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