Rediscovering Aldi

When a person finds themselves a little time-poor, things like shopping in two supermarkets is often one of the easiest things to dispense with. Certainly, I found myself making that choice. The silly thing is, that Aldi is just across the hallway at the Shopping Centre I frequent. My perception of the time I had was a little skewed by the inevitable fatigue that comes at the end of the day when you've been at work the four previous days.

Last week I decided to see just how much of my shopping could be done at Aldi and how much it would save me. In my defense, Aldi had slowly crept up in price so that many of their products were very similarly priced to that of Safeway's 'home brand' products. Our greedy Australian supermarkets have been making some 'permanent' pricing reductions of late and Aldi has reportedly joined in the action.

For the first time in many months, I found that I was able to shop within my budget quite easily, even though it included a couple of extravagences like frozen prawns and mangoes. While I still found that there were some items that remained similarly priced to Safeway's equivalent, there were a large number of things that were significantly cheaper, like mangoes, potatoes and milk.

What does all this mean for a busy mum who is often feeling quite bedraggled and drained by Thursday evening? It means I've rediscovered an incentive for commiting myself to the pursuit of financially wiser grocery shopping. I really didn't need more than $40 worth of groceries from Safeway and it wasn't so painful to go to two supermarkets, after all.

On a side-note. The prawns and mangoes were delicious in the form of 'Red Prawn and Mango Curry' on page 15 of 'Nigella Express'. Definitely worth chasing the more affordable frozen prawns and mangoes in Aldi! Yes, my obsession with Nigella continues unabated and I have tonight's episode recorded and ready for me to watch later.