REQUEST - Jello Flavors

Hi all! My mom is recovering from a surgery and is currently on a clear liquid diet -- this includes flavored waters, fruit juice without pulp, sodas (including dark sodas), Gatorade and sports drinks, popsicles/gelato/sorbet without dairy, coffee/tea without milk, clear broths, and, of course, jello! Notably, she cannot have anything with red food coloring/dye in it, and she's avoiding citrus for right now because it's still too hard on her stomach.

In terms of food, that basically just leaves broth and jello... And if it were me, I'm sure I would get tired of drinking plain broths in a real hurry! So I'm trying to come up with some creative jello solutions, because at least jello is shaped like actual food.

So now I'm trying to come up with some ways to flavor plain gelatin! To me at least, the red flavored prepackaged jellos (cherry/strawberry/watermelon) are the best flavors, so I'd like to figure out how to replicate those flavors without the red dye. Some ideas I've had of things to use to flavor the jello:

• Clear Gatorade/Powerade flavors (although it might end up looking odd, and not sure if the flavors would be strong enough)
• Mio/water flavoring drops (again, not sure if the flavor would be strong enough)
• Juice boxes? (I think they're all the same clear-ish color regardless of flavor)

But other than that I'm kind of stumped! I figured there was some kind of product similar to food coloring but for flavors (colorless, but adds taste), but haven't really been able to find anything other than the essential oils people use to flavor hard candies -- not sure that would work in this context.

Some family and friends have suggested other various things, which I worry would either be gross as a flavor of jello (carrot juice, apple juice, white grape juice, tea, broth!?!?) or just don't work for our constraints (citrus juices).

Also worth noting that she is still getting most of her nutrition by IV -- the clear liquid diet is mainly to help her body transition back to digesting food. So while it would be great to get her some nutritious stuff in the jello, priority #1 is just to make it appealing/edible for her!

Thanks so much in advance for any suggestions/help :) it's MUCH appreciated!

submitted by /u/chilawgal
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