Thrifty Thursday | Keeping down foods costs

The Aldi super-six this week are plums (400g), fun-sized apples (9), kiwi fruit (8), cocktail vine tomatoes (250g), red onions (1kg) and sweet potatoes (750g). They are all 69p each.That’s the same as last week.

People joke about me eating chicken, but I can eat it all day long. The fresh chicken I had out of Aldi last week was delicious and I was eating it for a few days. Some cold chicken, some Aldi everyday oven chips (82p) cooked in my airfryer and a few frozen veggies and I’m happy. The four seasons vegetable medley contains cauliflower, broccoli and baby carrots. For  99p a kilo, they add to your 5 a day at a reasonable price. I tend to mix fresh vegetables with frozen. Fresh vegetables are so expensive, even in Aldi. I’m all in favour of community farms doing cheap fresh veggies in deprived areas. I also had a kilo of garden peas for 99p last week.

I read somewhere that sparkling water is good for cleaning your car windows. It was 99p for 8litres and so I tried it. It didn’t work quite as well as I thought it would. It would be worth doing in an emergency I suppose, so you can get the dirt off after a drive on the motorway or something. The dirt tends to run down the glass and leave it streaky. Maybe I should have used more water?

I also buy the salt your own crisps in Aldi at 85p for 6 bags. I like them, but are they good value? They are good value compared to many famous names, but there is only 24.3 grams of crisps. That’s less than 150 grams of crisps in the entire bag for 85p. I can cook a lot of chips with those everyday oven chips in my airfryer. Which to choose? I can have 150 grams of crisps of 1,500 grams of chips for around the same price. A small portion of chips is about 150 grams. I think if you have hungry kids, the chips are a better option. Crisps are very convenient, but as someone said to me recently, you are tempted to open a second (or third) bag because you’re still hungry. 

If you really want cheaper veggies, then you should try growing your own. I bought some seed potatoes from Aldi last week and I’m going to start some runner beans off. You can also grow tomatoes and salad things like lettuce through the summer. Every little helps…

The Thursday special offers today includes angling equipment and there is a few items suitable for your first aid kit. You could even start a first aid kit, use a plastic food quality box and put plasters in, headache pills and other odd things for emergencies. You could even do one for the car.

There are also Sunday special offers worth looking at.The watches for 6.99 don’t look too bad. Most of the offers have a French theme, such as the French instant soup.

Aldi are also having lots of cycling stuff in by the 2nd of May. That will be in plenty of time for summer.  There’s only 63 days to go now!

There are also daily deals at Amazon. I didn’t find them very exciting, but I don’t really need a ukulele. I can’t even spell it!

Some of the newer digital cameras have gone up in price recently, probably due to exchange rate fluctuations. It seems likely that the ones from Japan will drop in price in the next few months for the same reason. The same will apply to other goods from Japan, but not those from other far east countries like Korea and China. China seems to have an appreciating currency while Japan has a depreciating currency.  We don’t know what will happen to the value of the pound, but it seems likely to remain fairly stable for the foreseeable future.

You can also save money on electronic goods like cameras and computers if you’re not too fussy and don’t insist on the latest model or specification. A Nikon D3200 is on special offer at Amazon at £397.00, but that has 24.2 MP. The very similar Nikon D3100 is on offer at £309.99 but is only 14.2 MP. That’s still good definition for landscape photography but you make a decent saving. Now I’ve given those cameras a plug, maybe Nikon will send me a D3200 and a bag of lenses and filters to test!

Have you seen any bargains? Please comment and share your thoughts.

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