Bare Fruit {Winner}

Thank you to all those who participated and congratulations to winner, Wendi and Matt (comment #5), who has won a case of 12-2.6 ounce packages of Bare Fruit Cinnamon Apple Chips ($28.73 value)!  Please email me to claim your prize by Tuesday, June 19. 

Bare Fruit Cinnamon Apple Chips {Giveaway}

I do a lot of dehydrating, especially in the past year since I received my Excalibur. Dehydrated snacks like fruit leather, peanut butter crunch and cheesy kale chips are staples.  I have also had fun preserving vegetables from my garden and taking advantage of sales on high quality fruit (pineapple). Buying dehydrated fruit usually involves added sugar and preservatives, which I have avoided completely for nearly a year now.  Another downside is that it is hard to find organic dried fruit, which I believe is important when concentrating foods because chemicals are also concentrated.

Bare Fruit is one company that set the bar higher than the rest. Their products contain only one ingredient; organic fruit, except for the Cinnamon Apple Chips, which contain two and I bet you can guess what they are. They sent me a sample of their Cinnamon Apple Chips and boy howdy, they were delicious! The crunch is amazing, seriously as addicting as potato chips! The apples are bake-dried, so they will not have the enzymes of low-temperature, home-dehydrated apples. The texture that this "baking" gives the apples transforms them into a completely new category of snack food. I couldn't taste the cinnamon at all, but it didn't matter because the apples had excellent flavor

I am planning to buy more for our upcoming family reunion.  My kids with think they are cool eating packaged food.  There are not many convenience foods we enjoy anymore because of our strict adherence to the GAPS protocol. I am grateful to companies like Bare Fruit who raise the bar for everybody. Keep in mind for both cost and serving size that dehydrated fruit is super concentrated. One 2.6 ounce bag contains more than five apples, so you may not want to eat the whole bag!

To enter for your chance to win a case of 12-2.6 ounce packages of Bare Fruit Cinnamon Apple Chips  ($28.73 value), simply "like" both Bare Fruit and Taste is Trump on Facebook, come back here to Taste is Trump and leave one comment telling me that you did both. Contest closes at 11:59 p.m. mountain time on Friday, June 15, 2012 and the winner will be announced on Saturday, June 16, 2012. The winner will have three days to claim their prize, so be sure to check back.

Palm Shortening {Winner}

Thank you to all those who participated and congratulations to winner, Nicole (comment #26), who has won   1 gallon organic palm shortening  ($40.75 value) from Tropical Traditions !  Please email me to claim your prize by Tuesday, June 12. 


For everybody else, purchase your palm shortening by tomorrow, Sunday, June 10 to get the sale price of $23.59 and the double bonus of free shipping on your entire order by entering promo code 11126 at check out!

BBQ Beef

Or pork, or venison, or lamb, or chicken…

 I usually start with a roast and cook it in the crock pot until it falls apart, and then I have all the great meat stock to use, bonus! I still simmer it a good deal more with the vegetables, sauce and spices so that everything melts together and becomes one pile of lip-smackin’ goodness.  Mmm, mmm, it’s BBQ season. I think this salad recipe could be the perfect accompaniment.

I still haven’t found a very good grain free bun substitute; the pancakes work fine, but can get soggy quickly and don’t have the nice chew to them that I really want.  Last time I actually served these up with some acorn squash and lacto-fermented pickles and it was a winner.  Squash isn’t really a summer time food though, so it felt weird.  But seriously, you can’t go wrong with this blend of flavors.

2 tablespoons butter

1 large onion, thinly sliced

1 teaspoon salt

2 pounds tender meat, shredded

2 cups tomato sauce

1 tablespoon ground cumin

2-4 tablespoons honey

4 cloves garlic, minced

2 tablespoons apple cider vinegar

Heat butter in large sauce pan, cook onions and salt until completely translucent. Add meat, sauce, honey and cumin.  Simmer 30 minutes adding meat stock to the pan as needed to keep from scorching. Once onions have melted into the meat, add garlic and vinegar, cook for five minutes and remove from heat.  Serve hot or cold.

Palm Shortening {Giveaway}

One of my favorite parts and the popular book "The Help" by Kathryn Stockett is when Minnie is teaching Miss Celia how to cook and sings the praises of Crisco. I've gotta admit to using it and loving it. Making twinkies with my grandma as a child always brought out the glorious blue can of snow-white, solid vegetable oil. Since then, we have all learned the dangers of transfats and have learned to do without once again, the laboratory made cooking fat.

There are oils that are highly saturated in nature with very little processing. Lard, tallow and palm oil. Good quality lard and tallow are hard to find, many will have hydrogenated fats added to them and most of them will be from poorly raised animals in feed lots eating corn and soy.  You will spend a pretty penny sourcing out pastured lard and tallow products. Palm oil is bright orange in color and has a very strong flavor. It is an incredibly healthy tropical oil.  The flavor takes some getting used to and every dish will have bright tumeric-colored look. It withstands high heat and is mostly solid at room temperature.

Tropical Traditions makes Palm shortening by removing some of the unsaturated fats in palm oil, leaving it colorless and tasteless, similar to Crisco with no hydrogenated fats. It an excellent substitute in grandma's recipes. It is also great in baking, frying and because it is ultra stable it is perfect for food storage. Palm shortening gives homemade flour tortillas an incredibly light texture.

To enter for your chance to win 1 gallon organic palm shortening  ($40.75 value) from Tropical Traditions, simply follow the link to subscribe to the Coconut Oil Newsletter, come back here to Taste is Trump and leave a comment telling me that you did. Contest closes at 11:59 p.m. mountain time on Friday, June 8, 2012 and the winner will be announced on Saturday, June 9, 2012. The winner will have three days to claim their prize, so be sure to check back. 

Tropical Traditions provided me with a free sample of this product to review, and I was under no obligation to review it if I so chose. Nor was I under any obligation to write a positive review or sponsor a product giveaway in return for the free product. If you order by clicking on any of my links and have never ordered fromTropical Traditions in the past, you will receive a free book on Virgin Coconut Oil, and I will receive a discount coupon for referring you. Click here to learn about Tropical Tradition's Virgin Coconut Oil.