the actual proprietor—not to purchase his pricey Maurten gels because 'they're all the same.' Now, I don't know if he was trying to use reverse psychology on me or what, but I'm here to tell you he's wrong (and an idiot). Not all energy gels are created equal. They range from the cheap to the not-so-cheap, and their potency generally correlates with their price. But then there are some energy gels that are excellent quality and completely free! Which ones? Duh—the ones you make yourself. For this issue, we've created a recipe for DIY energy gels, and we've called them... Gosh, I don't know...
HELL'S BELLS GELS® by POSSESSED.
What You’ll Need
• 1 cup of honey for that energy
• 1/2 cup of pure maple syrup for some more of that energy
• 1 cup of chia seeds for omega-3 fatty acids, fiber, protein, and viscosity
• 1 cup of water for wetness
• 1/2 teaspoon of salt for aiding electrolyte replacement
• ¼ cup electrolyte powder for those electrolytes
• Licorice flavoring (you don’t have to add licorice flavoring, but you won’t be making true Hell’s Bells Gels® if you don’t)
• Some caffeine powder (outlawed by the Surgeon General, but we know a guy)
• 8 tablespoons of Tabasco.
Instructions
1. Open your cupboard with your left hand and take down a small bowl with your right. Mix the chia seeds with the water. Stir. Stop stirring. Check for clots and stir again. Stir like the wind that blows from Mt Fuji in Spring. Stir until you’ve got a smooth mix. Let the chia mix sit until it becomes thick and gel-like. This should take about 20 minutes. If you don’t have a clock, listen to this four and one-half times.
2. Get another bowl and mix the honey and maple syrup together.
3. Now pour the honey/maple syrup into the chia mix and stir well to combine.
4. Stir the salt, electrolyte powder, illegal caffeine powder (we’ll let you decide how much of that you need), and licorice flavoring into the gunk. Taste the gunk. Add whatever you need to the gunk to make the gunk taste good.
5. Next, carefully pour the 8 tablespoons of Tabasco back into the Tabasco bottle and return to the pantry.
6. Test the gel's consistency. If it's too thick, you can add a bit of water to thin it out. If it's too thin, add more chia seeds and let that shit thicken like a well-fed chicken.
7. This bit is the tricky bit: Transferring the mixture into gel packets. Where do you even get empty gel packets? Small Ziplocs, maybe? What about water balloons or condoms? You could use condoms in a pinch. Load some Jimmy Hats with Hell’s Bells Gel® mix and pop them in the fridge until you’re ready to use them. Hell’s Bells Gels® last about a week in the fridge.
So, there you have it, DIY Hell’s Bells Gels®. Feel free to mess around with the ratios to get the exact right flavor and viscosity level you like best, and be sure to drink lots of water when you’re consuming them. Also, feel free to never make these. They probably taste like hell.
