Tropical Traditions Organic Thicked Rolled Oats Review & Giveaway with Banana Walnut Overnight Oats Recipe

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We love oats in our home and go through about 5 lbs in a month, easy. I love using oats for making chewy granola bars, crunchy granola bars and oatmeal mostly. For the past year I have been buying the organic thick rolled oats from the healthfood store out of the bulk section and keep them in one of my Snapware containers. I have to keep them hidden because if Ethan sees it he has a fit until I give him some to eat. Yes, he eats them raw. Oats are the only thing that I found would boost my milk supply when I was nursing Ethan. If you are a nursing mommy, or soon to be, keep oats in mind. If I didn't have oats one day I noticed a drastic difference in my supply by the late evening. Oats are good for everyone too because they are a whole grain. It's so important to eat organic whole grains because conventionally grown whole grains are sprayed heavily with pesticides.



I was excited to review another Tropical Traditions product and especially because I would be reviewing their organic thick rolled oats. I made oatmeal a few times with the oats and loved them. Actually, that may be an understatement! I have never had oats this thick before. They do take more liquid and more time to cook them when you are making oatmeal, but they are still very creamy and delicious.

Tropical Traditions has many recipes for their organic thick rolled oats if you want new and creative ways to incorporate oats into your diet. I have been reading about Overnight Oats for several months now and have been curious to try them out myself. I put together a simple recipe to share with this review, Banana Walnut Overnight Oats. This recipe knocked my socks off! Don't let "cold oatmeal" scare you, it actually tastes much better than hot oatmeal and it is very soft. All the flavors blend together wonderfully and this tastes more like a dessert than breakfast. I can't wait to come up with other Overnight Oat recipes, I'm totally hooked! I assure you that you'll be seeing overnight oats on my menu plan for a while to come.

Banana Walnut Overnight Oats
Serves 1 (large portion!)

1/3 cup of Tropical Traditions Organic Thick Rolled Oats
2/3 cup unsweetened organic coconut milk
1/4 tsp Vietnamese cinnamon
1 tsp raw honey (or more to taste)
1 large TBS organic walnuts
1 banana, sliced

Mix oats and milk in bowl. Cover and refrigerate overnight (Mine was in the fridge for 12 hours).

Take out of the fridge and set aside while you gather your other ingredients.

Mix all ingredients into your oats and then enjoy!

Feel free to use more or less milk when you make your overnight oats. You can also use any type of milk you wish.


BUY IT! You can buy directly from Tropical Traditions.

WIN IT! Tropical Traditions is giving away a 5 lb bag of their Organic Thick Rolled Oats to Take Time to Smell the Rose reader! 

Tropical Traditions also has a Referral Program, so if you place an order with them as a first-time customer, please select “Referred by a friend” and in the box that says “How did you hear of us?” enter my sponsor ID number 6059810. By telling Tropical Traditions that I referred you, you will receive a complimentary copy of the book Virgin Coconut Oil: How it has changed people’s lives and how it can change yours! by Brian and Marianita Shilhavy with your first order! This book is filled with testimonies and research showing how healthy coconut oil is, and it also includes over 85 recipes showing how one can incorporate coconut into their diet.


You have the chance to enter several entries by the doing the following. Each one counts as 1 entry unless otherwise specified. I am now making it a requirement to follow my blog publicly on Google Friend Connect to enter my giveaways.

• MANDATORY ENTRY(You also must be following my blog publicly on Google Friend Connect)-counts as 1: AND Look around at Tropical Traditions to see what they offer. Tell me an oat recipe from their website that you would love to try.

• Subscribe to my blog via email with Feedburner (on right side bar).
  

• Blog about my giveaway linking back to this giveaway and Tropical Traditions. Leave the URL where you blogged. 6 entries!

• Grab my  Take Time to Smell the Rose button. Leave URL where it is posted.

• Grab my Take Time to Share Your Giveaway Sunday button. Leave URL where it is posted.

• Grab my Bump 2 Baby event button. Leave URL where it is posted. 

• Follow Smell_the_Rose AND Tropical Traditions  on Twitter AND tweet about this giveaway. After initial "tweet" you may gain an extra entry each day. Limit 1 tweet a day.  Leave URL where you tweeted in your comment. 

• Sign up for Tropical Traditions Newsletter.  3 entries!

Please copy and paste this for your tweets: 


Win a 5lb bag of #Organic Thick Rolled Oats from @TropTraditions & @Smell_the_Rose #giveaway http://tiny.cc/TropTradOats

**Leave your email on each comment. You must do this in order to win!**

Giveaway ends Wednesday, February 16, 2011 at 9:00 p.m.(CST) Winner will be drawn by the random number generator at Random.org and will be notified by email. Winner will also be announced on this blog. Winner will have 48 hours to respond or a new winner will be drawn.

This giveaway is open to USA & Canadian residents ONLY . Must be 18 years old or older to win.

Disclaimer: 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. The thoughts and opinions expressed on my blog are my own and are not swayed by any monetary or product compensation. My personal health experiences may not be a typical result for others.
 

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Why your family needs to take Vitamin D

I probably haven't mentioned it before, but before Ethan was even born I had done some research (or so I thought) on vaccines and decided on doing a "delayed vaccine schedule". He only ended up with 3 vaccines because he seemed to constantly have pink ears (on the verge of an ear infection) many times and I kept pushing another vaccine off. Since then I have done more research about vaccines and have decided not to do anymore. I have been following Dr. Tenpenny on Facebook for a while now and have been keeping up with the various studies and articles concerning these health topics. Dr. Tenpenny recommends vitamin D to be a main supplement given to everyone to help prevent illness. Many on her page have shared their positive results since doing this for their families.

I believe there is still many more studies to be done to show what proper levels of vitamin D will do for our bodies. I also think you must stay "in the loop" through doctors who support supplementation and will continually keep you up to date of new studies such as Dr. Tenpenny. Dr. Tenpenny does have a great list of studies listed on her website supporting vitamin D supplementation.

I know there are lots of people who claim they get their vitamin D from the sun or food, daily. I have to disagree with this theory. Dr. Tenpenny also covers this topic on her website.

Since March I have been taking a vitamin D supplement. It is only a 2000 IU per pill. I love my supplement because it also has vitamin K combined to help the absorption. I have only had one instance in July that I felt a strange sinus like type virus coming on. I quickly got over it while upping my Vitamin C, echincea and garlic combo that I always go to when I feel something coming on. That is the ONLY time I have been sick since March. Ethan's multi-vitamin only has 100 IU per pill and he gets one a day. Last night I looked up the information on Dr. Tenpenny's site for recommended levels and discovered we are not taking near enough. While we haven't been sick in months, winter is right around the corner and I need to prepare our bodies for all of the illnesses that will be all around us. Not to mention last winter we were sick a lot! This was also before I started taking vitamin D for myself.

Check out all the information yourself on Dr. Tenpenny's site before taking a vitamin D supplement and educate yourself. Ethan's recommended dosage is 1000 IU and for myself since I'm pregnant, 6000 IU. As you can see we are taking much less than we should! I am taking more pills of my vitamin D supplement and I actually split them up throughout the day. I don't have to, but it is good to take with calcium and I take my calcium 3 times a day anyway. For Ethan since he can't swallow a pill I went to the heath food store today and purchased Carlson 1000 IU vitamin D drops. Carlson also makes vitamin D drops for babies with smaller doses per drop if you have infants. As long as Ethan doesn't get sick 1 bottle will last a whole year (you take more when you do get sick or feel something coming on). For less than $30 it is a great value to his health! The drops are clear and tasteless. I placed the drop on a spoon for Ethan and he licked it right off and actually acted like he enjoyed it, so maybe it does have a little flavor :-)

I wanted to share all of this information with my readers and hope that you will seriously consider starting your whole family on vitamin D supplements now and prepare for winter. No one wants a sick family! I'm interested to see how we do health-wise this winter compared to last since we are adding vitamin D.

I was not compensated for this post and all opinions are mine. I do have affiliate links within my post for product that I have personally used. You may not have the same health experiences from these same products. I am not a healthcare professional and you should always seek advice from your primary care doctor before adding a supplement.