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Tropical Traditions Gold Label Coconut Oil Review & Giveaway [contest closed]

reviews

Apr 102012

[EDIT]: We have a winner! Mariana S., check your email!

One of the aspects of the primal diet I follow is the importance of getting more healthy fats in your diet. Once you wean your body off of carbs, your body switches over to a lean, mean fat-burning machine… and you need to eat fat as the fuel. I try to cook with and eat healthy fats at every meal. Healthy fats can include animal fats, butter and ghee, avocados, olive oil, and coconut oil.

It’s the latter (coconut oil) that I tend to use the most for cooking. It has a higher smoke point so it’s good for frying, and a mild taste that doesn’t really interfere with the other flavors in your dish.

Here is a short list of some of the things I use coconut oil for:

Skin & hair moisturizer. I just warm a little bit in the palm of my hands and rub it into my skin or in my hair.
Eat it. Yep, sometimes I scoop some out and eat it plain. Or I’ll add some to a fruit/veggie smoothie, or in my morning coffee.
Frying foods like eggs, spinach or kale. And other things, of course.
Oral care. I make my own toothpaste, which has a coconut oil base. I also occasionally use it to do the oil pulling method of cleaning your mouth.
Season and care for cast iron cookware.
Deodorant. I make my own, and coconut makes it super moisturizing and it smells yummy!

These are just a few uses; there are hundreds of other uses for coconut oil!

There are many brands and types of coconut oil out there, and not all are created equally. Virgin, cold-pressed, organic, refined… so how do you know what kind to buy? I’ve been buying whatever my local natural store has to offer, but I had seen the Tropical Traditions brand mentioned on many websites… so I thought I’d give it a try.

Well, after trying it I can now tell you that I love Tropical Traditions Gold Label Virgin Coconut Oil! This will be my go-to brand from here on out. I have to admit, it did take a bit to get used to the taste, at least when eating it plain out of the jar. Since the previous brands I used were refined, the Gold Label brand tasted more … raw. Definitely not bad, but it did take my by surprise at first.

You see, Tropical Traditions is a high quality, organic, traditionally processed oil which is grown and made fresh, by hand, in the Philippines. It’s minimally processed, not refined. I love that it’s produced by people, and not machines, and that the purchase of this oil will help support the small family farms that produce it. I’m all about eating and using things in their natural state… and this is about as natural as you can get.

So have I persuaded you to add coconut oil to your life? Hows about I give you a free quart of Gold Label Virgin Coconut Oil to try it out?

I have one (1) 32 oz jar of Tropical Traditions Gold Label Virgin Coconut Oil to give away to one lucky reader. It’s pretty simple to enter the giveaway — all you need to do is fill out the following form. There are six ways to enter… if you do all six, you sextuple your chances!

Click here to enter the giveaway!

iPhone weekend

blog posts

Mar 132012

BTW, did you know that I’m giving away a Crock-Pot? Click over to find out how you can register to win!

SlimKicker.com Challenge & a Crock-Pot Giveaway! [contest closed]

reviews

Mar 122012

(Contest is closed — We have a winner!)

I have to admit… I’ve always been somewhat healthy in my eating habits. Yeah, I enjoy the occasional beer or Girl Scout Cookie (with an occasional binge on the latter), but overall I feel that I don’t tend to eat a lot of crap foods. I think I can keep up with my healthy eating because I enjoy doing diet challenges… I challenge myself all the time. Thirty days of no sugar. One week without alcohol. (C’mon… more than a week without beer? Let’s get real.) Two weeks raw vegetarian (I actually did this once). So on and so forth.

This is great and all, but there is a second half of the equation for good health… exercise. I hate exercise. I usually don’t feel well after… I don’t get the “runner high” that keeps one motivated. BUT. For the past six weeks or so I’ve been attending a total body fitness class held at my place of employment. I’m actually enjoying my twice-weekly exercise, but outside of this I again get unmotivated. I don’t exercise on my days off. I keep making promises to myself — If you do 75 kettle bell swings, you can eat that piece of chocolate. If you do 50 crunches, you can have that chunk of cheese to nibble on. Sometimes this works, but often it doesn’t.

Then I came across Slimkicker.com. This is a program that I can do, while I move toward a healthier lifestyle. The website (which is free, BTW), offers a quick and easy sign up. Once you’re logged in, there are a number of ways to earn points. If you log your food, you earn points (with more points earned for healthier foods). If you log exercise, you earn some more points. As you earn points, you level up — kind of like a game.

You can even set a reward for yourself when you reach a certain level:

The most fun part of the site though, are the challenges. Just browse the long list and find one (or more) to join. Then… challenge yourself to do it for seven days. Make sure you “check in” every day with your progress to earn points. You can chat with other users and can get support from the other participants doing the same challenge.

And not every challenge is fitness- or diet-related. There are several that seem to promote well-being for your mind, such as the “In Silence” challenge… which is proving to be a great way for me to wind down at the end of the day, and let the day go in order to get a good night of sleep.

So. As part of their challenge series, Slimkicker.com is giving away a 3-Quart Round Slow Cooker to one lucky reader of this little ‘ole website of mine.

It’s pretty easy to enter to win the slow cooker:

Click here to enter!

My Healthy / Fuck-Off Scale

blog posts

Mar 082012

I recently read a blog post which describes what is eloquently known as the Healthy/Fuck Off Scale. I loved the idea, so I decided to create one for myself.

Here it is:

And to explain:

High on the “healthy” axis are foods that are good for me, so I try to eat them fairly often, even though they aren’t my favorite foods. Fortunately, I do actually like most foods that are good for me.

Near the middle are foods that are okay in moderation, but I enjoy eating them a little more than I should so they can sometimes drift into unhealthy territory.

Then there are the foods that I’m told I shouldn’t be eating (or drinking, in this example) because they are not healthy. These foods are high on the “fuck off” axis because… well, you can just fuck off ‘cos I’m gonna have ‘em. If I completely eliminated these foods from my diet I would be a very unhappy camper, and I most certainly wouldn’t be able to keep up the rest of my healthy habits without indulging in these items every so often.

So… what foods are on your H/FO scale?

Foodie Friday: Chocolate Ice Cream

Foodie Friday

Mar 022012

I think I’m crazy, making ice cream in the middle of winter. I should save this for a summer treat. Espeically now, since I’m currently about two weeks into a 30 day challenge where I cut out sugar.

Anyway, I found this recipe on Food Network, and while there are many other recipes out there that are simpler, this recipe is definitely worth the effort. Chocolately, creamy, rich chocolate ice cream that tastes so much better than the store bought stuff.

So… let’s make ice cream!