Hope you had a Good Easter

It's probably a bit late to wish our readers a Happy Easter now, but we hope you had a good one and managed to stay warm in these artic conditions which persist.

Over the Easter period we have enjoyed a good mix of reflection and contemplation ...

... which started in the run up to Easter with our 'Time to be Still' sessions, where the church was simply and beautifully decorated with icons and lights, which we loved ... 

... followed by Good Friday reflections, where we spent time in our version of the Garden of Gethsemene ...

... and laid lit candles around a big cross after carrying it round the Church ...

We've also had lots of fun and family time too, with a visit from the Suffolk and Midlands branches, a good walk, a visit to Fakenham races and lots of lovely shared meals ...

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... not to mention a feast of Easter eggs and other chocolate goodies. We did feel a tinge of guilt at eating this chick's nest and eggs, but he hasn't gone homeless and now has a fine home with us in our bear cave.

Lots of love from us all to you all

All at Bears Unlimited xxx

Easter Comes Early

What a lovely basket full of chocolate eggs: Easter has indeed come early this year.


So how did we come by this bounty?

Our picture shows the principal members of the Bears Unlimited dog walking team, and this basket of eggs is a thank you present to them for services rendered this week.

Our guest at the Bear Cave for a few days this week, has been one of our all time favourites, Dilly Dog. You may well remember her from previous posts as she is quite a regular visitor.


It's always a pleasure having Dilly to stay as she is so friendly and well-behaved, although, having set out dog walking at 6.40 a.m. on Friday, to fit it in to a busy day, we did feel we had earned our eggs.

If we can keep our paws off the eggs for a day or two, we think it might be fun to organise an Easter egg hunt as we've got some great hiding places.

Lots of love, the Bears Unlimited dog walkers 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

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