School shoes and shopping!

The trial began in Clarks - and ended in the Factory Shop. The YFG went first in the shoe shop and had no choice over her new school shoes, poor child. Their selection is not vast when you are a 2H, and so she had to have the solitary pair which fitted. She was not terribly happy, but the EFG had it worse - the machine brought up 4 and a half H as her size, so she had to try on loads of shoes but resigned herself to a smart pair of lace-ups which are not her taste, but should be supportive and comfortable when she is walking around school all day in them. Anyhow, we survived and moved on to the Factory Shop to get a pair of cheap trainers for PE for the YFG. Cheap it had to be when I had just spent £66 in Clarks - and the trainers are worn once a week for an hour, so they don't warrant a fortune. The EFG was pleased to find a £2 pair of red canvas shoes so I bought her those for wearing at home, and for casual sport. She is planning to wear them tomorrow for the day of sport that they will be attending.

I have been very pleased with the dwarf beans that I planted in the early summer - they are cropping heavily and this morning, I was able to pick a huge pan of them again. They are a fine bean, of the type often called "Kenyan" in the seed catalogues, so I am definitely going to be growing these again. Two neighbours got donations of these this afternoon, so I hope they enjoyed them as well.

This evening, YFG has a friend to stay and she and the FGs have had home-made pizza for tea. This is an incredibly easy pizza to make and very cheap! I made two big pizzas using this recipe:

Mix a pound of SR flour with half a pint of water and 4tbsp oil and a pinch of salt. Mix until it all binds together and then knead for a few minutes. Then cut into two pieces and roll out to large discs. On top, they got a drained tin of chopped tomatoes (half on each pizza), half an onion finely chopped, on each and then 200g grated cheese divided between them. My kids love Pepperami, so I chopped up a couple of mini ones and that was the topping. They cook at 180C for about 15-20 minutes.

Value flour does the job as well as the expensive stuff, so don't lash out on branded flour for this. Costing these pizzas, I think that the total cost for the two of them (one went in the freezer for another day) was about £2. It would be cheaper without the Pepperamis as they are the most expensive ingredient.

Back in the garden, the FH made a start on the greenhouse. The aluminium frame has been put together, and shuttering has been made for a concrete base. It will not be able to go in the spot that we had first planned as the ground there is too hard to dig - we presume that there is a lot of builders' rubble around that area from when the houses were built. However, the new position is a good one and will be more convenient. There will be a photo when it is completed!