immunity boost oranges
you may or may not know that i am the world's biggest germaphobe (think howie mendel) i have been known to keep simms out of school the weeks leading up to any big event..thanksgiving, christmas, vacations, my brother's birthday, you name it. before i put the kids in childcare at barre, i find out how many kids are coming.. honestly, its probably really out of hand. before i had the twins, i never feared germs. besides the stomach bug, i just didn't really care. i'm not a huge baby and being sick doesn't destroy me or anything.
then i had my preemie twins during flu and rsv season. the nurses really stressed the importance of being illness free when visiting, not to mention all the scrubbing in to even get back to them. i remember one week only having a runny nose but i didn't go see the the whole week. i saw the micro preemies in there with different illness and to see a 1 lb baby fighting for it's life changes you. rsv in an adult, could be as simple as a runny nose...and rsv can kill a preemie. simms got breastmilk until he was 2 and the twins are almost 2.5 and still getting it (although my stash is insanely low and i'm having anxiety.) i try and do everything in my power to keep the kids well. then last year the entire family got the stomach bug twice in two months. during one of the nights of puking, simms ruined our really expensive organic mattress. so add up all the work lost for being sick and having to buy a new mattress and we are literally thousands of dollars in the hole...as if the whole family having the stomach bug wasn't bad enough!!!
then after my brother got diagnosed with brain cancer, it cranked my crazy germ radar up another notch. always wanting to make sure he didn't get sick. when you've been given 17 months to live, i don't want a single day of that person's life to be dealing with ANYTHING else illness related that could have been prevented. well this past christmas, elizabeth and jack (my sister in law and nephew) got the stomach bug a couple days before so we couldn't spend christmas together. do you KNOW how bad that sucks? i think what if that was my last christmas with him?! and because some asshole just couldn't stand being cooped up all day, went out and got my sister in law and nephew sick, now i don't get to see them on christmas. thats where my brain goes.
i am guilty of being one of those people who went out before i was well years ago. i hadn't ever seen past my little world and thought things through. i never thought "i might be giving someone already on chemo my cold." that NEVER crossed my mind in my tiny world.
so you can count on me to find ways to try keep everyone healthy. its one of the main reasons i started using young living essential oils. one of the first oils i bought was called thieves. i got it to use in a diffuser and to make a diluted roller to roll on the bottoms of our families feet to keep us well. its named after some french thieves that were breaking into the homes of people killed by the black plague and robbing their money and jewels. somehow the thieves weren't getting the highly contagious plague. in exchange for a lighter sentence, the king wanted to know how they were staying well. the thieves came from a line of spice traders that knew what oils to rub on themselves in order to stay well...which of course is the ingredients in thieves oil today: clove, lemon, cinnamon, eucalyptus radiata, and rosemary.
right after the babies came home from the hospital, thieves was put to the test on accident in out house. so vance had thrush in his mouth and everyday we had to take a qtip and rub his nystatin inside his mouth. simms was a year old at the time and he watched us do it everyday. well also at this time i had a horrible staph infection on my leg. i had been taking my thieves, diluting it with a carrier oil, and using a qtip to put it on my infection. well one day i found simms with one of the qtips i had used ON MYSELF, swabbing the inside of vance's mouth!!!!! he put staph and thieves directly in my tiny preemie baby's mouth. i had a TOTAL freakout. we called the doctor who told us what to look for and vance NEVER GOT IT. he cried for a solid ten minutes because thieves is a "hot" oil (it burns if you put it on your skin, like in a weird spicy way) but he never got staph.
after that incident i went searching the internet for how well thieves prevents staph and found this experiment
so i was sold. i now use the hand sanitizer, toothpaste, mouthwash, household cleaner, mints, and cough drops. this month i actually ordered the laundry detergent too. i am totally addicted. haha!
so last week knox county schools were out a couple of days for illness and my brain started cranking for how else i could give the kids an immunity boost. i had to find a way to cook with thieves oil. i threw together a quick recipe of chocolate covered oranges (with thieves!) and the kids are destroying them. yay for healthy snacks! i used milk chocolate because the last thing these three boys need is caffeine, but you could definitely swap the milk chocolate for dark chocolate for an even healthier snack.
also disclaimer: i know these are clementines and not oranges. my kids call them oranges and they're easier to peel, easier for the kids to eat, and i had all the ingredients at home... so we went for it! but you could use actual oranges too!!
IMMUNITY BOOST ORANGES
ingredients:
1 bag (11.5 oz) of chocolate chips
4 peeled clementines
3 drops of young living thieves essential oil
chia seeds (optional)
1. peel the clementines. pour yourself a drink because for some reason this takes forever and all my kids did was scream for them the entire time i peeled them.
2. melt the chocolate chips in a double boiler on medium heat.
3. once the chocolate is melted and smooth, add 3 drops of young living thieves oil.
4. dip half the orange and set it on parchment paper to dry.
5. sprinkle chia seeds on and tell your kids they're sprinkles..gray sprinkles... (optional step)
6. store in the fridge and enjoy!
