Enjoy this guest post from www.pinksthinks.com! I love these jello bites as this would be a super fun way to sneak probiotics into your children’s’ diet (cut the jello into shapes with cookie cutters)! These would also be great to serve at a party or get together. And they are way cheaper than buying store bought probiotics or kombucha.
Many of you are well aware of the health benefits of kombucha – the outstanding source of probiotics, the detoxifying properties for your liver, how it kicks up your immune system, (and even stops heartburn and belly aches) and the rest. Some go as far as to nickname kombucha “the elixir of immortality”. (Now, I doubt you could get that slogan approved by the FDA, but it is – at any rate – something to think about.)
And, likewise, if you have popped over to the health food store to pick up a bottle, you also know that it is going to put you out about $4.00 for just 16 ounces, which makes it a pricey habit to keep up on a regular basis (even though I think you could make a really great excuse to yourself or your significant other for spending such – “Honey, it’s the elixir of IMMORTALITY! I need it!”).
What if you could cut the price down to nearly nothing, and have it everyday?
What if you upped the health benefits even higher and combined the precious kombucha with some other powerhouses to amaze your soul, mind, and body?
Like what? Oh, just chia seeds and tart cherry juice, the glorious wonderkins of the superfood health world.
Now we’re talking.
I mean, do you even know the wonders of these two?
First of all, chia seeds
The omega-3’s in the chia seeds are all that you’ve heard about (and more) for heart health. Research suggests that omega-3’s reduce the risk of arryhtmias, thrombosis, lower LDL (as well as total) cholesterol, reduce triglycerides, decreases atherosclerotic plaque, and improves endothelial function (endolethial function is responsible for everything from healing damaged or diseased organs, to blood flow, to hormone communication throughout your body, to inflammation, and more). Sound kind of important? Yeah, I thought so too.
How else can we make this even more astounding? Toss in some tart cherry
Now let’s take all of these, add in some real gelatin (I prefer Great Lakes gelatin which you can find here
What does this look like? A big pile of awesome.
Or tart cherry chia kombucha jello. Whatever. It’s kind of a mouthful (again with the puns!), but if you come up with a great name, you just let me know.
Let’s talk saving money (while saving your life). If you know how to make your own kombucha (I can show you how here if you don’t), you are saving a crazy amount. Instead of $4.00 for 16 ounces, you can make a gallon for the price of 3 tea bags (you’d do organic, right? I know. I thought so.) and half of a cup of cane sugar (organic, obvs). Prince of Peace organic black tea is $7.99 for 100 tea bags, so that’s approximately $0.08 per bag – times 3 – gets you up to the whopping $0.24. You can get a 10 pound bag of organic cane sugar at Costco for $7.79 (that is about 24 cups), making your half cup of sugar cost you about $0.16. Okay, so, for $0.40 you can make a gallon of kombucha. (A gallon has 128 ounces, so that’s like you going to get eight 16 ounce bottles. 8 x $4 = $32) So you can go to the store and buy a gallon of kombucha for about $32 or make it at home for $0.40. Um, yeah. I’ll save $31.60 thankyouverymuch.
And now, without further ado, the recipe for awesomesauce (or tart cherry chia kombucha jello).
Prep time: 20 minutes (most of it waiting for chia seeds to mesh with kombucha)
Done time: 4 hours? How cold is your fridge?
Ingredients
- 3 cups of kombucha
- 1.5 cups of tart cherry juice (organic is way better)
- 2-3 tablespoons of real gelatin (Great Lakes is my fave)
- 1 tablespoon of chia seeds
Instructions
- Stir your chia seeds into your kombucha. Let it sit there and relax for ten minutes or more. They are going to blow up like goo. Let them do this. It's good for their souls.
- Add 1 tablespoon of gelatin to your kombucha-chia plasma and stir wildly.
- Meanwhile (Don't you love when recipes say "meanwhile" and you're like, wait, what? I am supposed to multi-task here? HEY!), warm up the tart cherry juice in a pot on the stove (you can stop stirring the chia plasma now). Add your other one or two tablespoons of gelatin to this. You don't need to get this baby boiling or anything. Mostly hot is good enough. You'll know. It's not rocket science.
- When you deem it hot enough, pour the tart cherry juice into the kombucha-chia-gelatin mix and stir flamboyantly. It's going to need some flair.
- Pour into your favorite molds or into a glass pan (8x8 is fine, or you can make thin ones with a larger pan) and stick that baby in the fridge.
- Wait patiently for several hours until it doesn't slodge around.
- Eat with joy while exclaiming, "I am SO HEALTHY RIGHT NOW! Do you even know what I am EATING?!"
- Cover any leftovers and keep in the fridge. It should be good until mold or something grows on it. But seriously, please just eat it before that happens. Sneak it to your kids, your spouse, your friends, your parents. Or don't. I mean, if you're opposed to that kind of thing. Whatever. Save it all for yourself and be around for fifty years past all of your loved ones if that's what you're into, I'm not going to tell you what to do. Well, I might. Either way, enjoy your awesomesauce.
Peace, love, and real jello = really awesome,
Ms. Daisy
Ms. Daisy is passionate about health coaching, gardening, creating potions and elixirs, triathlons, pink glitter, foreign languages, English monarchs, chickens, laughing, swimming, dancing in the car, winning, telling people what to do, kombucha, and traditional foods. When she’s not out talking to her 14 chickens or figuring out how to save the world, she can be found at www.pinksthinks.com. Or peek in on her wild world on pinterest as glam organic.
