One good non-alcoholic drink should not matter as much as it does. It does though, and this is where ours came from. Here's the recipe. The one-pager is attached as a PDF and a picture, so you can print it, save it or send it on. YOU NEED (makes about 3 litres, 3 US quarts) Fresh ginger, about 500 g (1.1 lb), grated. I often use more Hot water, about 3 litres (3 quarts) Sugar, about 300 g (1½ cups), to taste Vanilla sugar, 2 to 3 sachets (in the US: 1 to 2 tsp vanilla extract) Cloves, 10 to 15 Cinnamon, a few sticks Cardamom, a few pods Lemons, 3: some sliced, the rest juiced HOW I MAKE IT Step 1. Grate all the ginger and split it into 2 equal piles. Step 2. Put the first pile in a big pot or jar with the sugar, vanilla sugar, cloves, cinnamon, cardamom, lemon slices and lemon juice. Pour the hot water over it. Step 3. Let it cool down. Then stir in the second pile of ginger. Step 4. Cover it and let it stand for at least 1 day. Step 5. Strain it and keep it in the fridge. The trick is half and half. Hot water cooks the bite out of ginger. The raw half you add once it's cool brings back the heat and the freshness. Keep it cold. On the counter it starts bubbling, which means it's fermenting into alcohol. Exactly what we want to stay away from. Everyone ends up with their own mix. More cloves, more cinnamon, more cardamom. Taste it and change one thing next batch. Over ice or without. A shot in the morning. Too strong or too sweet? Half lemonade, half water in the glass. Straight from the jug a 250 ml (8 fl oz) glass has roughly 25 to 30 g of sugar, about what a regular soda has, so if your blood sugar has been affected, go lighter on the sugar. Tell me what you make yours with. The story behind it: https://pancreaszen.com/journal/the-ginger-lemonade-story-community-spotlight/

There's a new tool on the site and you're the first people I'm asking to break it. It's a fat budget calculator. You pick your phase (20 to 30 g a day in the strict weeks, 40 to 50 g once things settle, or the number your dietitian gave you) and 5 or 6 meals. It gives you the grams of fat per meal, plus the calories and protein that have to come along. Then there's a day planner. You type a food, it searches my own food list first and then 8,422 foods from the USDA database, you set the grams, and each meal gets a bar that fills against its share. At the end you can save the day as a PDF or email it to yourself. Here it is: https://pancreaszen.com/fat-budget-calculator/ What I'd like from you, 10 minutes: 1. Put in yesterday. What you really ate, in grams where you know them. 2. Reply under this post with what's missing. A food you couldn't find. A number that looks wrong. A step where you got stuck. Which phone you used. One thing I already know: on a narrow phone the search results don't show the food names properly. That gets fixed first. If you hit it, turn the phone sideways for now. It's open to everyone until 31 October. From 1 November it asks for a free email registration. The phases are mine, from the book. The calculator does sums, it doesn't know your body. Your number comes from your own medical team. I'm a patient, not a doctor.

Chamomile, honey, lemon. No caffeine, no fat, and it keeps three days, which matters on the days you cannot be bothered to make anything. https://pancreaszen.com/recipes/chamomile-and-honey-iced-tea/

Most alcohol-free drinks are sweet and dull. Fresh ginger fixes that. It is also one of the few strong flavours that stays gentle. https://pancreaszen.com/recipes/virgin-ginger-lime-sparkler-mocktail/

Deep red, served properly, and nobody at the table asks why you are not drinking. That question is exhausting and this is the cheapest way to skip it. https://pancreaszen.com/recipes/hibiscus-pomegranate-party-spritz-mocktail/