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!

Wheat, Wine & Mini Marrows

So far this year I've been to 3 harvest festivals. That's not bad going is it? I've also been to one harvest tea and one harvest supper. The food at the harvest supper was very nice but I didn't linger over it as I was eager to get back home to watch the rugby with the rest of the Bears Unlimited guys (the harvest supper took place on the same night as England's semi-final match against France, which was, after all, essential viewing).

The harvest celebrations have been a bit subdued this year as it's been a tough year for the farmers, what with bird flu, summer flooding, foot & mouth and blue tongue. We're lucky though, and a bad harvest doesn't mean we have to go hungry.


As you can see from the first of today's pictures we managed to accumulate a wonderful selection of harvest produce at one of the churches. I couldn't wait to try the scrumptious looking harvest loaf but was disappointed to learn that harvest loaves don't make good eating as they contain a lot of salt to keep them looking their best. Please note also, that the wine to the left of the picture has is Fair Trade - strangely enough I wasn't allowed that either.


See what I found decorating the top of the font. There were some really cool mini marrows as I called them - they were probably small squashes or gourds to be really precise. Perhaps I look a bit girlie though with those flowers decorating my ears. I reckon that if I'd draped that wonderfully coloured cloth round my shoulders I'd have looked just like Joseph with his coat of many colours.

Lots of love, Bris xxx

Happy Easter (Part 2)

Another reason that we like Easter so much is because of the great food that is associated with it.

Bears just love Hot Cross buns especially toasted with real butter. In fact Sebastian and Marmaduke like them so much that they said they would be happy to eat nothing else but Hot Cross buns all day, provided the local shop could bake enough to satisfy their bear sized appetites.

In our first picture you see these two guys tucking into their breakfast buns. As you can see from Sebastian's face eating buns is a serious business.


By the time it gets to Easter Sunday, however, we have satisfied our Hot Cross bun craving sufficiently to get excited about chocolate Easter eggs. Buying Easter eggs this year has, however, been a bit difficult for us. Let us tell you why. As you will know from recent blogs we are keen supporters of Fair Trade and have undertaken to only buy Fair Trade chocolate as we won't buy from companies that condone child slave labour.

We are very unhappy with the leading supermarkets as the range of Fair Trade Easter eggs on sale has been very poor, for some of our friends it was non-existent, they failed to secure a Fair Trade egg after visiting 3 major supermarkets. We feel some 'disappointed of Norfolk' letters to the supermarket managers coming on.


As you see in our picture above we did have some success but we would have liked more choice. We tracked down a 'Divine' Fair Trade egg, which turned out to be a good one as it included chocolate brazils, another bear favourite. As this was the only Fair Trade egg we found we had to make do with the CO-OPs selection of Fair Trade chocolates as an alternative. Although this box of chocs is disappointingly not egg shaped, we do have to admit they are worth having as there are some rather special flavours. How do Berry Burst, Fudge Crunch and Madagascan Vanilla sound to you? For our nutella loving friend Bear, there is even one called 'nut heaven'.

Hopefully in our Easter blog next year things will be different, and there will be so much choice we will have to make decisions about which Fair Trade egg to buy, here's hoping!

Have a lovely holiday Monday,

Lots of love from all at B.U. xxx

The Simnel Cake gets a Thumbs Up

We had a special Mothering Sunday service at one of our village churches and we all went along.

Bris and Jimmy helped out with the distribution of posies of flowers and were pleased that their busy paws had prepared sufficient quantities for everyone present, not just mothers, to have a lovely posy of daffodils to take home.


We were all very impressed with the simnel cake that the Vicar had prepared and talked about in his sermon. This is often associated with Easter but we found out that originally it was given by servant girls to their mothers when they went home on Mothering Sunday, so it is more properly a Mothering Sunday cake.

We were all able to have a slice of this delicious cake with our coffee after the service. As Bris and Jimmy had been so helpful with the flowers they got to have the first slice and here we see Jimmy eagerly awaiting the cutting of the cake.


We especially liked the marzipan topping and the marzipan balls on the top of the cake. Did you know that the 12 balls represent the 12 apostles? Have the sharp eyed among you also spotted the fair trade chocolate wafers on the table?

Lots of love, Jimmy, Bris and the gang xxx

Easy Shopping the Ethical Way

One of our minders has a birthday coming up and we couldn't think of any better place to search for a present than the Traidcraft mail order catalogue. There is just so much choice of lovely and exotic fair trade gifts, ranging from lovely patterned clothes to equisite wall hangings and carvings, jewellery and items for the house and garden. And the great thing is that these gifts are absolutley unique -you won't find them in the shops.

Sorry, but we can't tell you what we're getting our minder as she might read this. However, we can reveal that we're giving up buying nutella, having recently found out some of the awful things that go on in the cocoa platations, and are putting in a big order to Traidcraft for their fair trade chocolate hazelnut spread.

If you want to do the same checkout www.traidcraftshop.co.uk

Love from all at Bears Unlimited xxx

More Happy Munching

Taste testing fair trade products at home is all very well, but we needed to go public and win some converts to the fair trade concept. After a Bears Unlimited team meeting, we decided that the best way to achieve our goal would be to bake some delicious cakes using fair trade ingredients and then have a coffee morning in one of our local church halls, serving fair trade drinks with the cakes of course.

We thought we'd baked extra large quantities of cakes: hazelnut & chocolate brownies, fruity banana bread and pecan toffee whirls, so there would be plenty left for us to eat at the end, as you've got to admit they do sound mouth wateringly delicious!


However, we were completely bowled over by demand for our fair trade cakes. They literally flew off the plates and all our happy customers said they would now be looking for the fair trade logo next time they went shopping.

As you can see from our picture, our success meant that there wasn't much left to take home at the end. Just a couple of the hazelnut brownies topped by coffee icing. Mind you, these really do tickle a bear's taste buds as the chocolate /hazelnut combination is rather similar to that staple of a bear diet - nutella. (Note to our friend Bear, we'll send you the recipe).

The other great thing about our coffee morning is that it raised a lot of money which we will be sending off to Traidcraft.

All in all, a good morning's work.

Lots of love, all at Bears Unlimited xxx

Taste Buds in Action

Chelmer and Rocko returned from their trip to Morrisons with lots of fair trade products. We decided to have a fair trade tasting session to critically evaluate the products and see if we could recommend them to our friends, not only on ethical grounds, but also on grounds of taste.


As you'll see from our picture we put to the test: tea, coffee, hot chocolate, wine and bananas. We all had a taste / sip of each and compared tasting notes. Not surprisingly the wine proved to be the most popular but that probably says more about the audience than the product!

The verdict from us all is, buy fair trade products as they do taste good as well as doing the producers a lot of good.

We do like a win/win situation.

Lots of love, Chef Oakly and the tasting team xxx

Please Support Fair Trade Fortnight

As we hope our readers are aware, it's currently Fair Trade fortnight. We, at Bears Unlimited, are very enthusiastic supporters of Fair Trade products and we really want the growers of the products we enjoy, to earn a fair wage. We can't bear to think of it being otherwise.

Yesterday Rocko and I (Chelmer) popped along to our local Morrison's supermarket where we usually shop. We wanted to make sure that Fair trade fortnight was being properly advertised in the store and there was lots of attention drawn to fair trade products.

We got off to a good start, finding an advertising board in the shop entrance.


However, we did have to turn it round as we thought it important that shoppers saw it as they came in, not as they left (there was a different advert on the other side).

As we toured the shop, we did get increasingly disappointed. Although there were fair trade products on sale there was nothing to draw attention to them and no promotional material.

We will have to write to Mr Morrison as we don't think it is good enough. We hope you will do the same if your supermarket is not giving enough support to fair trade fortnight.

In the meantime, talking of Morrison's, Blue Bear is currently checking out Bearmobile 2 as she was filled up with petrol on the very day the fuel scare hit the news. Paws crossed everybody!

Lots of love Chelmer, Rocko and the gang xxx