Electrolyte Gelatin Gummies

For when the tummy bug hits

This past week our family was hit hard by a nasty stomach bug, which has been followed by a heavy head cold. I shouldn’t complain, really, our family is so rarely sick, though it felt like this virus was surely making up for lost time! It hit some members harder than others, but its left all of us feeling run down, washed out and very dehydrated.

Over the years I’ve developed our family’s personal protocol for dealing with a stomach bug, both during the event and recovering afterwards. When spewing is in full swing, we sip at water and try and keep down some activated charcoal for as long as possible. The charcoal helps bind whatever bug is causing the nausea and carry it out, one way or the other. Adults can swallow capsules, but for the children I break one capsule open and mix it with a teaspoon of baby puree. I keep pouches of Rafferty’s Garden on hand for this reason. In conjunction to the charcoal, a bath of Epsom salts or magnesium flakes is great at this point. Our bout of illness was a bit too severe for us to manage baths for everyone, so we’re doing this in the recovery phase this time round.

As soon as everyone’s stomachs start to settle, and are able to hold fluids down again, I start serving up homemade electrolyte drinks.

I think most people know the importance of re-hydrating after a bout of the stomach bugs. All that spewing and sweating not only leaves you dry, but it also depletes your body of a lot of minerals. You can easily purchase premixed electrolyte drinks, or tablets, from the grocery store, but they’re nearly always laden with extra junk that I just don’t want going in to my stomach in general, let alone when my stomach is so sensitive. The vitamins and minerals that they supply you with are also mostly synthetic forms and so not as easy for your body to absorb and process, and some can actually build up in your system over time and cause negative effects for some people. It’s certainly not something I’m comfortable giving to my children when I can easily make my own at home.

There are recipes galore on the internet for mixing up your own electrolyte drink from natural ingredients, and they’re all more or less the same; coconut water for potassium, fruit juice for sugars and vitamin C, some salt for sodium and you’re good. For the sake of convenience, I will normally buy a bottle of juice from the grocery store – I like juices from the brands Nudie Juice and H2juice as they’re juices are about as close to freshly squeezed as you can get. No concentrates or added sugar or other rubbish. As it so happened, I was fresh out of juice, but I did have a bunch of oranges, so we went with freshly squeezed.   

This time, rather than just serving out cups of drink, I turned my electrolyte mix in to gelatin gummies. The novelty of a bowl full of gummies does wonders to lift miserable spirits, and the gelatin helps to soothe a sore stomach, as well as provides some extra nutrition when you just don’t feel like eating much at all.

Electrolyte Gelatin Gummies

• 2 cups coconut water

• 2 cups orange juice

• ½ cup grass fed gelatin powder

• 1 teaspoon of Celtic sea salt

Pour all the ingredients into a saucepan and sprinkle the gelatin on top. Allow everything to sit for a minute while the gelatin soaks up the liquid. Turn on the heat and stir your mixture until just warm. You’ll be able to see that the texture of your juice no longer looks grainy, but smooth. As soon as that happens, remove it from the heat and pour it into a large baking tray (or into fun-shaped, silicone chocolate molds for extra moral boost). Let it chill in the fridge for about 2 hours, or until set. Slice up your tray of electrolyte gummies and store them in an airtight container. They’ll keep in the fridge for a good week, but I promise they won’t last that long!

Note: these gelatin gummies should be consumed along side water, not instead of, when recovering from a stomach bug. 

Let me know if you give these a go. They’re a big hit in our home!

Peace be with you.