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.

GAPS Hawaiian Haystacks

I never was much for this hodgepodge of a meal.  Never had it growing up, can you believe we never even had rice, ever? Weird, right? Not only did the flavors and textures not mesh with me, but the chicken sauce was always made with some cream of something in a can and those tinned globs always have grossed me out.  Even when I was ten, I despised my mom’s green bean casserole because of that mystery goop. Since I have discovered the roux, and more recently the GAPS roux (white bean flour and butter), I have been able to enjoy thick gravy sauces in abundance.

A Hawaiian Haystack doesn’t have to be Hawaiian for me, but it does need to have a theme of flavors.  Cheese and coconut with tomatoes and celery? That is too weird for me. A Chinese haystack with peppers, onions, broccoli and cashews, sounds good.  A Thai haystack with carrots, bean sprouts, basil, spring onions and peanuts, yep. Italian stack with hot peppers, tomatoes, oregano, zucchini and pinenuts, mmm.

I get that the point of the meal is to clean out your fridge.  The kids love to pick and choose their favorite toppings and don’t care much about the culinary blend of complimentary flavors.  To each his own. At any rate, it is a great dish for a crowd and by using cauliflower rice or buttered and salted spaghetti squash for your base, while subbing the “can” or flour roux with a bean roux, it can be GAPS friendly too.

¼ cup butter

1 onion, diced

¼ cup navy bean flour

1 cup rich chicken stock

2 pounds boiled chicken

1 cup homemade sour cream

Salt and pepper to taste

Melt butter is sauce pan, add onions and cook down 10 minutes.  Stir in bean flour and cook 5 more minutes.  Add stock and stir constantly while sauce thickens.  Add chicken and sour cream, salt and pepper to taste.  Remove from heat. Serve over buttered spaghetti squash with toppings of your choice.

Toppings;

Celery

Peas

Peppers

Onions

Zucchini

Broccoli

Tomatoes

Herbs

Nuts

Pineapple

Papaya

Apples

Raisins

Coconut

Cheese

Fermentation Series {Winner}

Thank you to all those who participated and congratulations to winner, Joel, Jes & the rest, who has won Jenny's Get Cultured Online Class !  Please email me to claim your prize by Wednesday, May 30. 


Everyone else; remember to use coupon code "TRUMP" to save $50 off the sale (through May 31). price of $147.

Fermentation Series {Giveaway}

I started making homemade yogurt for my first baby eight years ago, I was die-hard, bringing it and making it on vacations.  When I learned about kefir, hello! 300% more live cultures than homemade yogurt. The kids loved it right off the bat, I took a while to get used to it. 

Three years ago I decided I wanted to venture into fermenting vegetables.  I did a lot of research and tried my hand at it a few times.  I had all kinds of problems, molds (which I didn't know was okay), bitter sauerkraut (which was because I use radicchio instead of red cabbage) mushy pickles (fermented too long) and acetone flavored ginger carrots (still not sure about this one, maybe since I didn't peel the carrots.) I was discouraged with all my vain efforts and backed off the project.

Jenny's Get Cultured Online Class restored my confidence completely. She is a pro, her information is clear and concise. She keeps her recipes simple for the newbie and gives ideas for those who are ready to start branching out.  I would play her videos on my laptop, placed on my kitchen counter and make the recipes right along with her. The recipe would turn out, I was not afraid to eat it in the end and the next time I made the recipe it was no big deal.

This morning I listened to Jenny's webinar replay as I was unable to attend the live webinar and WOW! Loads of great information focused on troubleshooting, safety and starter cultures.  I love that she points out all you need is something to ferment (a single vegetable), something to ferment it in (a mason jar, crock-pot insert, food grade bucket), and time. The time it took when I was learning compared to the time it takes now is a completely different measure and that time decreases quickly after just one recipe, so jump in! Remember to use coupon code "TRUMP" to save $50 off the sale price of $147 (through May 31).

If you can't afford to sign up for this excellent online class check out the payment options, be sure to listen to the FREE webinar replay and enter to win my giveaway!

To enter for your chance to win  Get Cultured Online Class ($199 value) you must be a public follower of Taste is Trump and leave a comment sharing how you will benefit from the series. Contest closes at 11:59 p.m. mountain time on Sunday, May 27, 2012 and the winner will be announced on Monday, May 28, 2012.

Get Cultured

One of the main principles of the GAPS diet is to propagate a healthy gut ecology.   Ones gut flora becomes out of balance due to processed foods, sugar, stress, lack of sleep, antibiotics, environmental toxins and the birth control pill. We are even born, our sterile tummies become off balance from those first gulps of amniotic fluid. When opportunistic bacteria take over in your body a myriad of symptoms pop up, it might be simple headaches or joint pain, often as time goes on it will get more drastic with symptoms like allergies (food and seasonal) or an autoimmune disease.  It is a wide spectrum and gut health is complicated.

Probiotics are the beneficial bacteria that keep opportunistic and pathogenic bacteria under control and in the right balance.  It is a gradual process to build up the good bacteria in your system because the bad guys fight back, it in not a quick fix.  Probiotic supplements have become a big thing in the past ten years and most of them are helpful, but pale in comparison to fermented foods which have more active cultures, a wider range of types of bacteria and cost much less, so you can consume even more.

Fermenting foods is a traditional food preparation that preserves food for many months in cold storage.  The most popular fermented food is yogurt.  Pickles and sauerkraut used to be fermented, but now they are made with vinegar and no bacteria.  You can ferment your condiments like ketchup and mayo just by adding some whey and leaving at room temperature for 24 hours to inoculate the batch.  You can do many vegetables by soaking in a brine for a week.  You can make probiotic drinks and of coarse cultured dairy all in your own home.  Homemade ferments are optimal because they are fresh, live active cultures die over time, counting the time they are transported and sit on the grocery store shelf.

I took an ecourse a couple years ago called Get Cultured by Nourished Kitchen.  I was so impressed by the quality of the information.  Above all, the videos were so helpful.  These ferments are easy, the big hurdle is getting started. Here is an overview of what the course covers;


Fermented & Cultured Dairy: Greek- and Bulgarian-style yogurt, fil mojlk, kefir, sour cream, bonny clabber, clabbered cream, yogurt and kefir cheese, farmers cheese, cultured butter, buttermilk.
Dairy-free Coconut Ferments: coconut yogurt, young coconut kefir.
Probiotic Beverages & Tonics: kombucha, water kefir, beet kvass, rejuvelac, wild cider and mead, natural sodas, probiotic herbal tonics.
Condiments & Relishes: Lacto-fermented mustard, mayonnaise, ketchup and barbecue sauce, pickle relish, horseradish, salsa and hot chili sauce.
Fruits, Chutneys, Fruit Butters & Jams: Preserved lemons, lacto-fermented fruit chutneys, fruit butters and jams.
Sauerkraut & Shredded Vegetable Ferments: Basic cabbage ferments, pickled greens, sauerruben, gingered carrots.
Brine Pickling & Whole Vegetable Ferments: Sour pickles, sweet pickles, pickled garlic, pickled beets.
Naturally Cured Meats & Fish: Corned beef brisket, bacon, gravlax, anchovies.
Fermented Legumes & Naturally Fermented Soy: natto, tempeh, Japanese-style miso bran pickles, fermented bean paste.
Sourdoughs & Naturally Leavened Baked Goods: sourdough starter, gluten-free sourdough starter, sourdough bread, gluten-free sourdough bread.

Go to her site for more information.  Sign up with the coupon code "TRUMP" to save $50 off of the current sale price $147!

Tropical Traditions Coconut Flour {Winner}

Thank you to all those who participated and congratulations to winner, Sue D, who has won  2.2 pounds Organic Coconut Flour  from Tropical Traditions!  Please email me to claim your prize by Saturday, May 19.


Follow this link to purchase coconut flour for the sale price of $11.99 today.
1 Organic Coconut Flour - 2.2 lbs.