Locally born & bred Rachel Down is owner & director of Boil and Broth, a business she created in 2017. In 2014 after the birth of her son, she gained weight and became ill. The NHS just didn’t have the right tools to correct Rachel’s health problems, so she decided that it was time for her to take control of the situation. Rachel used her training as a health & fitness instructor to learn all about gut health and developed her own diet from homemade ‘new’ foods.
Her new diet was such a success that she lost 25kgs in just nine months and her health problems disappeared! Family & friends of course noticed this transformation and all wanted to try Rachel’s unique homemade foods. As requests increased she decided to create her mail order business, which has blossomed and she now sells to customers all over the country.
You can buy her book “Be Candida Free” from Amazon. Rachel has put together her research along with her exact plan, to include foods you should eat, supplements, and meal suggestions. With many of Rachel’s health clients following the same program and seeing great success, you too could be rid of Candida in 12-weeks. http://amzn.eu/d/hdAvMfT
Rachel is looking to work with a university for further microbiology and testing on all of her products, to give more information to her customers about how making better food choices can help improve health; “diet before drugs is often the best medicine”. Rachel says.
Her main products are chicken bone broth and beef marrow bone broth, all bones are locally sourced from quality butchers around Dorset, all are free-from antibiotics and hormones. Each broth takes nearly two days to prepare; first the bones are roasted before being added to slow cookers. Filtered water and homemade apple cider vinegar are added to help extract minerals; this is then slow cooked for 16 hours for the chicken broth and 30 hours for the beef broth.
The beef marrow broth contains collagen. Our bodies over time produce less collagen; production can also be affected by sugary diets, smoking etc. The recommended daily portion is 150-200ml broth a day, this can be drunk hot on its own or added to soups and meals. Rachel has many delicious recipes on her website for you to try.
You can also buy ready prepared soups, such as Beef Madras Curry Soup or Thai Green Curry Beef Broth. The Thai Green Curry is beautifully fragrant, with a nice spicy kick and a great way to take your daily portion of mineral rich broth.
Rachel also sells fermented drinks, Ginger Ale and Kefir Juice. Yes, Kefir Juice is a new one to me as well; it is actually grains harvested from the prickly pear cactus plants and comes mostly from Mexico. A sample of her Kefir Juice has been sent to the lab and they confirm there are over 97,000,000 Lactobacillus bacteria found in only 1ml; packed with beneficial bacteria. It has a very subtle refreshing flavour and can easily be drunk at any time of the day – recommended serving of 200ml a day.
The Ginger Ale is full of brewer’s yeast and in 1ml of ginger ale you can find 180,000 Saccharomyces cerevisiae. It has a good ginger flavour, not too overpowering and not too sweet like some other ginger drinks – recommended serving of 200ml a day.
Kombucha is her new fermented tea coming to the market this year.
You can also have some fun by adding your daily measure to create cocktails; Ginger & Dark Rum or Kefir Juice with Damson Plum Gin…
Rachel is so passionate about her lifestyle that she is eager to get her message of maintaining health and fitness out to people; she will be doing this through videos and live fermentation demos, and has plans to undertake a Higher National Diploma in Health Science, with a view to top up to a degree, in the near future.
For more help and advice on Rachel’s lifestyle head over to her website or email her with your questions info@boilandbroth.com
Blog and photos kindly written and taken by our volunteer John Grindle. Find more of Dorset’s unique produce here.
