Going Bananas

We don't know about the other big supermarkets, but our local one, Morrissons, has loads of great offers on fair trade products at the moment, to coincide with Fair Trade fortnight.

Of particular interest to banana lovers Monkey, Ellie and Billy, when we visited last weekend, was the 25% reduction on fair trade bananas. These 3 decided that we should take advantage of the offer and buy twice as many bananas as usual. One of the reasons we could do this with confidence was because of the purchase of our new banana bag. You will see it, along with our fair trade bananas, in our picture.


The banana bag, purchased the week before last, is already proving a great hit with us all. It is lovely and yellow and it keeps bananas fresh in the fridge for up to 2 weeks. This is simply great as we all prefer a nice fresh banana rather than a black and furry one.

If you want to take maximum advantage of great offers, like the Morrisson's bananas discount, get yourself a banana bag, and you can do some serious bulk buying. Don't forget to look for the fair trade label though.

We're loathe to tell you where they come from, as we think they would make great Christmas present for our families, but since we hope there will be people reading who won't be getting a present from us (sorry!), we'll let you know that you can buy them in Lakeland (formerly Lakeland Plastics.

Lots of love, the Bears Unlimited Fair Trade supporters (that's all of us!) xxx

Fair Trade Tastes Good

Hopefully we've got our readers so well trained now, that you will all be aware of, and supporting, Fair Trade fortnight, which is now half way through.

We all had a lovely time at a fair trade wine tasting last Monday. If this gives you a sense of deja vu, then, yes, we did attend a similar event last year and report it in our blog. It went so well last year that it simply had to be repeated, hence last Monday's event. While it is always nice drinking wine, what we really enjoy is chatting to other people about what they think of each bottle, and inevitably the conversations take some interesting turns and we find ourselves chatting quite happily to people we may hardly have known before the event.


The lady who organises the wine tasting is our local Traidcraft distributor, so just after the event Gio and I spent a pleasant hour going through the Traidcraft catalogue and placing a big order. It feels good to have a significant part of our Christmas shopping already in hand, as well as lots of lovely fair trade chocolate and snacks on the way for us all to enjoy.

We'll be back soon with another fair trade report.

Lots of love Gio, Bris and all at Bears Unlimited xxx

Our Oz Clarke Impersonations

As promised, here we are again to tell you about the second reason this has been an important week.

The Suffolk Branch made a good guess, but no, it isn't that the Masterchef 2009 final was on Thursday (although we did enjoy the series and felt that the right man won). What we were referring to was the Fair Trade wine tasting evening we attended as part of Fair Trade fortnight.

This was a really fun event but with a serious purpose: to introduce lots of people to Fair Trade wine, show them how good it is, and to encourage them to buy Fair Trade wines as well as lots of other lovely Fair Trade products.


Here you see Gio and Bris leading the way and getting stuck into the tasting. We tried 3 reds, 3 whites, a rose and a sparkling wine and we had tasting notes to help us appreciate the finer points. Comparing notes with the many people who attended was great fun and we found it really interesting to discover that a wine that was someone's favourite would be someone else's least favourite wine (not that there were any bad ones).

We were very grateful to our local CO-OP who had donated several of the bottles we tasted, and also to our wonderful hosts who provided a case of mixed bottles from the Traidcraft catalogue, and also lots of lovely nibbles.

We can't recommend Fair Trade wines, and all Fair Trade products enough. What can be more important as you drink a glass of wine or cup of tea, and eat a meal, than knowing that you are helping to address the injustices of conventional trade, which discriminate against the poorest, weakest producers and allow practices such as slave labour to continue.

Please look for the Fair Trade logo when you are shopping and remember that your local CO-OP and Traidcraft (you can order on-line) offer a lovely selection of wines.

Lots of love, all at Bears Unlimited xxx

P.S. actually we didn't do Oz Clarke impersonations as we drank our wine and didn't spit out any!