SOLE v Aldi.

So, this fine and frosty morning, Furry and I set off, as I have Twittered about, to our local Aldi, to see just how SOLE we could buy. As we were on the way I was mentally composing this post, musing to myself on what sort of acronyms I could come up with, pretty much prepared to call ALDI all sorts of nasty things.

I was getting in touch with my inner pre-schooler, mulling over whether to use "Aldi is a lying poopie-breath" or "Aldi sux big fat jobbies" as a title, when we walked in, and the first thing I was met with was Aldi's range of organic, fair trade tea.

Yes, I know, you just did a double take, didn't you? It's not that acid you dropped at Uni in 1982 finally metabolising, you read that right.

And if that didn't tilt your world along the "most unlikely words ever to be heard in the same sentence" axis, guess what? The tea is $2.19 for 50 bags.

You can find the range of teas (green and black) right next door to their organic honey. Produced on Kangaroo Island, honey with honey made by the world’s only remaining pure strain of the Ligurian honeybee.

Do you need time to remember that this post is about Aldi, and re-read that paragraph again?

Oh, and the honey is 500g for $5.49

I bought some organic yoghurt ($2.99 for 500g) and some non-organic but awesome looking muesli, as well as sundry other household items.



Is it SOLE?

Sustainable? I didn't see much evidence of supporting sustainable producers.

Organic? Well, far be it from me to believe labeling, calling something "organic" does not make it so, but a quick check on their web site does indeed prove that their organic range is NASSA certified. So yes, it is most definitely Organic.

Local. Their corn is from Thailand, their dry biscuit range made in Denmark from Danish and Imported ingredients and their soy is a product on Indonesia. HOWEVER, a quick tour of their web site shows that 100% of their meat, 97% dairy and 95% of their fruit and veg are Australian sourced. I imagine pretty much the same percentages as Slaveways et al. Like all grocers, the key to shopping local is caveat emptor, READ THE LABELS, and you'll be fine.

Ethical? Now here's where I was prepared to really get stuck into Aldi, I mean ANY large chain spewpermarket being ETHICAL?? Clearly I have been inhaling too many organic lentils, but I hate to tell you.

Aldi is.

Aldi is the first and only supermarket to introduce a national pricing policy, something consumers have been calling for Safeway/Coles to do for years. Adli's policy is "all people, wherever they live, should have the opportunity to buy everyday groceries of the highest quality at the lowest possible price."

That said, Aldi has also been awarded an ecoBIZ accreditation by the Queensland Government for its environmental policy, which included planting only local, native, drought tolerant plants at Aldi stores.

Oh, and they stock certified organic and certified fair-trade coffee. At. Aldi.

So, in these tight and uncertain times, it is still possible to shop as SOLE-ly as possible AND save some $$$, and while I will I still can prove that buying fruit from out local farm gate and local meat from the butcher is still the cheapest way to shop, Aldi, much to my suprise, now has a place in my weekly shopping ritual

Frugal Food #4 (I think)

We'd all love to be living on organic Local Wagu steaks, and cutlets sourced from happy gamboling lambies, their tails wibbly-wobbly-ing right up until they're hit on the head, happy flu-free piggies, leaping through the lupins.

But we can't.

We can make choices about how and why we buy our food, particularly our meat based on a whole lot of factors.

Going SOLE means I will never, ever EVER buy from a large Spewpermarket. If they were giving away gas-backed foi gras for free, I'd not be tempted. That's one of my never-to-be compromised factors.

Having said that, I've recently blogged about Aldi and buying things like dog food, canned tomatoes and toothpaste. This weekend, I am off to our local Aldi to see just how much stuff I CAN buy from there that fits the SOLE criteria.

And then there's IGA.

I love our IGA. It really is our local. We know all the guys there by name, they know us. It might be a fallacy invented by The Hollow Men, but shopping at our locally owned IGA feels much more SOLE than shopping at Slaveways. We don't often buy meat and we never buy veggies, as its cheaper to buy from the butcher and the farm gate, but we get crackers, canned beans, bread, other staples from them regularly.

So, Imagine my suprise when, earlier in the year, I saw this:

That's right. 2.7kgs of porterhouse for less that $20.oo. I doubt it fits into any of the SOLE criteria (although I am going to assume the meat is at the very least, Australian!), but for that price I couldn't pass it up.

We are lucky enough to have a large freezer, so this little beauty got frozen as a whole and defrosted over the past few days and chopped into 8 individual steaks and approx 500g got cubed for a curry. We lost about 70g to the thick layer of fat that had to be removed, but hey, the pups LOVED that!

What with some dhal and some rice and a side of leftover mash (yes, I KNOW about all those carbs, but it was cold yesterday!), I estimate we'll get 12-14 portions out of it. Making each meat serve about $1.50.

We swung by the Organic grocer and picked up a sweet potato and a few carrots for $2.20, and a Thai green curry with rice, dhal and veggies was on the table for about $6.50, or about $2.10 a serve.