7 Tips for Backyard Gardening

When we first moved into our house we were so excited to have such a big backyard that one of the first things we did was run to Home Depot to get stuff for a backyard garden. A backyard garden is a great way to get in the sun and dirt and switch up your daily routine. We have been doing a garden for the past few years and I’ve learned a few things along the way that I wanted to share. Granted I could still learn way more, but these are just some things that seemed to stick out over the years of trying to operate a little backyard garden. Most of my help comes from this book which is specific for my area of Southern California. If you’re not in Southern California try to find a guide specific to your area. So whether you already have a garden or would like to start one, here are 7 tips I have for running a mini farm in your backyard.

Kale

1. Plant only the things you will actually eat

When we first got our square foot garden going we made 3 boxes. 2 shallow boxes and 1 deep box for root veggies. It was a great learning experience but I soon realized as our crops started to grow that I didn’t really like most of the stuff I was growing. Sure it was nice to experiment growing and eating things that are new, but it’s hard to be devoted to a whole garden if you don’t even like the stuff growing in it. So this year when we got our garden back up and running, I decided to only plant the things that we were going to eat. So we have a whole box for herbs, another box for veggies, and our deep box for roots that was taken over by our daughter so she could plant flowers. The veggie box only has the stuff we eat and is easy enough to grow in the backyard: kale, romaine, summer squash, spaghetti squash, butternut squash, watermelon and pumpkins. Sure there are other veggies we love to eat like cauliflower, but it takes so much time to harvest and it only yields one head of cauliflower – whereas we go through too much cauliflower to try to grow it in the backyard. The crops we did plant are perfect to pick off when you need them and they still keep coming back.

2. Install a drip line

This was a lifesaver for us and our crops. When we first started our garden 3 years ago we were going out there everyday with a watering can or hose and it became very stressful if we missed a few days and our crops would start to suffer. Especially when we went on vacations for a week or more at a time – our crops were destroyed by the time we came back. So I hit up my dad for help to install a drip line and it was super easy to run soaker hoses and a timer. Now our garden is hands free and flourishes even when I fail to give it attention.

3. Check on your garden every day

Now just because you have a drip line doesn’t mean you shouldn’t check out your garden everyday. It’s always good just to get outside and get in the sun, especially if you’re stuck in an office all day looking at a computer, but more than that you need to check to see how your crops are doing. There may be snails tearing up your romaine or there can be those scary green worms attacking your tomatoes. You need to be out there everyday killing all those things that aren’t good for your garden. You don’t want to resort to spraying your precious beyond organic crops with something to ward off bugs – so you and your fingers need to be the “pesticide”. Just pinch them and kill them or if you’re a hippie you can collect them and release them in a field or something. I prefer to pull the snails off my romaine and throw them as hard as I can at the wall. I get angry when snails ruin my burger buns or taco shells.

4. Don’t go crazy washing your crops

This one is a little controversial because even if you don’t use pesticides in your backyard garden, your soil or municipal water may contain contaminants. What we’re looking for here is some of the good soil based probiotics to still remain on the crops. So go ahead and wash off the snail juice that’s all over your romaine or bird poop on your squash, but don’t freak out if you can’t get off all the dirt from your crops. You’ll be getting more soil based probiotics which is what we need most. Most probiotics you can get in a pill or from fermented stuff isn’t soil based. The best way to get soil based probiotics is to eat a little soil still left on your crops before you eat them. Just be sure to use the highest quality soil in your square foot gardens and do your own composting.

5. Actually eat it

The whole point of a garden is to grow food that you actually eat. It’s easy to get in a routine of tending to your garden and have it be self sustaining with the drip line and all but the whole point is that you’re growing food to eat for you and your family. So try not to let backyard gardening turn into a drag or a chore – let it be a fun thing and actually eat what you’re spending all your precious time and water growing.

6. Experiment with different recipes

Anyone whose grown zucchini before knows how to experiment with different recipes because once your zucchini starts to take off, you’ll have a hard time keeping up with cooking it all. You’ll also go crazy if all you do is make zucchini noodles for your spaghetti alternatives. Try to use your zucchini (or other veggies) in recipes you’ve never tried before. Feel free to have fun and experiment and if something turns out terrible – well now you know to never try it again.

7. Get your kids involved

Like I said at the beginning of this post, we converted our deep box that was intended for root veggies into a flower garden for our 2yr old. At the beginning of March we went out there and my wife helped our daughter plant a bunch of flower seeds we picked up from the store. So far it’s been really cool to see the flowers grow and for her to get excited about her garden. Our daughter is also really into the raspberries and strawberries we have growing. We pick them right off the plant or vine and we eat them right there on the spot. Getting your kids involved with a backyard garden is a really fun thing to do that gets you outside the house and into the dirt and sun.

Garden

Hopefully you found some of these tips helpful and will inspire you to get started on a backyard garden! If you have any tips for growing a backyard garden feel free to share them in the comments below. Thanks for reading!

Wildway Granola & Instant Hot Cereal Review

Wildway Granola

By now you know I’m a sucker for some good granola. Especially the kind that doesn’t have oats, which is pretty much every granola out there. I already found a really great granola, Paleonola, but browsing instagram one day I came across another contender in the Paleo granola market – Wildway. Which is great because the more companies, means the more competition to make great Paleo granola – and more flavors.

Wildway Instant Hot Cereal

Not only did I find some cool new Paleo granola, Wildway, I saw that they made a new product that I haven’t seen done before – basically a replacement for instant oatmeal! They call it instant hot cereal. It’s basically a ground up nut/seed mixture with dried dates and all you do is add hot water (hence the correlation to instant oatmeal) and voila – breakfast!

Wildway Instant Hot Cereal

So once I saw both of these products on their site I reached out to them to see if I could get my hands on their beautifully packaged products and they were more than happy to send me some samples of their granola and instant hot cereal.

As always with our product reviews, we will review the: Nutritional Profile, Affordability and Taste. Let’s get to it!

Nutritional Profile

Let’s take a look at their granola and instant hot cereal. First up their granola.

Wildway Granola

Wildway Apple Cinnamon
Total Fat: 10g
Total Carbohydrate: 12g (Dietary Fiber 3g, Sugars 8g)
Protein: 4g
Ingredients: Organic dates, apples, walnuts, sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds, dry roasted cashews (cashews, sea salt), pecans, cinnamon, nutmeg, vanilla bean.

Paleonola Apple Pie
Total Fat: 15g
Total Carbohydrate: 7g (Dietary Fiber 2g, Sugars 4g)
Protein: 4g
Ingredients: Almonds, Pecans, Pepitas, Honey, Walnuts, Coconut Oil, Sunflower Seeds, Flax Seeds, Dried Apple, Dried Coconut, Spices, Vanilla Extract. *Denotes Organic Ingredient

Nature’s Path Hemp Plus Granola
Total Fat: 3g
Total Carbohydrate: 10g (Dietary Fiber 2g, Sugars 4g)
Protein: 2g
Ingredients: Rolled oats, evaporated cane juice, soy oil, brown rice flour, flax seeds, hemp seeds, oat syrup solids* (oat syrup solids, tocopherols), sea salt, molasses. *Organic.

These two granolas, Paleonola and Wildway, are two different approaches to granola. Paleonola seems to roast their granola with coconut oil and such therefore giving way to a little more fat per serving than Wildway. There are slightly more carbs in Wildway’s granola than Paleonola, but that’s most likely due to the dates. Dates are pretty high in sugar. Both granolas though are much better options than the low fat high carb granolas like Nature’s path. Wildway fills you up and leaves you satisfied, while I could see myself downing a whole box of Nature’s Path and then feeling hungry in an hour.

I do like that Wildway and Paleonola take different approaches to sweetening their granolas. I wouldn’t say one is better than the other, just different. Some people may not do well with honey or dates so it’s a good thing we have options.

Now these hot cereals are something I’ve never seen so I had to google paleo instant oatmeal and I found this on Amazon. So here’s how the competition breaks down:

Wildway Instant Hot Cereal Nutrition Facts

Wildway Cinnamon Roll Instant Hot Cereal
Total Fat: 19g
Total Carbohydrate: 15g (Dietary Fiber 7g, Sugars 4g)
Protein: 7g
Ingredients: Walnuts, ground flaxseed, cashews, coconut flour, pecans, cinnamon, dried dates, vanilla bean.

Pure Traditions Instant Hot Cereal
Total Fat: 26g
Total Carbohydrate: 14g (Dietary Fiber 6g, Sugars 6g)
Protein: 14g
Ingredients: Hulled Hemp Seed, Almond, Organic Coconut, Organic Chia Seed, Organic Coconut Sugar, Konjac Root, Organic Cinnamon, Himalayan Pink Salt.

Quaker Apple & Cinnamon Instant Oatmeal
Total Fat: 2g
Total Carbohydrate: 33g (Dietary Fiber 4g, Sugars 12g)
Protein: 4g
Ingredients: Whole Grain Rolled Oats, Sugar, Dehydrated Apples (Treated With Sodium Sulfite To Promote Color Retention), Natural And Artificial Flavor, Salt, Cinnamon, Calcium Carbonate, Citric Acid, Guar Gum, Malic Acid, Niacinamide, Reduced Iron, Vitamin A Palmitate, Pyridoxine Hydrochloride, Riboflavin, Thiamin Mononitrate, Folic Acid*, Caramel Color

As you can see Quaker is obviously insane on carbs and offered little sustenance with only 2g of fat. I would feel sluggish and hungry after eating this instant oatmeal. So the real contender is between Wildway’s instant hot cereal and this one I had to look up from Pure Traditions (the serving size is a little larger for Pure Traditions, so the numbers are slightly inflated). Both take different approaches to sweetening and fat, which again is nice to have both options. One uses dates for the sweetener, and the other coconut sugar for the sweetener. One uses walnuts and cashews and the other uses hemp seeds and almonds. Both are still pretty high in fat, low on sugar and will offer a quick breakfast on the go. The Pure Traditions instant hot cereal does have double the protein which is pretty impressive, but this is probably attributed to the hemp seeds. You could do the same by throwing some hemp seeds on top of the Wildway instant hot cereal – which I normally keep on hand anyway for salads.

I never knew such a thing existed but it’s really a great replacement nutritionally to instant oatmeal packets, especially since their aren’t 10 different ingredients that I can’t pronounce, and the carbs are relatively low. These Wildway instant breakfast packets are definitely something I’m gonna need to have on hand in the office.

Affordability

Wildway Granola

Wildway Apple Cinnamon
10oz $7.99

Paleonola Apple Pie
10oz $8.99

Nature’s Path Hemp Plus Granola
11.5oz $3.69

Wildway and Paleonola both are drastically more expensive than the Nature’s Path, but that’s something I already addressed here. But in short it’s because nuts are expensive and oats are not. You’ll have to pay a little more for quality and for something that will sustain you and not leave you hungry in an hour.

Wildway Instant Hot Cereal

Wildway Cinnamon Roll Instant Hot Cereal
Price per packet: $1.50
Price per 4 pack (7oz): $5.99

Pure Traditions Instant Hot Cereal
Price per 8oz: $9.00

Quaker Apple & Cinnamon Instant Oatmeal
Price per packet: $0.25
Price per 4 pack: $2.50

It’s insane how cheap instant oatmeal packets are. Once again – oats are cheap – but just cause they’re cheap doesn’t mean you should be eating them. The Wildway packets break down to a pretty reasonable price for a quick breakfast on the go. They’re great options. The Pure traditions instant hot cereal is a little more and it doesn’t come in individual packets which I think is a huge downfall. I loved that I could grab the packets with my lunch – pour it in a paper cup at work and go to the hot water machine and boom – breakfast is served.

Someone could argue that the alternative is that I purchase all the ingredients used in Wildway’s instant hot cereal and grind it down myself, but let’s face it – no one has time for that, and I’m not sure if that would even be cheaper. I will choose for convenience and I will be coming back to Wildway for more instant host cereal packets.

Taste

The overall arching theme of Wildway’s granola and instant hot cereals, for me, was that they were not overly sweet, which I loved because it was like they didn’t force you to eat the carbs via sugar if you didn’t want to. You could always go back and add some honey or maple syrup if you wanted.

Now I took my time testing all these flavors because I really wanted to get a grasp of if I really liked them and if I would be coming back for more. Let’s see how they turned out:

Wildway Granola

Wildway Grain-free Granola: Apple Cinnamon
Super cinnamon tasting. More chewy than the other granola. Dates are more evenly chopped and dispersed than the other granolas as well. The chopped up apples are a nice texture as well.

Wildway Grain-free Granola: Banana Nut
Soft and chewy. Very much tastes like banana bread. Pretty strong cinnamon flavor too. Nice texture from the dried bananas. Just the right amount of sweet.

Wildway Grain-free Granola: Coconut Cashew
Nice coconut flavor. Soft and chewy, not sticky or crunchy. The dates are in big chunks and not chopped up. Would be nice if they were smaller so the sweetness was more even throughout.

Wildway Grain-free Granola: Vanilla Bean Espresso
Very strong coffee flavor! Soft and chewy. Not sweet by itself but tastes amazing with yogurt. Unlike anything I’ve ever tasted before. This was by far my favorite!

Wildway Instant Hot Cereal

Wildway Grain-free Instant Hot Cereal: Blueberry Flax
I really like this one. Nice texture and blueberry flavor. Though it has no added sweetener it doesn’t really need it like some of the others. I would literally eat this all the time for breakfast at work.

Wildway Grain-free Instant Hot Cereal: Cinnamon Roll
Very cinnamon tasting. Not really sweet but I don’t think it needs more sweetness. Nice texture. Just the right amount of sweetness. If you like cinnamon tasting things you’ll love this one. Very oatmeal like and reminds me of the packets I used to eat pre-Primal.

Wildway Grain-free Instant Hot Cereal: Java Chip
Very coffee flavored. Not sweet at all, could use a little more sweetness. Very filling. Nice cocoa flavor and crunch from the coffee and cocoa nibs.

Wildway Grain-free Instant Hot Cereal: Original
Real good normal instant oatmeal replacement. Just the right amount of sweetness actually. Nice texture, smooth. Would be nice to add berries on top. No need to add sweetener. Noticeably pleasant vanilla flavor.

Wildway Grain-free Instant Hot Cereal: Toasted Coconut
Not very sweet, could use some more. Very filling. I would use less water with this one. It has a very oatmeal-like texture. It takes some getting used to since most instant oatmeal is super sweet.

So will I be coming back for more? Yes. Overall my favorite of both were the Vanilla Bean Espresso Granola and the Blueberry Flax Instant Hot Cereal. All the different flavors would appear to different people so it’s nice to see the variety Wildway has to offer.

Conclusion

Again, thank you Wildway for sending me your products to review. Y’all were more than generous. For all the readers I suggest you check out some of their granola and instant hot cereal because both are definitely nice to have on hand for when you don’t have time to cook up some bacon and eggs or if you’re looking for an after dinner snack. Thanks for reading!

Buy some for yourself:

Affording Primal

Ever since I went Primal I started doing all the grocery shopping. Prior to eating Primal we never really set a budget or cared about grocery shopping, or more or less it wasn’t a thing. We just went shopping for whatever and spent whatever. Heck, when I first started Primal we had a dual income and no kids. Now my family and I are single income and two kids! How in the heck are we still affording to eat Primal?!

I have done a lot of refining over the past few years on what our weekly meals look like and more importantly what our budget looks like. To really get Primal right and your budget right, I think we really need to understand what the main focus of Primal eating really is. Paleo and Primal both emphasize eating:

Meat, Fish, Fowl & Eggs
Vegetables
Healthy Fats
High Fat Dairy (if you tolerate it)

Now when you look at that list for what to eat when you go Primal, you see that all the cheap foods are cut out, beans, rice, breads, pastas, etc… But what makes the above list even more expensive is when you really dial down the quality of these things. We should be eating all grass fed and free range meats because of the proper Omega 3 and Omega 6 balance. We should be only eating all Organic vegetables to limit our intake of pesticides and insecticides. We should be only eating grass fed animal fats. We should be only eating raw high fat dairy.

But you see all these shoulds are at the top end of the spectrum of what is the most healthiest of the above listed points because it corrects Omega 3 and Omega 6 balance. So what are we to do? I believe each family and person needs to decide what battles they are going to fight. What end of the healthiest Primal food spectrum you want to live on. Not all of us can afford pastured meats and Organic vegetables all the time. I saw this post talking about what are the most important grass fed items to consume if you had to choose and the most helpful piece in that article was at the very bottom where he said:

Grass-fed animal foods aren’t a deal breaker for successfully going Primal. You can be incredibly healthy without ever sniffing a piece of grass-fed lamb.

Then I read this post that’s in the similar vain of what I’m writing about here and the very last sentence really gets to the core of the issue:

It’s better to start with a less optimal version of the Paleo diet than never start at all.

So…

All that is to say, if you can’t afford top quality meats, veggies and fats – still go Primal and eat the highest quality of what you can afford. That’s the guiding principal I take every time I plan meals for my family.

I’m going to be completely honest here, listed below are the ways in which I govern my grocery shopping. Our weekly budget for the regular grocery store every week is around $70-$100. My budget for Costco every month is $300. So what I do before I even decide what meals I want to make for the week is check what meats are on sale. Once I see what meats are on sale, I build my meals for the week in my notes app on my phone. From there I then list out all the items I need for said meals in the notes app and only buy those things once I get to the grocery store. I happen to work right across the street from a Costco, so I pop in there for occasional items that I need when I run out of them or if my regular grocery store doesn’t carry them and/or has a better price on them. Listed below are the guiding principals for my food purchases for my family.

Meat, Fish, Fowl & Eggs: I can’t afford grass fed beef unless its on sale and ground. Otherwise, I get whatever meat is on sale at the regular grocery store (Stater Brothers). If it’s ground beef, I buy the lean ground beef and add in either Kerrygold butter or coconut oil while cooking. I always just buy whole chickens now and roast them in my skillet in the oven. I buy the rotisserie chicken when I go to the store because it saves me time when I get home from work and grocery shopping and there isn’t anything weird listed on the ingredients. I rarely buy any other meats at Costco because the regular grocery store is cheaper. The only meats I buy at Costco are bacon because it’s dirt cheap. I also did some digging on yelp and cragslist and found a really cool egg farm near us and on my way home from work that we now get our eggs from. They’re higher quality than anything at Costco and Stater Bros and cheaper. It’s a win win.
Vegetables: The only produce I buy that’s Organic is the mixed salad greens. It’s not too expensive and we eat a lot of it. Other than that I don’t really focus too much on buying conventional unless the Organic counterpart isn’t that much more expensive. But once again, I really only buy whatever vegetables are on sale too. That includes the frozen veggies also. Whatever bags are on sale I just grab a bunch at either the regular grocery store or the really big bags at Costco.
Healthy Fats: This is where I’m really strict about what fats we use to cook with and to eat. We’ve cut out all industrial seed oils and never use them at all. The only fats we use are Kerrygold butter, Organic Extra Virgin Olive Oil, Avocado Oil, Coconut Oil, the occasional regular salted butter from Costco if we run out of Kerrygold, and bacon drippings. All of which I purchase from Costco.
High Fat Dairy: I can’t afford raw dairy. The health food store near us sells one brand and it’s just too expensive to even consider it. Yet I still need cheese… We get Kerrygold cheese from Costco but we just use pre shredded cheddar or mozzarella for eggs. I know there is potato starch and weird stuff in them, but I just don’t have time to shred cheese every time we eat breakfast because I normally have a 2yr old yelling at me. I have yet to find a whole milk Kefir at my grocery store. We also get Daisy brand sour cream. We never buy milk, we tried to give our toddler some Organic milk, but she just spit it out so we don’t even bother.

Overall the grocery store trip is cheap and easy if you go in with a little planning and pair it with very precise Costco trips to get things like bacon and healthy fats.

This is the key takeaway here that I hope I’m not sounding like I’m just repeating the same thing. The alternative to super premium quality meats, veggies and fats shouldn’t be an unhealthy conventional non-Primal diet. If you and your family is still eating a crazy amount of veggies, some meats and good fats – regardless of quality, you’ll still be healthier than the alternative. Currently, this is where me and my family are. Maybe one day I can afford a grass fed cow share, and shop the non sale Organic items, but for now I’m trying to keep my family healthy by cutting out industrial seed oils, grains, legumes and focusing on eating meats, veggies and healthy fats. Thanks for reading and feel free to leave a comment on how you and your family afford eating Primal.

Easy Honey Roasted Vegetables

Looking for a way to make veggies less boring? All you have to do is roast them in a bunch of fat, some fresh herbs and a little bit of honey.

No joke it’s that easy. I’m always looking for ways to minimize my time in the kitchen and roasting veggies is the easiest way to do that. I prefer a mix of broccoli, cauliflower and carrots. Now you can use fresh if you want to, but honestly I’m too lazy to cut all the different ones and all that, plus flash frozen veggies tend to be fresher because they are frozen right after they’re harvested. I call that a win win, but the choice is up to you. The cook time just may be a little less for fresh veggies over frozen. Costco has a pretty good selection of huge bags of frozen veggies. That’s where I tend to get mine or if I run out I just get them at Stater Bros.

Pair these veggies with the protein of your choice and you’ll have about 10 minutes total kitchen time and then all you have to do is wait for your veggies to roast to perfection. While they’re roasting feel free to play with your kids, run around with the dog or take a nap.

Fresh herbs

Before Oven
Before the oven

Close up with fresh herbs

After oven
After the oven

Crispy
Crispy & sweet

Easy Honey Roasted Vegetables

2016-03-21 20:32:38

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Ingredients

1lb mixed fresh or frozen veggies (I prefer the ones with broccoli, cauliflower and carrots)
1/2T honey
3T extra virgin olive oil
1/2t Kosher salt
1/4t pepper
Handful of fresh thyme (or 1/2t dried thyme)
Handful of fresh mint (or 1/2t dried mint)

Instructions

Preheat oven to 425.
Pour veggies onto baking tray. Measure out (or eyeball it) and pour all ingredients onto veggies and mix it all together. Try not to crowd the veggies or else they will take forever to crisp up.
Roast in oven for 35–45 minutes depending on if they’re fresh or frozen. You really just need to keep watching them and pull them out of the oven when they are at your desired crispness. I like to stir them only once throughout the roasting.
Once they’re done, pull them out and serve with your protein of choice. Enjoy!

That's So Primal https://www.thatssoprimal.com/

Epic Review

When I first went Primal, I was always on the lookout for Primal snacks. It was tough shifting from burning carbs for energy to burning fat for energy at first. I would get super hungry between lunch and dinner on the way home from work. So I searched online for what would be a good Primal snack. As it turns out, jerky and nuts are a great source of protein and fat to hold you over until dinner. During that time I came across something called Pemmican. I so badly wanted to try making some but I was just too lazy. Then I came across Epic. They were basically a modern take on Pemmican, they had meat, berries and fat in the form of nuts. I had to order some.

I ordered a box of the Turkey Almond Cranberry bars and they were the perfect snack for in between meals, or hikes or camping. Perfectly Primal. Then not too long after that I noticed that Epic started branching out to jerky and trail mix packs. First of all, I was super interested to check out these new jerky and nut packs because they just looked so cool. Once again, being that I’m a designer by trade, I got enticed with all this amazing branding and package design. So I reached out to Epic to see if I could review some of their newer products since I was already familiar with their Pemmican-esque bars that you can check out here. Epic was kind enough to send me some of their Bites and one of their Hunt & Harvest packs. So as with any review I wanted to check out the three main categories: Nutritional Profile, Affordability and Taste.

Nutritional Profile

Epic has a bunch of different products and they just keep expanding. So Like I said I started with their bars, then they created some bites and bits, trail mix packs – and now they’re branching out to selling pastured cooking fats and bone broth. What we’re looking at today is their Bites and their Hunt & Harvest packs.

Epic Bacon Bites
Bacon Bites
Total Fat: 7g
Total Carbohydrate: 0g (Dietary Fiber 0g, Sugars 0g)
Protein: 10g
Ingredients: Uncured Bacon (Pork, Water, Sea Salt, Vinegar, Celery Powder), Natural Pork
What? Zero Carbs? Whats not to love about the nutritional profile of these. The way they get away with that is because there is no sugar used for curing or added sugar after the jerky is made. If you’re looking for a perfectly Primal snack, you can’t go wrong with these. Packing some fat and protein and zero carbs. You’re on your way to becoming a fat burning beast.

Chicken Sesame BBQ Bites
Total Fat: 2.5g
Total Carbohydrate: 8g (Dietary Fiber 1g, Sugars 6g)
Protein: 9g
Ingredients: Natural Chicken, Organic Currants, Sea Salt, Garlic, Onion, Sesame Seeds, Sesame Oil, Ginger, Black Pepper, Red Pepper Flakes, Red Pepper
This chicken jerky comes in with a little more carbs and less fat, but it’s still a low sugar snack and perfectly Primal.

Epic Honest Harvest
Honest Harvest
Total Fat: 8g
Total Carbohydrate: 4g (Dietary Fiber 0g, Sugars 3g)
Protein: 9g
Ingredients: Jerky (grass fed organic beef, wildflower honey, water, salt, organic apple cider vinegar, yeast extract, organic black pepper, celery powder, organic garlic powder). Nut Mix (roasted almonds, roasted pecans, roasted Brazil nuts, pistachios).
This is such a great little package. Packing just the right amount of fat and protein for a snack or on the go meal. Low sugar and real whole ingredients with grass fed beef.

All of these products have an impressive nutritional profile. Epic really focuses on high quality ingredients, pastured raised meats leading to high omega–3 & CLA, gluten free, soy free and low glycemic, paleo friendly snacks. So it’s without a doubt that not just these but any of Epic’s products have an amazing nutritional profile. With their products you don’t have to worry about high fructose corn syrup or other weird ingredients that you don’t know how to pronounce. It’s all real ingredients, not something some scientist invented in a lab.

Affordability

Now this is where things get a little dicey. I love Epics products, but they can be a little pricey. It’s all about comparison though. If you compare this chicken or pork jerky with other jerky you find in the grocery store or gas station it will be filled with sugar and soy – cheap ingredients no doubt. So what happens when you remove the cheap ingredients and use high quality pastured raised meats? The product becomes more expensive, thus we have Epic coming in as follows:

Bacon & Chicken Bites
Price per pack: $6.25
Price per box of 8: $50

Honest Harvest
Price per pack: $3.88
Price per box of 8: $31

Oberto Bacon Jerky
Price per pack: $4.68

Now I put the price of a sorta comparable Oberto Bacon Jerky up there to compare and see that yea Epic is slightly more expensive for a comparable product and size (2.5 oz bag) but the difference is in the ingredients. Oberto’s Bacon Jerky is cured pork with sugar, unlike Epic’s which is uncured. So if uncured pork is a big thing for you, I would say Epic is the way to go if you’re willing to pay the extra money, otherwise Oberto isn’t necessarily a bad option if you’re not concerned with the quality of your protein, as I assume Oberto’s pork is CAFO.

Finding a comparable product for the Hunt & Harvest pack is kinda difficult as there really isn’t any other product out there marketed like this. Sure you could go buy some grass fed jerky yourself and some nuts and come in less expensive, but you’re paying for convenience with this pack. It’s about having a nice little snack for when a craving hits or when you’re on the go – hiking, camping, running from meeting to meeting. For the price I think it’s a great deal to have for when that craving hits.

Taste

I’ve never really been a fan of sweet jerky or really tough jerky and that’s where Epics jerky really shines. They’re all low sugar and very moist so win win. Let’s take a closer look at all the flavors they sent me:

Epic Bacon Bites
Bacon Bites
Soft. Salty. Pork. Expect nothing else and expect nothing more. If you like salty you’ll love this. I really liked these bacon bites. Not tough at all and not sweet at all which is what I like. Pretty great.

Epic Chicken Sesame BBQ Bites
Chicken Sesame BBQ Bites
I normally am not a fan of chicken jerky but I really liked this one. It was just the right amount of sweet from the currants and has a pleasant sesame taste to the jerky. Both of these jerkys aren’t just straight dehydrated muscle meat. They’re sorta ground up and turned into strips and cut up. Sounds gross but it actually works for both of these jerkys.

Epic Honest Harvest
Honest Harvest
Now this is a cool little idea. There are two sides to this pack that have jerky on one side and mixed nuts on the other side. When you open the ziplock you open the divider as well and mix it all together.

Epic Hunt Harvest
Jerky and nuts separated for freshness

Mix Contents
Instructions on how to mix after you open up the bag

Mixed together
Voila, you have a nice little grass fed trail mix

The jerky is traditional grass fed muscle meat dehydrated and the nuts are simply mixed dry roasted nuts. Both of these together had a great trail mix salty taste. The jerky is much tougher than the other stuff but the flavor is nice and salty and peppery. Not sweet at all. I really like the idea of this pack and suggest having a few on hand just for emergency hikes or if you’re strapped for time and need some quick protein and fat.

Conclusion

Epic is onto some great things. They’re a promising company with some pretty amazing products and I look forward to trying out all their new stuff like their cooking fats and bone broth. I’m glad there are companies like Epic out there dedicated to making whole food snacks, with fat and high quality protein. Feel free to share in the comments what your favorite Epic products are. Thanks for reading.

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