Small Bears' Baking Day

We bears can't go out to have adventures while this nasty virus is about, so we are having small adventures at home.

Last Monday, Polar asked if we wanted to take turns helping her in the kitchen, baking scones, shortbread and some quiches.

Hanley Bear wanted to make cheese scones.  Polar showed him the recipe and he busied about finding and weighing out the ingredients.  He needed plain flour, some baking powder, butter, milk and cheese.

The bag of flour was too heavy for a small bear to lift, so he supervised while Polar weighed out the amount they needed.

Then he cut some pieces off the butter, which Polar weighed and added to the flour, while Hanley grated lots of cheese.

Polar had to rub the flour, butter and cheese together, but Hanley Bear stirred in the milk and when Polar put the dough out on the worktop, he rolled it out by balancing on the rolling pin and running backwards and forwards!

Then he cut out some big scones for Polar and Grizzly, and some little scones for us, and put them all on a baking tray.

He was so excited when they came out of the oven, golden-brown and smelling lovely and cheesy.

Meanwhile, Endon had found the recipe for shortbread.  He needed flour and butter too, but more butter than Hanley had used, plus some sugar.

He had to cream together the butter and sugar but this was very hard work for a small bear, so Polar helped him.  Then they sieved in the flour and mixed it all together with a little bit of orange juice.

Endon didn't think he could balance on the rolling pin, like Hanley had done, but Polar said he didn't have to, because the shortbread mix was just pushed down into a round baking tin. 

Polar squished the dough into the tin and Endon used a fork to make the pattern around the edge, before marking out the pieces carefully with a sharp knife.  Then Polar put the tin at the bottom of the oven to cook, where it wasn't so hot.

My job was to make the fillings for two quiches.  Polar had already made the pastry cases for them, as small bears can't make pastry without getting very messy paws.

My first job was to chop up some onions and fry them gently until they were lightly browned.

Polar partly cooked the pastry case, then we mixed cheese and herbs in with my onions, added a couple of beaten eggs, and put the mixture in the pastry case, before it went back into the oven. 

The other quiche had a filling of cheese, chives and broccoli, using up the last little pieces from the broccoli plants in our garden, so I had more chopping and cooking to do.

By the time we had made the filling for the second quiche, the first one was cooked.  I wanted to eat it at once but Polar said we were going to freeze them and eat them on warmer days, with salad and new potatoes.

Finally, all our baking was cooked and cool enough for us to get close enough to sniff it.  Hanley Bear couldn't wait to try his cheese scones, so he shared a couple of them out between us while Polar was washing up.  He thinks she didn't see him, but she did, although she does not mind because we all worked hard and scones are very, very delicious when they're fresh!

Garden Bears' World - Magic Beans

 Hello everyone!  It's Endon Bear here with another Garden Bears' World post.  In this one, I am planting beans, including some very special ones from one of our friends.

Chomper is one of our Twitter friends and he says his human grows giant runner bean plants and saves his own seeds.  'Chomps' very kindly sent some to us.  Polar has dug a big trench for them on the allotment and she and Grizzly filled it with compost and manure and well-rotted weeds.  Now it has rained, they will cover it over with more soil.  We are hoping the beans will like it there and that they will grow tall and strong, so we can eat lots of tasty beans and save some seeds of our own.

It is too early to plant beans outdoors, in case of late frost, but I was really eager to plant the magic beans.  Polar said I could plant them in cardboard tubes (and some made from rolled-up paper), so they could start growing indoors.  We had some other old runner bean seeds too, which I decided to sow at the same time.  I put one bean in each tube, as they will make quite big plants.

Then I had some small beans to sow.  These are dwarf French beans, which don't climb up poles.  We are going to grow these in the garden and hopefully get lots of baby green beans from them.

 I sowed two in each tube, so I can be sure at least one will grow, but it won't matter if they both do as we can plant two together. 

Polar carried the beans out to the lean-to greenhouse but, yesterday, she moved them to the other greenhouse because she found there was a mummy mouse with babies in the lean-to one, and she didn't want them to eat the beans.

After that, it was time to go back upstairs to the window where we wave to human cubs going for walks.  But first, Polar said that another parcel had arrived for us and I could open it.

It was a very special parcel, because it held little T-shirts for all of us.  

They were made for our friend Tour Guide Ted's company StuffieStuff and sold to raise money for NHS charities.  I put mine on at once but Sonning and Hanley had to change out of their dungarees and put trousers on for theirs to fit properly. 

He we all are, looking very smart and sharing a very important message.

We send *Hugs* to everyone who is going to work to do essential jobs looking after us, and to everyone staying at home too.  We hope all of our friends and readers are staying safe.  

Bears in the Woods

We bears have been visiting Staffordshire Wildlife Trust nature reserves famous for their wild flowers this year, but I didn't know that one of the best is very close to our house, until Hanley Bear told me.  It's called Parrot's Drumble and it is famous for its wild bluebells.  

Hanley reminded us all that 1st May was Staffordshire Day, and said that would be a good day to visit.  He kept pestering Polar and Grizzly, but it was a mostly cloudy day with lots of heavy showers, and they didn't think we would be able to go.

Finally, an hour before our usual tea-time, the clouds started to break.  Polar fetched us down from our window overlooking the street and tucked us into the bear bag, then she and Grizzly set off on a walk right down through the village, then past the shopping centre and the industrial estate.  We couldn't believe we would find a nature reserve down there, but after a scramble through muddy woods, we were there!

'This is the best bluebell wood in the whole of Staffordshire,' Hanley Bear told us, once Polar had let us out of our bag to explore.  'And, because Staffordshire is the best county in England, this is the best bluebell wood in the whole world!'

I decided it was best not to argue with him, even though we had both visited some very special bluebell woods in Belgium two years ago.  Parrot's Drumble was certainly very beautiful and very, very blue - and there were some wonderful climbing trees too.

Because the ground was quite wet after the showers, Polar and Grizzly decided not to do the long walk down to the stream (which is what 'drumble' means), but stayed in the beech woods at the top of the site.  We didn't hear any other people but we did hear lots of birds singing.

'We love it here so much,' Endon said to Polar.  'Can we come again?'

'I'm sure we can, little bears,' she replied.  'We'll see if we can pick a drier, sunnier day before the bluebells finish, then we can explore all of the woods.  We could even get up early one morning and listen for the dawn chorus.'

We didn't know if we wanted to get up that early, but we would have loved to see the bluebells in the sunshine.

Polar and Grizzly let us do some more running and exploring.  Every time we climbed over a little hill, there seemed to be even more bluebells on the other side of it.

We tried very hard not to trample them with our paws as we scurried about.

Hanley Bear was jumping and skipping.  'This is a brilliant way to celebrate Staffordshire Day,' he said.

Finally, the sun peeped out from behind the big, grey shower clouds.   The bluebell woods looked even more beautiful.  'We should have brought a picnic tea!' said Endon, who was starting to feel hungry after all the running and climbing he had done.

Polar explained that humans weren't supposed to go out for picnics at the moment, just for exercise.  'But you can do some more exploring before we go home for tea, if you like,' she said.

So we did.  Then we sat quietly for a little while, sniffing the bluebells and trying to count how many we could see.  Hanley Bear got to five thousand and twenty-two, then lost count.

Polar lifted us back into our bear bag for the walk back up the hill to our house.  The clouds had almost all cleared away and the fields looked very green and fresh. 

Hanley asked Polar to take some more pictures of the view, so we could show all our friends how nice Staffordshire is, but she was cross when she got home, as you can see dark specks in the sky where there are dust spots on the mirror, so she will have to clean it today, so it's ready for our next visit to Parrot's Drumble!