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.

The latest cure for Affluenza?

http://women.timesonline.co.uk

It was the hybrid cars parked outside that first signalled the arrival of a new type of shopper at the discount supermarket Aldi; then the Bugaboo Frogs that started clogging up the aisles. Once it was strictly for budget shoppers, but slowly but surely the bastion of discount retail is seeing a new type of customer walk through its sliding doors. And it isn’t only Aldi that is witnessing a change. Lidl, Poundstretcher, Primark and Peacocks, long the preserve of the budget-conscious, are fast becoming a stamping ground for the fashion-conscious, too. Because as fast as their credit is being crunched, shoppers are getting savvy.
Welcome to the age of the Aldirati. Defined recently by the trend forecasters the Future Laboratory, they are the new consumer group on the block, recognisable by their high household incomes (£80,000- £100,000 a year) and strategic approach to shopping. Also known as the no-frills affluents (NFAs), they are drawn to pragmatic, practical products, not prepared to pay premium prices for either essentials or flash-in-the pan trends, but determined to maintain their pre-crunch lifestyles. And they are making their presence felt all over the high street.
“In the past three years, the number of ABC1 customers in my stores has doubled,” says Paul Foley, managing director of Aldi in the UK and Ireland. And similar statistics are coming out of Lidl, which has seen a 13% rise in sales. But while the savings these retailers offer are significant (25% on the average shopping basket at Aldi), this is not a simple case of people downgrading their goods to save a few pennies. As Martin Lewis, the creator of Moneysavingexpert.com, explains: “It’s a specific cohesive philosophy and it means cutting your bills without cutting back. It’s not thrift. It’s different.”
NFAs have grown used to the finer things in life and aren’t about to let a bit of budgeting get in the way. They may be trading down when it comes to certain items — own-brand cleaning products, good old Colman’s Mustard and Suttons seeds are all enjoying a revival — but they are not about to start cutting back on others that they have come to regard as essential. And their new favourite shops are rushing to meet their demands. “We’ve launched a lot of new luxury products in the past year or so,” says Foley. Cue bresaola and mortadella alongside the luncheon meat at the deli counter, and yellowfin sole and smoked salmon in among the battered cod. And witness the launch and subsequent run on the infamous £5 lobster at Lidl. Yet, however brilliant the bargains, for NFAs, sometimes discount just won’t do. Pauline Kent, a PR director from Norfolk, started shopping in Aldi and Lidl a year ago, and reckons that she saves about £300 a month. But she has limits. “What I tend to do now is a supermarket shop, then I shop locally for certain items. I go to a fantastic local butcher and farm shop. I’ve never really liked polystyrene-wrapped meat.” She has, though, had to suffer the shock of her friends. “I’m almost evangelical about it. I held tasting sessions for friends at my house. And now more of them are changing the way they think. When I was in Aldi the other day, you should have seen all the Audis and BMWs in the car park."

Read the entire article here.

Aldi is AWESOME for pet food (canned and dry), tinned tomatoes, Jaffa biscuits, dried herbs and spices, toothpaste, everyday frozen puff pastry, blocks of chocolate, canned sweet corn and dry biscuits.

Avoid their "bourbon". It will kill you.

Frugal Food #2

The thing with being frugal is that you have to plan ahead. There's no point deciding at 5.30pm that you want steak au poivre, if you've only got chicken mince in the 'fridge. The key to frugality is buying carefully and (more importantly) seasonally. Given it is Autumn here in OZ, there is no point getting a Jones on for raspberries, as you'll pay el primo $ for them. At this time of year, you want to be rocking on with your Quince self. Or your Rosella Pear self.

Yesterday, I knew that I had got 2 Porterhouses out of the freezer, and I knew I had some potatoes, a head of garlic, a medley of peppercorns (an Easter gift), so I was actually planning steak au poivre, until I rang Furry on the way home to find that he'd thoughtfully marinated the steaks in a goodly dollop of Elfred's Mumbai Chutney.

So much for planning ahead.

Rice is always a staple in our house, you can pick up 5kg bags for next to nothing, from Asian grocers, so that was definitely on the menu. I also knew there was a sweet potato lurking in the pantry somewhere.

And my best friend since going frugal?? My freezer. Before unemployment descended on us, I would have put aside left overs for the pups. As long as any leftovers didn't include onion, then Stella Bella and Mrs Peaches were set like jelly.

But since having to decide between paying the mortgage and buying heart medications ('cos we sure couldn't afford both this month), I've been a whole lot better at portioning food freezing leftovers.

Much to Stella and Mrs Peaches chagrin.

Which brings us to another frugal-friendly food.

Lentils.

Once, the staple of unwashed hippies and vegan crack-pots everywhere, lentils are now enjoying a resurgence in mainstream cooking. Once only seen on menus at places like Govindas or Gopals, the 90's saw David Lebovitz et al banging on about "lentils de puys" and thus bought them into the mainstream cook's consciousness.

And I happened to have some dhal in the freezer. I purchased my dhal from the dhosa man at the Balnarring Market, for $10 a kg, and I guestimate I'll get about 40 serves out of it! Like rice, it bulks up by about x 3 when cooked. Like rice, bags of various types of dhal can be purchased for next to nothing at your local Indian/Sri Lankan grocer.

So with my bulk porterhouses, my bulk rice and my bulk and frozen dhal, I managed to prepare a meal for 4 last night that came in at about $2.50 a head.

And I have rice and dhal left over for lunch today.

pg's spiced sweet potato.

Peel and chop one large sweet potato/kumara.
Boil/steam until tender.
Add a splash of peanut oil, some cumin seeds and some grated fresh ginger.
Mash.
Scoff.

Leftovers are freezer-friendly

pg's dhal.

500g organic mixed dhal
Place in a large pan with water to cover to a depth of 5cm above the top of the dhal.
Add a good knob of fresh ginger.
slow simmer for 4 hours, adding water as necessary, until lentils are soft.
Add a can of coconut cream.
Fry off some cumin seeds, some fenugreek, some coriander seeds and black cardamon seeds in ghee.
Add to lentils and stir.
Adjust seasoning.
Serve.

Leftovers are freezer-friendly.
(500g of dhal makes about 1.25-1.5 kg of cooked dhal. This, my friends, is a WHOLE lot of dhal, but given the cooking time for dhal, it works out so much easier to make it in bulk and freeze it)

Enjoy!

Frugal Foods # 1

My first Frugal post was a bit of a disaster. I was going to wax lyrical about how to prepare fresh yabbies.

Except Furry didn't catch any.

So, for this weeks frugal post, I made sure that we actually DID have something in the pantry. And this is the key to this weeks post.

Don't buy anything if you can avoid it. Without doubt, I bet you a pound to a bent penny, you've got the makings of at least one meal tucked away in your fridge/pantry/cupboard. The statistics show that we throw away at least one bag of every seven bags of groceries we buy.

That's appalling, in my opinion. So, rather than spend money we just don't have, here's what I whipped up this weekend. It's a variation on a recipe that Mater Beige used to cook on Good Friday, and I believe it originated in one of those ubiquitous Woman's Weekly Recipe books of the 70's/80's.

I had:

1/2 stick of unsalted butter. Melted in in a frypan and added about 10 button mushrooms, sliced. They were starting to dry out, so they had to be used, and I fried them off in the butter until golden. Next I added about 1 heaped teaspoon of tomato "pesto", which is basically some sundried tomatoes, in the oil they are preserved in, whizzed up to a pulp with the stick blender. I opened a can of tuna in springwater, and deglazed the pan with some of the liquid. Then whacked in the tuna and heated through. I had a small tub of sour cream in the 'fridge, so that got whacked in as well.

Cook a whole packet of spirals/shells/elbows and when done, add the sauce and combine. top with some freshly cracked black pepper and some torn Italian parsely from the garden.

I guestimate the ingredients cost me less than $10, and we got 5 serves out of it.

The point is, that if you like this recipe, go out and buy the ingredients, it still qualifies as frugal food. But I'd LOVE to hear what you guys can make, sourcing all the ingredients only from what you've got on hand!

I'm eyeing off the 1/2 packet of Black pepper Savoy's and thinking savory tart shell.

Frugal Food.

 

It's before 7am on Good Friday morning. Furry, the masterful hunter-gatherer, checks his equipment

  

 The loneliness of the long-distance hunter. 

  

 Some locals look at him as though he's crazy. 

  

Years of experience, and calling on his Koori roots, he finds a secluded spot to wait for his prey. 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I have been really excited about this coming series of "frugal food" posts, I've been planning them, in my head, for weeks now, so I was right chuffed when I finally convinced Furry to get out the yabbie net and get us some free food. I mean, how much more frugal can ya get?? I posted about yabbie hunting and recipes last year, and I was looking forward to revisiting cooking with this really really lovely native Aussie "crayfish".  Methods of catching yabbies, and varieties of bait are as numerous as there are yabbie hunters. It's a part of the OZ childhood psyche that you spend an afternoon, on the banks of a dam, ankle deep in cow manure, trying to lure yabbies into your net, with a bit og bacon tied on a piece of string. Furry favours a couple of stinky chicken necks or some canned dog food. 

So it was with a light heart, primed taste buds and a hot pan, that I awaited Furry's return, 8 hours later.

 

**sigh** We had canned tomatoes on pasta.