Fairtrade chocolate crunch!

Today Ellis and I made a recipe from the  Sainsbury’s online website – click on Sainsbury’s to get the link. But we discovered it was the school favourite Chocolate crunch with added brazil nuts and bananas. As Ellis hated the bananas and nuts, she was delighted to make the discovery that she had made her favourite school desert, and just needed Daddy to make the Custard.

Anyway the important bit all ingredients that can be were supermarket own brand fairtrade ingredients. That is easy to get, cheap and ordinary ingredients…so even easy to ‘go fairtrade’. Anyway here is our version of fairtrade chocolate crunch (with Nuts n Bananas)

Fairtrade chocolate crunch

1. Preheat the oven to 190ºC, fan 170ºC, gas 5. Peel and slice the bananas and arrange in the base of a 1-litre ovenproof dish.

2. In a separate bowl, place the flour, chilled butter, drinking chocolate and sugar. Rub the mixture together with your fingertips until the mixture resembles fine breadcrumbs.

3. Stir in the nuts and then sprinkle the mixture over the bananas. Bake the dish for 15-20 minutes or until piping hot. Remove from the oven and rest for 5 minutes and then serve for a gooey, fruity dessert.

4. Get family to taste….enjoy xxx

cu tomorrow. Let me know what you think of the recipes and please comment if you have found some unusual or cool things to swap for fairtrade

Rach xx

nuts about fairtrade

Today my idea was to make a video of me eating fairtrade nuts – but I have a stinky cold so that just wouldn’t be entertaining!! (because a video of someone eating is always entertaining….lol

Also I have the slight problem that I saw the packet of co op fair-trade peanuts and scoffed the lots….oops. (Hubby is not happy) The good news is I still have the Sainsbury’s brazil nuts ready for my saturday fair trade recipe extravaganza..watch this space.

Let me know what you have swapped!

love n hugs

Rach x

p.s Hubby has just reminded me to tell you that coop nuts are the best peanuts ever.. please try them xx

Fairtrade tea n Coffee

Hello peeps

Welcome to Fairtrade fortnight – 4 days late but a big welcome all the same  Sorry I haven’t been updating you on the fairtrade blog, but rest assured I have been swapping my shopping for Fairtrade, and can’t wait to tell you about the cool stuff I’ve swapped. If any of you lovely people have found any unusual items please let me know in the comments section.

I am hoping also to do some vlogging -(video blogging to the uninitiated), my technical support guy (my better half), has been very busy and unfortunately I can’t manage it on my own!! But watch this space as the weekend is almost upon us, and you may get a visual blog as well.

First things first don’t forget to register  your swaps on the Fairtrade Foundation website. (click on the name and it should take you there).

My first swap I want to tell you about is…..tea and coffee. I can’t  actually swap  my drinks for a Fairtrade brand as all my tea n coffee is  already Fairtrade (and yes that includes green tea.) There are many brands out there to choose from like clipper and cafe direct . But many supermarkets have there own brand tea and coffee . All Coop and Sainsbury’s own brand  tea and coffee is Fairtrade. Think how good it makes you feel drinking tea you know is making a difference to poor communities in the world. If you have a favourite fairtrade cupper, let me know in the comments below.

love  n hugs

c u tomorrow

Rach xx

Here is some encouragement for you to swap your tea xxx

hello again

Hello you lovely people
This year I am not just eating fairtrade. Instead I am going to find unusual foods to swap everyday……………..let me know if you have some interesting things that you can get fairtrade!!

love n hugs

Rach xx

Moving to Bristol………

Soon I’m moving to Bristol. Hubby is an ordinand, and will soon be training at Trinity College. All very interesting I hear you say, but what’s that got to do with fairtrade! Well I was researching about my new place of residence in North Bristol and found out my MP is a cooperative and labour MP- I’m not 100% sure what this means yet, but it must be good for fairtrade…….

Fairtrade Forum is now open!

Further to Rach’s post, we have now offically opened the Fairtrade forum for discussion, please feel free to drop by and say hello!

As a consequence the blog has been moved, please update your bookmarks: www.thecommunitypub.co.uk/blog

Forum is at : www.thecommunitypub.co.uk/forum

A portal for both sites is now up at : www.thecommunitypub.co.uk

Many thanks, Paul & Rach

Forum

Hello all,

My other half Paul has finished Uni, isn’t working and hasn’t received his reading list for his next degree….. The good news for us is he is planning to start a fairtrade forum watch this space IT WILL BE FAB!

love n hugs

Rach x

Another excuse to eat Fairtrade !!!

Rachel is a big fan of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream so I had to post here about a new flavour that we have recently become aware of called ‘Chocolate Macadamia’, here is the description:

“chocolate vanilla ice-cream with macadamia nuts themselves covered in chocolate fudge”

Sounds lovely! And of course, it is Fairtrade. Those crazy people at Ben & Jerry’s even carved themselves into the Macadamia nuts to promote it:

Warning, this product may contain nuts carved into little people !!

Now,  in the interests of “market research” and in order to provide a fair review me and Rach will be hunting down this flavour soon. Well, tonight actually. In fact, I am thinking of going to the co-op right now ……..

Lets have some reviews of what it tastes like !!

If you have tried any Fairtrade products that you like why not post them as comments here so for everybody to share?

A little something from the Cartoon Church ….

From the fantastic Dave Walker @ www.cartoonchurch.com

Had to add this in, the display is not quite as big as Rachels display in our church this year, but next year who knows !!!

G20 summit and all things Divine

Hello all,

yes I am back!!!!!!

I have been eating Divine chocolate for ages, then the other day I noticed their story, which is found on the inside of their wrapper. It is AWESOME, the cocoa farmers using their own initiative have  a meaningful input into decisions about how Divine is produced and sold. To get the full story you can buy yourself a nice bar (I recommend the mint flavour), or you can click this link……  The divine story

A nice person from divine is also promoting keeping Fairtrade on the agenda and trying to make it fun.  (see the comment on ‘about me’

The game is called ‘Egg A Politician’ http://www.eggapolitician.com. You can throw an egg at Gordon Brown, Barack Obama, Nicolas Sarkozy, Hu Jintao or Manmohan Singh. Divine will then send an email to the politician on your behalf.

love n hugs

Rach xx