You can’t imagine how much I was looking forward to having our son home for Thanksgiving — along with all of his friends. To me, it seemed like a page out of the movie, It’s a Wonderful Life, just before George is supposed to go off to college, before he realizes he’s never going.
But somewhere, somehow, he got sick. We aren’t sure if it was a friend with a virus, or the cranberry sauce. Â It may have been the sauce, because the rest of our family, the non-cranberry eaters, was pretty much safe.
But it was just the two of us, with pains in our stomachs that kept us from getting the rest we needed.  We took Oscillococcinum, but in my brain fog, I completely forgot about cinnamon and oregano oil.  (Sometimes, I do need a mom myself.)
But with all the churning inside of our stomachs, I did manage to remember the warm gelatin my mom gave me. Suddenly, I began to realize why she gave me warm gelatin — because it settles your stomach! When you can’t keep water down, there’s nothing about the stiffness of gelatin to hold things together. Â If you haven’t tried it — try it the next time and see what you think.
Here’s a very quick, low-sugar version that was pretty good, adapted from the package:
- One envelop of unflavored gelatin
- 1/2 cup of fruit juice, or ginger ale. (I used lemon/ginger soda, of course, because I had some ready to go.) Make it as sweet as you need — but not going overboard. Of course, depends upon your audience.
- 1 cup of boiling water. (Alternatively, you could add 1 cup of peppermint hot tea, as peppermint is also good for settling the stomach.)
- 1 teaspoon of ground ginger, to help settle the stomach.
- Add gelatin to boiling water, and stir to dissolve. Add remaining ingredients and sip.
This worked like magic… bring comfort and stability. But honestly, I think the cinnamon oil would have been great.
If anything, warm gelatin gives you something to do, to give, to someone who’s suffering, that just needs to “get through it.”