The Aldi Challenge

The weekly shop is something every family has to go through and endure, either online or visiting your local supermarket.  I do tend to stick to my most local supermarkets which are Waitrose and the Co-Op, both being a fairly small supermarket as I live in a small market town.  I used to shop online with Tesco on a regular basis and occasionally do still do that if I feel it worth me doing so, but I do prefer to head to the supermarket where possible.

Aldi recently got in touch and wanted to challenge me to fill my trolley for £75 and see how much I could save if I were to swap supermarkets….Challenge accepted!

As mentioned previously I live in a small town and so therefore my nearest Aldi is a good 15-20 minute drive away so it’s not a supermarket I tend to frequent regularly unless I happen to be near on whilst out and about.

I always plan my week of shopping and look through different recipes so I know what ingredients I will need before hand, Aldi have a good selection of healthy recipes on their website so that was a good place to start!

With shopping list and my mum in tow we headed into Aldi…

Unsure on actual costs of things to begin with we stayed close to the shopping list I had created and pretty soon the list was complete and I’d only spent about £15!!  Which was great as I could then really go mad with the remainder of the money.. As a general rule if I know my meals are all planned for the week anything I buy on top of that I make sure I can freeze it for another day. So I bought packs of Aberdeen Angus mine, chicken breasts, sausages and meatballs and a whole free-range chicken, enough to create a whole new week of meals (on top of the ones I had already planned for already).

I also took advantage to really make sure I bought plenty of fruit and vegetables, as everything was reasonably priced I managed to fill my fruit bowl to the brim and my fridge and freezer have never been so well stocked!

But as they say, the proof is in the tasting… Here’s a few of the recipes I made in the week:

First up I made Braised Steak: A hearty braised steak casserole with a tasty mix of vegetables. A great-value meal for the family.  I chose this meal as sometimes I struggle to get the boys to eat red meat especially if too chewy.  I actually made the casserole in the slow cooker for about 5-6 hrs.  Enough was made that I freezed a portion also!   This was served with parsnip and swede mash…of which I’m now a huge fan of! (boys are not so keen so potato mash for them!)

Next up was a quicker meal, a midweek chicken roast complete with chipolata sausages and stuffing, teamed with roasted baby potatoes and sugar snap peas and baby corn.  The chicken breasts came complete wrapped in bacon and the sausages, stuffing and gravy were included too all for £2.49.  I actually bought an extra pack for the freezer 🙂

I also made a red berry smoothie, from frozen berries, cranberry juice, banana and lemon juice to be extra healthy!  I felt the recipe made the smoothie too thick for my liking so I added more cranberry juice to suit my taste.

Overall I was incredibly impressed with shopping at Aldi the amount of things I was able to buy was astonishing and so far everything tastes really good too, I will no doubt be going back again soon once I need to re-stock my cupboards!