A Better Day

Bear has decided that he desperately needs to have Arteza pens. He needs them, they are a necessity, please can he have some, please. I decided to make a test purchase and ordered a variety pack of sixty which cost @ £13 and which was a down payment on an awesome parents' evening. He is now hinting at expensive paper. I am unenthusiastic.

Bear was on pins waiting for this. We were evening tracking the package. He couldn't get to the door fast enough. It was actually a delivery sort of day. We had the Approved Food delivery, the pens, some microfibre cloths I want to keep just for the car, a long handled thingy that apparently everyone I know uses to demist car windows and some silicone washing up gloves. The pens, of course, were the last to arrive. Bear settled down with an adult colouring book, the pens and occasional complaint about his colour blindness and produced this.

At the top of the picture you may see the graph paper and the key that bear makes with a square of each colour and a note of what it is called. I had to explain to him that it wasn't crimson but brown, and it wasn't blue but purple, but on the whole he got it.

The whole colour blindness thing is hitting bear hard. He had heard that there were glasses that could help, but when we did the research, the scientific reception wasn't heavily in favour. We'll ask the optician next time we go.

Tonight we had Vegan Shepherd's Pie. According to the Tesco site, it's £1.91 per serving. I had a quick look. I hadn't learned my lesson when I ordered the ingredients, so I blindly allowed them to put on the fancy Merchant Gourmet ready to eat puy lentils. I will hesitate before I do that again, they were £2! but if I had bought a tin it would have been 55p and I daresay even less expensive if I had used dried green lentils. I had a quick overview, and I think that I could probably get it down to @ 90p per person, assuming parsley in the garden and slugs of oil from a bottle already in plus lazy garlic and a pinch of chilli flakes. I'll definitely make it again. DH went back for seconds and bear almost inhaled it. I enjoyed it a lot as well. Next time I will not crush new potatoes and mix them with parsley to use as a topping but use proper mash and perhaps sage instead, or oregano. Tomorrow, all being well, it's a chicken and sweet potato tray-bake. Bear is very keen. I'm going to keep searching out recipes like this as I think it's going to keep us eating extremely healthily and if I keep my wits about me it will save some pennies.

Hugs to all.