The Healthy Cooking Coach

Amazing Gluten-Free, Grain-Free Granola Giveaway

Do you follow wheat-free, gluten-free, grain–free, soy-free, corn-free, or dairy-free diet? Do you follow a real foods, traditional foods, paleo, primal, or natural foods diet? Are you into health and fitness? Are you looking for a quick snack, morning meal, or dessert on the go? If you’re like me, when you buy packaged products you want them to wholesome and natural ingredients you can spell and pronounce. You want them to contain the kinds of raw materials you would have in your own kitchen. You don’t want artificial flavorings or refined fats or oils. If they contain sweeteners, you want honey, maple syrup, dried fruit, or stevia. If they contain oil, you went the best kind: coconut, olive, or avocado oil.

Two weeks ago I made a post about something that meets all of the criteria above. It’s Paleo People Granola, crunchy clusters of nuts, seeds, berries and other fruits, and honey. It comes in four delicious flavors: Apple Crisp, Banana Nut, Cacao Nut, and Cappuccino Crunch. Cacoa Nut and Cappuccino Crunch were my favorites!

FYI: For any purists out there, please note that the Banana Nut flavor does contains a small amount of sugar (found in the dried cranberries; it’s difficult to find dried cranberries that don’t contain sugar) but otherwise honey is the only sweetener used in these granolas. I like that Laura uses coconut oil, a super healthy fat source, rather than refined, polyunsaturated vegetable oils used in most packaged foods. You can learn more about the nutrition details for Paleo People Granola by clicking here.

If you haven’t seen it in stores in your area (yet), you can ask your local retailer to stock it or you can order it over the internet. (By the way, your purchase supports a small artisanal producer). In the meantime, owner Laura Keenan has generously donated two terrific prizes for a giveaway right here. You could be a winner, all you have to do is enter and you can do it as many times as you like to increase your odds.

You could be a lucky winner
The 1st prize winner will receive a generous 8 pack of Paleo People Granola.  The 2nd prize winner will receive a 4 Pack  Variety. 

Your coupon code
If you can’t wait and you want to order some of this granola right away, you can place an order on the Paleo People website and when you check out, type in this coupon code to 10% discount on your order: garden.
   
Note: If you like (or love) Paleo People Granola you can order it in bulk packages. For info about that, click here.

Here’s how to enter

Step #1: Leave a comment below telling me why you want to win Paleo People Granola.

Step #2: To receive bonus entries, spread the word about my blog and this giveaway. Here's how.
Select as many actions as you like just BE SURE TO post a separate comment for each action telling me what you did so your extra entries will count:

1. Subscribe to My YouTube channel (check out some of my videos while you're at it)
2. Subscribe to this blog (upper left side of this page; see email notification option)
3. Subscribe to my monthly e-newsletter (upper left side of this page)
4. Follow my Healthy Cooking Coach Page on Facebook
5. Tweet about the giveaway and send me a link
6. Announce the giveaway on Facebook and send me a link
7. Mention the giveaway to your family and friends and invite them to enter
8. Mention the giveaway on your blog and send me a link
9. Visit My Books page to find out more about my cookbooks and cooking DVDS
10. Come up with your own creative idea and tell me about it

Deadline: Midnight, Monday, November 14th, 2011.
Selection criteria: Random drawing
Limitations: Drawing open only to US residents due to shipping restrictions.  

Healthy Edible Gift Ideas

I prefer making rather than buying gifts over the holidays and throughout the year. No one asks where I bought the gift. They don’t want the receipt and they never ask about returning the gift. Sometimes they ask for the recipe if I don’t include it with the goodies. I save money, avoid standing in long lines, and have the satisfaction of knowing the recipient will rarely ever receive the same gift from someone else.

Although many of the recipes I show people how to make throughout the year work as gifts, I rarely have time in each class to suggest this. Each year, if I can, I teach a class focused on making and sharing delicious food over the holidays. Sometimes I lead it in the late summer or early fall (think Christmas in July or August for those who might want to plan far ahead). This year I opted to do it the weekend before Thanksgiving.

This year I called it Healthy Edible Gifts from the Hearth and held it at SWIHA (Southwest Institute of  Healing Arts in Tempe), where I teach two five-week whole foods (think natural foods rather than the chain that goes by the same name) cooking courses throughout the year along with some afternoon classes, and two online cooking courses.

My aim was to show people how to savor the season without spending a fortune by making healthy food gifts from inexpensive, whole foods ingredients. I shared wheat-free, gluten-free, dairy-free recipes free of refined sugar. Since we made it a hands-on class, I did most of my work ahead of time: shopping, planning, and setting up work stations for the class. My students did most of the work in class, after I gave them an overview of the recipes, techniques, and ingredients.

Here’s what they made for gift giving:
Moroccan Barbecue Spice Mix
Moroccan Barbecue Sauce
Cranberry-Apricot Chutney with Chipotle
Poppy Seed Pineapple Drizzle & Dressing
My Favorite Macaroond Dipped in Dark Chocolate      
Naturally Sweetened Dark-Chocolate-Dipped Date Nut “Truffles”
Homemade Apple Sauce                          

Here’s what they made to go with the spice rub and sauces above:
Moroccan BBQ Spiced Wild Alaskan Salmon
Vanilla Omelet with Cinnamon to go with the Cranberry Apricot Chutney

Here’s what I made ahead and gave them samples of to take home:     
Homemade Beef Jerky
Fruit Rollups/Fruit Leather
Dried Apple Chips

Here’s what my assistant and I made to round out the meal:
A crisp, colorful green salad (to go with the salad dressing they made)
Roasted onions, baby turnips, and sweet bell peppers (to enhance the salad)

Once they were sitting down, enjoying their meal, I walked them through planning,  wrapping, decorating, packing, freezing, and shipping tips.

The morning after
Here’s what I had for brunch the day after the class. I love leftovers and cooking classes give me plenty of delicious things to work into meals at home. It’s one of the great benefits of doing what I do.

If you’re looking for more ideas for gifts you can make and share with family and friends, check out the two posts below from 2008 and 2009. Consider getting copies of my books, The Garden of Eating and The Ice Dream Cookbook, to give as gifts and to use yourself for making edible gifts for others. The books have been hugely popular with conventional eaters, people into natural foods, whole foods, real foods, slow foods, paleo and primal diets, wheat-free, gluten-free, dairy-free, low-carb, moderate-carb, and high-carb diets, the Zone, Crossfit, and other ways of eating. My mid December of this year (20101), I hope to have my first set of cooking dvds ready for sale.

For more great gift ideas, click here and here

If you’re interested in cooking classes in the Phoenix metro area, click here to see the list of upcoming classes I’m teaching. If you’d like to give a gift certificate for a group or private cooking class, cooking party, kitchen coaching, or healthy shopping tour for someone on your list, please contact me by email (see my contact info under my photo, upper right side of page). 

The Perfect Foods Bar Giveaway

I’m not a big fan of protein bars or meal replacement bars. Most of them contain highly processed and artificial ingredients that I don’t want to eat or recommend:

• low quality protein made from soy protein
• refined sweeteners, such fructose, high fructose corn sweetener
• artificial sweeteners, such as aspartame, Splenda, or acesulfame K
• artificial flavorings and colorings (I want the flavor of real foods !)
• junk vegetable oils and/or hydrogenated fats or oils

Too sweet to eat
Most of the bars I’ve tried also taste too sweet for my tastes and very artificial with an unpleasant after taste. So I was skeptical about trying any of the new ones on the market. If I want a snack I usually go for toasted nuts, a piece of fresh fruit, fresh fruit with almond or peanut butter, homemade jerky, or something else. I recommend eating foods that spoil and eating them before they spoil. Real foods spoil. Preserved foods don't.These bars fall into that category. The company recommends storing them in the refrigerator. If you plan to take them on outings away from home, you may want to store them in the freezer, then stash them in an insulated tote if you don't plan to eat them before they thaw.

A better bar?
I’d seen the Perfect Foods Bars at my chiropractor’s office for at least a year. I know Dr. Jason and Dr. Elissa at Living in Line Chiropractic, located in the Phoenix-Ahwatukee area in Phoenix, are very selective about what they eat and recommend to their practice members. Then a colleague of mine at Funktional Fitness a crossfit style fitness training studio in Gilbert, AZ, gave me one of the Peanut Butter flavored Perfect Foods bars to try. I liked the flavor of the bar, what was in it, and what wasn't in it.

Good, real food ingredients
The bar does not contain soy, gluten, and refined and synthetic sweeteners. It contains real food concentrates from land vegetables, sea vegetables, and fruits, along with nut and seed-based fats and oils, and honey. The bars taste sweet (sweeter than eating a piece of fruit) but the sweetness comes from a traditional and real foods: honey. If you’re not in the habit of eating bars or you limit concentrated sweeteners (even honey), I suggest having a tall glass of filtered water on hand to drink with the since it is more dry than a piece of fresh fruit.

They’re rich in antioxidants and they contain 18 grams of whole food protein per bar. Each bar contains 18 grams of whole foods protein made from peanut butter and egg, milk, and rice protein. If you don’t tolerate casein, whey, or peanut butter, then this wouldn’t be the bar for you. Note: I’ve heard that the company is working on creating a line of bars using almond butter in place of peanut butter.

What about the PUFAs?
Although I’m not a fan of and usually avoid seed oils, most of the polyunsatured oils in the bars come from peanut butter (a whole food) and I think the benefits of these bars outweigh the drawbacks. Many people are going to buy bars for snacks to take to work, school, or when traveling, hiking, camping, cycling, running, or engaging in other sports. If you (and they) are avoiding other sources of polyunsaturated oils such as corn, soy, canola, sunflower, cottonseed, peanut, grapeseed, and generic “vegetable” oils, all margarines, shortening and all foods that contain it, deep fried foods, commercial salad dressings, and packaged baked goods made from vegetable oils or shortening, then I don’t think the PUFAs in these bars would create fatty acid imbalances or inflammation.

If you’re not already avoiding the hazardous oils I just mentioned, I encourage you to read more about the risk of consuming them (click here and scroll down to "Time for an oil change") and weed them out of your diet in favor of more stable and traditional fats and oils, such as real butter, ghee, clarified butter, virgin coconut and palm oil, avocado and olive oil, non-hydrogenated palm shortening, fat from meats (preferably pasture-raised), and occasional unrefined almond or sesame oil. You can also read more about how the processed oil industry created a propaganda campaign to discredit naturally saturated fats and promote refined vegetable oils and the effects of that in The Garden of Eating: A Produce Dominated Diet & Cookbook by Rachel Albert Matesz & Don Matesz.

So what’s in these bars?
The Perfect Foods Peanut Butter Bar contains the following ingredients:
Peanut Butter*, Raw Unheated Buddy Bee Honey*, Milk Protein, Egg Protein, Rice Protein, Dried Whole Food Powders (Sunflower Seed*, Sesame Seed*, Flax Seed*, Rice Bran*, Rose-Hip*, Orange*, Lemon*, Grapefruit*, Tomato*, Apple*, Bell Pepper, Papaya*, Mango*, Black Cherry, Cranberry, Fig, Alfalfa*, Celery*, Spinach*, Parsley*, Mint, Kelp*, Dulse*), Olive Oil*, Sunflower Seed Oil, Sesame Seed Oil*, Flax Seed Oil*, Pumpkin Seed Oil, Almond Oil, and Rice Bran Oil.

1 Peanut Butter Bar contains: 292 calories, 16 grams of fat (2.5 grams of saturated fat and 13.5 grams of polyunsatured fats), 26 total grams of carbohydrate (less 3 grams of fiber) with 17 total sugar grams, and 18 grams of protein, 95 mg of sodium. 520 milligrams of potassium (so it has a good potassium to sodium ratio).  * The asterisk denotes organic ingredients.

To see ingredients in The Perfect Foods Fruit & Nut Bar click here.
To see ingredients in The Perfect Foods Carob Chip Bar click here.
To see ingredients in The Perfect Foods Cranberry Crunch Bar click here.

What do they cost?
The bars run $2.39 each at whole foods, less than many of the bars on the market. On line from the company that makes them, they sell for $2.42 each (before shipping) if you buy them in boxes of 12 on line.

Would you like to try these bars?
You can if you enter the Perfect Foods Bar Giveway that starts today. Three lucky winners will each receive 4 bars.

Rules for entering
1) Leave a comment below telling me why you want to win a handful of bars or 2) Tell me why you like these bars.

To receive entries, spread the word about this giveaway by doing any of the following:
1) Watch one of my YouTube videos and leave a comment about it below
2) Subscribe to my YouTube page, then leave a comment about that below
3) Subscribe to my blog (see link half to two-third of the way down the left side of this page), then leave a comment saying you did that below
4) Publicize the giveaway, then come back to my blog and leave a comment about what you did, for example
    a) Tweet about the giveaway with a link to my blog
    b) blog about the giveaway
    c) announce the giveaway on Facebook and send me a link
    d) mention the giveaway to your family and friends
    e) come up with your own creative idea
5) do any or all of the above; just be sure to post a separate comment below for each action

Deadline
Minight, March 5th, 2010. You have 10 days to get your entries in, starting today, February 23rd, 2010.
Selection criteria: Random drawing