Glory Foods Gift Basket Review & Giveaway

Southern food is so yummy.  Cornbread just out of the oven, ready to be spread with butter. Spicy red beans and rice. Seasoned greens. Sweet fried apples.  All so delicious, but so time-consuming to make!

If you love Southern food but don't have the time to cook it, give Glory Foods a try!

Glory Foods is the category leader in Southern-style, heat-and-serve products including seasoned canned vegetables, cooking bases, hot sauces and fresh greens. They have an array of ready-to-eat and fresh products, including spinach, fried apples, low-sodium green beans, cornbread mix and fresh kale.

According to the Glory Foods website, using the delicious dishes served in his Columbus, Ohio soul food restaurant as inspiration, William F. “Bill” Williams and three partners launched Glory Foods in 1989. The vision for this food company, steeped in generations of Southern-style recipes and flavors, came to the table during a friendly discussion about holiday dinner preparation. Williams mentioned to friends the number of hours and care that went into cooking a savory pot of collard greens and how no African-American family celebration is complete without them. How great it would be to have truly authentic canned collard greens, Williams thought. After extensive research, Williams and his partners realized that pre-seasoned, canned collard greens were not available anywhere. So they set out to launch Glory Foods. The company has since become synonymous with quality, convenience and flavorful Southern-style vegetables.

Over the past several years, Glory has been able to expand its line to offer 85 products, including seasoned canned greens, bagged fresh greens and other vegetables, the Sensibly Seasoned low sodium product line, Seasoned Cooking Bases and a line of hot sauces.

I had the chance to try out many Glory Foods products that were delivered in the gift basket photographed above. One Sunday night, my extended family and I gathered for some fried chicken and all of these great Glory Foods products.

The biggest hits were the cornbread mixes.   I had baked cornbread muffins with the mixes based on the package directions. They were easy to make and easy to clean up afterward.  The yellow cornbread muffins were scarfed up immediately.  The white cornbread muffins followed suit.  As my youngest daughter said, "The cornbread muffins taste like corn!"

And guess what else tasted like corn?  That's right, the corn!  The cream style skillet corn was a big hit with my youngest as well, and I liked the peppery taste of them.

Another big hit was the fried apples.  They were sweet and held together well, yet melted in my mouth.  My middle daughter asked for seconds... and then thirds.  

I was surprised that canned red beans and rice - canned rice? - would turn out as well as it did.  Of course, it wasn't the same as red beans and rice from scratch, but then again I didn't spend hours making it, either.  We added some of the spicy Vidalia hot sauce to it to make it even more spicy - yum! 

I generally don't eat much greens, so I wasn't sure what to expect when I tried the turnip greens.  They were surprisingly good!  They were full of flavor from onions and garlic.  They were a little on the salty side, though.  We also tried the low-sodium green beans - I thought these were a little mushy, even for canned green beans.

Other products in this gift basket that we didn't get a chance to try were Great Northern beans, chicken seasoned cooking base, and country cabbage.

To learn more about Glory Food Products, you can visit the Glory Foods website, become a fan on Facebook, or follow on Twitter. And there are lots of great recipes using Glory Foods demonstrated on the Glory Foods YouTube channel!

Have I made your mouth water with this review, and would you like to try Glory Foods products?  They're available at local retailers nationwide.  Go to the Glory Foods Product Locator to find a store near you. 

Or would you like to try them for free?

Frugal Follies is hosting a giveaway for a free Glory Foods gift basket! Your gift basket will contain all of the Glory Foods products listed above.

To enter, use the Rafflecopter below! This giveaway is open to US and Canadian residents 18 and older.  This giveaway ends on Friday, October 26, 2012, at 12:01 am.  A winner will be chosen randomly soon after the end of the giveaway.  The winner will be contacted by email, and the winner must respond within 72 hours.  If the winner does not respond, that person will be ruled ineligible and another winner will be chosen.  This giveaway is in no way associated with Facebook.


a Rafflecopter giveaway

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