Happy Tummy Juice!

GIVEAWAY

Starter grain to  make your own probiotic juice at home.

Illness is a constant companion when you're the parent of little kids. Ear infections, another virus, runny noses, poor sleep, allergies, food insensitivities - you've had them all right? Me too! And although my Dr is sympathetic, she's really trained on how to treat these illnesses rather than prevent them. A couple of years ago I thought to myself - "This can't be right. I'm not a helpless person in this equation - I must be able to do something to help my kids". So I educated myself, found a brilliant naturopath, reduced dairy and wheat from the kids diet, and learnt how to make Happy Tummy Juice!

Happy Tummy Juice is my name for Water Kefir. This is a drink with health promoting bacteria (probiotics) that stimulates your immune system ( It is 300x more powerful than Yakult and has no dairy - awesome stuff!). It helps to prevent allergies and all sorts of nasty viruses and infections. If your child has already had a lot of antibiotics in their short life then I would get them onto this ASAP - antibiotics kill some of the good bacteria in your tummy too, so you need to replace them with a drink like Water Kefir.60% of your immune system is in your gut so if you want to be healthy, you have to look after your gut (Just to prove that it is possible for kids to live without antibiotics - my youngest son is a sufferer of ear infections and bronchiolitis and has only required 1 dose of antibiotics in his 3 years of life!)

So what' the best thing about this juice? You can make it yourself at home! (Have you seen how expensive probiotics are?!) I'll show you how:

1) Boil up a jug of water then let it cool ( the chlorine in water kills the kefir grain so you need to boil off the chlorine unless you have a water filter)

2) Add 1 cup of raw organic sugar to 1 cup of water in a saucepan and boil until sugar is dissolved. Let it cool.

3) Add 1 cup of water kefir grains to a large open mouthed jar/ bottle then add the cooled sugar water

4) Cut up 1 lemon into wedges and add to the jar

5) Put 1 cup of dates into a small muslin bag and tie it up tight and put in the jar (I just use an old baby wrap and cut it up for the muslin bag )

6) Add 1 tsp of baking soda

7) Top up the jar with your cooled water

8) Leave for 48 hours on the bench top. Then throw away the dates and lemon, strain off the juice into a jar with a lid and store in the fridge.

This is such a cool drink to brew - it will bubble away on the bench and it is fizzy so the kids think they're getting a special fizzy drink. My kids drink this all day. The clever little kefir grains eat up the sugar so you don't need to worry about that going into your kids system.

The hardest part is getting your hands on the kefir grains. Anyone who has them will gift them to other people (because they grow over time) - if you happen to receive them from somebody then be very thankful as they are a beautiful growing gift.

I'm giving away one batch of these today, so if you want to be in to win just leave a comment below. The winner will be announced tomorrow. Happy tummy healing!