Sick food

Sometimes, even if you are eating safe food, stomachs get upset.  And that can be a challenge.  It's tough if you're caregiver to a food allergic child, it's even tougher when you're the one with allergies, and you're the one with an upset stomach.  (My husband is all for cooking...but he's heavy handed on the spices and can't quite figure out the difference between "tastes good" and "gentle on the digestion") 
The BRAT diet is easy to follow.  Bananas (Green University from WF if you have a corn allergy), Rice (Lundbergh or unenriched from Thailand if you have a corn allergy), Applesauce (All natural, no citric or ascorbic acid...with a corn allergy, I use Trader Joe's), and Toast.  Since I'm gluten free, I follow a "BRA" diet. 

But sometimes, you want something even lighter.  Recently, my doctor suggested I go on a liquid diet for a few days.  Liquid. 
I'm sire she was thinking Ensure, and protein drinks, and soup and milkshakes or smoothies. 
I looked in my cupboard and sighed. 
What did I come up with?  Well, it wasn't totally liquid.  We made a huge batch of broth.  I mashed some of the carrots.  I know, I know, there's no nutrition left in them.  But I was hungry.  And they filled me up and set gently.  I had warmed applejuice with cinnamon, fork mashed sweet potatoes and parsnips with broth, and when I was starving...a scramblled egg (It's soft, not fibrous, which seemed to be what the dr wanted to avoid).  I also made gelatin. 
In fact, the first thing I thought of was gelatin.  Good old J-E-L-L-O, as the commercial used to sing.  Of course, the brand name and store bramd flavored gunk is full of corn derivatives and artificial gunk that I really don't want in my, or my kids, bodies.  So, I used Knox. 
Honestly, I don't care much for the thick Knox Block recipe that's on the back of the box.  I wanted something that wiggles and jiggles and tasted...Jello-like. 
Here's what I came up with:
2 cups applejuice, warmed on the stove. 
While it warmed, I dumped a cup of cold water into a small casserole/baking dish and sprinkled 1 packet of Knox gelatin into it. 
When the apple juice was done simmering, I whisked it into the water/gelatin mixture. 
Then I chilled everything. 
And enjoyed it. 
No, I didn't cut it up into cute little squares.  I did it the way my mom used to do it, scooped it out into my bowl.  Oddly, it tasted better with just a sprinkle of salt (I think my electrolytes were off balanced, since I was also chugging plain water to eradicate a kidney infection)  My husband's opinion?  It tastes like sick food. 
Which is exactly what you crave when you're sick. 
And my version included no additional sweeteners, no artificial colors or flavors, or anything else undesirable.