I’m a label reader. I read the ingredients of any food that comes in a box, a bottle or packaging in general. It has rubbed off on my child, which I’m happy about. Even though he can’t read the labels yet, he pretends and we talk about all the ingredients.
As an impressionable child, he’s drawn to food that is colored, sprinkled, or frosted with even more color. Who wouldn’t be at his age?
While he basically knows what food is and that most colored food likely has some chemicals added (red 40, corn syrup, blue 1, etc) How does food get blue again??? Oh, chemicals. Chemicals that our body doesn’t even identify as food.
In classic five-year-old style, Miles has decided that out of all the six tastes, he really likes the sweet one. Surprise! Surprise! (Kapha phase of life for sure – more on that later). And combined with his love for creating in the kitchen, we discovered we can make our own gummies!! Hooray!
So, we started with elderberry gummies, because why not make them medicinal? We had made elderberry syrup earlier in the Spring and it made sense to include it. My first attempt was with a vegan approach and it was a disappointing flop, so we went straight to the grass fed gelatin and it worked like a charm.
At first, gelatin sounded gross to me, reminding me of a weird green Jell-O salad that would sometimes show up at family reunions and picnics when I was a kid. But after some research, I found high-quality grass-fed gelatin options. Here’s the one I used.
I love experimenting in the kitchen and weaving Miles into the process.
What’s your favorite kid-friendly project?
I’d love to hear,
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Rachel Peters is a yoga teacher, yoga health coach, lifestyle and habits expert, easeful living advocate, and lover of wild places. She leads others towards Embodying Ease through a yearlong wellness & lifestyle journey to dissolve perfectionism, embody daily habits that promote mental clarity, overall ease, and deeper connection to life on this wild ride of modern living. Learn MORE today!