Review: Bags of Change, re-usable bag

Faith from Bags of change sent me one of their gorgeous re-usable bags. The bag that was voted "Most Innovative Green Product" in the Green England Awards 2008. A fantastic step towards being more green, don't use plastic bags, use one of these instead!

Available in three new colours, brown, green or blue. I received the brown and cream version.

Not only is it re-usable its made from fair trade, ethical materials including organic cotton, hemp and fairly-traded rubber.

The bag was instantly impressive with its bold design and chunky coconut shell buttons on the sides that open out to expand the bag, allowing more room for shopping.

A must with my bags is that they have an inside pocket. Somewhere for my keys/phone or money if I'm just popping to the local shops, so i was very pleased to see that this bag has a roomy pocket for such things.

I would love to see the same bag made in a variety of size's, one that's extra big for the supermarket shop would be fab. Also a thinner lighter one that you can fit into the pocket of this one for emergency's.

And possibly two more colours? Red and purple please :)

These three new colour ways are on an introductory offer of £14.85 at the moment, soon to go upto £16.85. Get yours whilst the offer lasts :) I'd love to own the whole colour way set but at £16.85 its a rather expensive fancy. For what is essentially a cotton bag i feel a lower price tag of around the £10 mark would be more suitable, £9.85 and your on!

However this bag also works as part of a loyalty scheme amongst over 70 participating ethical retailers, you could save 10% on your purchase when using your bag, so i guess this is where you claim back the cash you spent to buy it. To find out more information and to view the listing of participating shops visit the Bags of Change website here.

Review: Glory Foods ~ Gluten free baked goods

Chris and Rosalie Barton a married couple who also have their own business.

A business i very much admire as it involves food, Gluten free food! :)

Glory Foods are a Scotland based company who home bake gluten free goodies for cafes, restaurants and many other places with a tourism industry. They originally started out just baking cakes for Chris's mum who is (like me) a Coeliac, and things have grown from there.

Being a fairly new company and in the process of moving business address, they are still working on packaging their goodies. However my package was in an air-tight container and wrapped securely so the tasty content was not broken or damaged.

The lovely Rosalie had whipped up a batch of her gluten free chocolate chip cookies for me to try.

These are made with gluten free flour, fair trade sugar, free range eggs, Scottish butter and fair trade chocolate. I really like the fact they're combining local produce, fairtrade and free range together to make their yummy items. I couldn't wait to open them and tuck in!

The cookies are just right, perfect texture that's moist yet still chewy and crumbly at the same time. The lovely deep taste of the chocolate hits you as you bite into the generous chunks that are scattered on the cookies.

I was very pleased to find that they weren't to sweet, most gluten free products compensate flavour for extra sugar, which isn't good for anyone and taste's horrible. Not these well balanced cookies.

It would've been interesting to know more details about the content though, maybe send an information sheet with them about the RDA of fat/energy etc... content.

Needless to say they didn't last long....

Chris said he will be sending me some more of their goodies to try out and review for you all to read. I'm looking forward to seeing what else the fabulous Rosalie can make :)

Meanwhile you can have a nosey around their website and read more about them here.