Stuff Parents Need

Easing the chaos in the nest, one find at a time.

Saving Money on Breakfast While Going Organic: Tropical Traditions Organic Thick Rolled Oats (GIVEAWAY!!!)

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Have you found that choosing organic foods for your family often comes at the expense (no pun intended) of saving money? I know I have. But today I want to show you one way that we have incorporated an organic item into our breakfast routines AND we are saving money in the process!

Tropical Traditions sells so many wonderful products, and the one I am highlighting today is the their Organic Thick Rolled Oats. They are sold in 5 lb or 10 lb bags and are useful for anything you’d normally put oats into (cookies, breads, and of course, oatmeal).
Tim really loves to eat oatmeal. I try to watch for coupons and in-store deals on instant oatmeal, but thanks to the wonderful blogosphere, specifically the blog The Simple Dollar, I learned that if you are a regular oatmeal eater, making your own is more cost-effective.
Let me break it down for you! Typically, a store-brand variety of instant oatmeal costs .20/package. If you go organic, the standard price goes up to about .62/bag. Yikes. We made our own packets using our Tropical Traditions oats, and our cost per bag came out to .14 (not including the small bit of sugar and salt we added…so let’s just say .16/bag). I totally hear you that this isn’t a far cry from the store brand price, but remember that the store brand stuff is NOT organic. This is MUCH cheaper than buying instant organic oatmeal and even a little cheaper than buying the store brand non-organic stuff. Pretty awesome, right?!
So what’s the down side? Well, 2 things. First, you do have an initial cost of all the plastic bags you will be using. But since they are just holding your dry ingredients, you can use them again. We are on round two of using our plastic bags for making oatmeal, so there was no additional expense for us this time around. This isn’t the right idea for someone who eats oatmeal once a month, but if you and your family members eat it a few times each week, this is definitely worth doing!
Second, thick rolled oats aren’t instant. We did some experimenting, and reached the conclusion that they just had to be cooked on the stovetop. It takes 10 minutes, which is much longer than the 1 1/2 minutes that instant oatmeal takes. BUT, you may just find the texture to be even better than the instant stuff (we did).
So, even though we have to spend a bit more time preparing it, we are very pleased to be making organic oatmeal that is delicious for a fraction of what it costs to buy its instant counterpart in the stores.
Buy it!: Tropical Traditions Organic Thick Rolled Oats come in a 5 lb bag for $11.75 or a 10 lb bag for $23.45. If you are an oatmeal eater, but a little extra time in and go organic! Your body will thank you and your wallet won’t hate you! 🙂
Win it!: One lucky Stuff Parents Need reader is going to win a 5 lb bag of Tropical Traditions Organic Thick Rolled Oats! The contest will run until April 22nd at 11:59pm EST when a winner will be selected using Random.org. The winner will have 48 hours to respond to winning notification before the prize is forfeited and a new winner is selected. Open to residents of the United States. Limit one entrant per household, please.
Mandatory entry: Share one way that you have gone organic. Has the decision impacted your overall budget, or did you find a way to make the choice not so expensive?
My answer: I also buy organic whole grains (bulgar, millet, etc.) for Darah, to add to her meals. I use the bulk bins to save some dough!
Additional entries:
1. Sponsor love: Subscribe to the Tropical Traditions Newsletter and be the first to know about all their great sales!
2. Blogger love: Subscribe to Stuff Parents Need by email or RSS
Be sure to enter my other current giveaways, found on the sidebar of my homepage.
Disclosure: I received a complimentary item for review purposes. The opinions expressed here are strictly my own.

Best Dishwasher Detergent That is Eco-Friendly

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Tim and I have been actively searching for the best dishwasher detergent that is eco-friendly and  that works just as well as our old standby, Cascade. We’ve been looking for roughly 3 years, I’d say, and until recently, we just hadn’t found anything. Our homemade detergent was the worst, leaving our dishes coated with a film of some sort. Even though it was “green” I still didn’t want to ingest whatever that was!

We tried two other more commercial “green” detergents, and they just worked ok. We’ve been using those for lack of a better option, but still haven’t felt satisfied with the end result, which is filmy dishes (though less filmy than our DIY stuff). I was actually coming pretty close to just going back to Cascade when I got the opportunity to try Household Traditions Powdered Dishwasher Detergent. As you know, I was a Tropical Traditions skeptic and then turned into a fan, but I still expected this detergent to work as well as our other commercial products, and no better.

best dishwasher detergent I’m tickled pink to tell you that I was wrong. I have finally found the green detergent that can go toe-to-toe with Cascade! Our dishes are clean and sparkling, and I have to tell you, they haven’t looked like that in a long time. It is so refreshing!

This is our new detergent, hands-down. I will be buying more when we run out, which won’t be for a while, because they sell the product in 5 lb jars (hooray for less packaging!). I just can’t say enough great things about this. If you are like me and have been dissatisfied with the end results of your eco-friendly dishwashing detergents, I want to strongly encourage you to try this one. It is exactly what we have been looking for, and I bet you’ll like it, too!

Buy it!: A 5 lb container of Household Traditions Powdered Dishwasher Detergent retails for $32.00, which I know is a bit steep. But Tropical Traditions regularly has sales (yay!). I very recently saw it on sale for $19.99!

Win it!: One lucky Stuff Parents Need reader is going to LOVE the detergent s/he is about to win! 🙂 The contest will run until March 15th at 11:59pm EST when a winner will be selected using Random.org. The winner will have 48 hours to respond to winning notification before the prize is forfeited and a new winner is selected. Open to residents of the United States. Limit one entrant per household, please.

Mandatory entry: Tell me another product at Tropical Traditions that you really want or that you already use!

My answer: Now that I’ve seen how well the dishwashing detergent works, I want to try the laundry detergent!

Additional entries:
1. Sponsor love: “Like” Tropical Traditions on Facebook
2. Blogger love: Follow Stuff Parents Need by Google Friend Connect

Be sure to enter my other current giveaways, found on the sidebar of my homepage.

Disclosure: I received a complimentary product for review purposes. All opinions expressed here are strictly my own.

Tropical Traditions Rocks: From Skeptic to Big Fan

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If you’ve been reading blogs at all in the last year, you’ve likely seen at least one or two posts about the company Tropical Traditions. I’ve read several posts, and was initially completely skeptical of a company that could offer such a vast range of products.

But I kept reading reviews from bloggers whose opinions I trust. And my skepticism shifted to genuine curiosity. The products this company makes seem to get high praise again and again. I really wanted to see for myself if I agreed.

So now it is my turn to talk about Tropical Traditions. And after trying out one of their products for about a month, I can tell you that this skeptic is now a big fan.

 

I have personally never used coconut oil in my own kitchen. We are big fans of extra virgin olive oil, and use that for as much of our cooking, as possible. So when the Gold Label Virgin Coconut Oil arrived, my first question was what in the heck to do with it! Fortunately, Tropical Traditions anticipated this question and provided an answer. From their site, “There are many ways to use coconut oil and incorporate it into one’s diet. Since it is a stable cooking oil, one can simply replace unhealthy oils in their diet with coconut oil. Since it is a solid most of the time at room temperature or when refrigerated, it can be a butter or margarine substitute for spreads or for baking. Any recipe calling for butter, margarine, or any other oil can be substituted for coconut oil. It is popularly mixed in with “smoothies.” There are also hundreds of FREE recipes here that have been submitted by our customers over the years.”

We had a shrimp dish on our menu the week the product arrived, and I thought I’d try out the coconut oil with that dish. I thought perhaps it would give it a tropical flair like what I would taste at a place like Bahama Breeze (oh how I miss that restaurant since we moved!). OH. MY. WORD. You guys…it was DELICIOUS! The coconut flavor was present in the dish, but it really just complimented the food and didn’t overpower it at all.

The next day, I decided to use the spread as an alternative to butter on my toast. Also delicious! We then tried it with our popcorn that night (we hand crank our popcorn and use a mixture of butter and olive oil. The coconut oil replaced the butter. Tim wasn’t crazy about the overall taste, though he said he liked it just fine. I thought it was great, and took the popcorn in a slightly sweet direction. I think he prefers his popcorn to be more savory, whereas I’m always going to like something if it is sweet! So we were a house divided on that one.

Since I liked the coconut oil so much, I decided to do a bit of research on it. My mom had the impression that coconut oil would contribute to high cholesterol, so I did have a few concerns. The impression that I get is that it is that coconut oil is high in saturated fat, so I wouldn’t want to use it instead of something like extra virgin olive oil. However, if I’m using it to replace a different oil that is high in saturated fat (like butter), that’s the way to go. Tropical Traditions has a great link to some research if you want to read up on why replacing butter with coconut oil might make sense. After we did our homework, we have personally decided to replace butter with coconut oil in several of our dishes. And I’m now using it instead of butter on my toast and bagels.

Buy it! If you’ve never bought coconut oil before, the price tag might alarm you. It isn’t cheap. But the prices Tropical Traditions offers are competitive, and the quality of their oil is one of the very best; just ask all their loyal customers who rave about it! Plus, if you get on their email list, you’ll see that they regularly offer discounts on their oil (and other products). I’ve seen it for as much as half off! The Gold Label Virgin Coconut Oil, which is the best of the best, retails for $37.50 for a quart. They offer a variety of sizes, though.

Edit: this giveaway is now closed. 

Win it!: Joy of joys, here’s your chance to get your own jar of Gold Label Virgin Coconut Oil from Tropical Traditions! The contest will run until January 22nd at 11:59pm EST when a winner will be selected using Random.org. The winner will have 48 hours to respond to the winning notification before the prize is forfeited and a new winner is selected. Open to residents of the United States. Limit one entrant per household, please.

Mandatory entry: Tell me another product Tropical Traditions offers that you’ve either tried or want to try.

My answer: I want to try their carpet cleaner. Darah is into blueberries right now, and you can imagine how our rugs feel about that!

Additional entries:
1. Sponsor love: Sign up for the Tropical Traditions newsletter (emails once a week…always a great sale happening!)
2. Blogger love: Subscribe to Stuff Parents Need by RSS or email
3. Rare bonus entry opportunity: Follow both Tropical Traditions and Stuff Parents Need on Twitter for a third entry (leave your twitter id)

Be sure to enter my other current giveaways, found on the sidebar of my home page.

Disclosure: 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.