Aldi – Asda #thrifty

Aldi

The Aldi super-six starting today are limes (3), cherry tomatoes (300g), Brussels sprouts (500g), leeks (500g), kiwi (6) and garlic (4). Those are 59p each.

Today’s special buys at Aldi are mostly for children. The top one being a children’s raincoat for £7.99. Besides the children’s stuff there is a bird feeder and nesting box and even a book on wild birds. The rest of the special buys are food related and include a frying pan for £3.99.

The Sunday special buys are all related to Italian food, with the top offer being Bruschetta bread at £1.59.

In store now are lots of goods for Valentine’s Day including flowers, chocolate and my local Aldi has champagne by the door as you go in. The prices are very competitive compared to other supermarkets.

Asda

I shopped at Aldi as I usually do yesterday, but for the past two weeks I’ve been shopping at Asda. The big difference I noticed was at the checkouts. Aldi even when it’s busy is fast, Asda was slow and when we went on Sunday although there were few people around the store there was a bottleneck of people at the checkouts and the ones where you scan the bar codes yourself were busy too.

The reason I’ve been shopping at Asda is I’ve had a house guest and so Aldi didn’t have everything we needed. My house guest was used to Asda too. On Sunday, she decided go back for an item she had forgotten and then tried to come through the scan yourself checkout for a few items. That took longer than my whole shopping trip to Aldi. The checkout staff in Aldi are younger and quicker and with no free carrier bags, people put goods into their trolleys and go quickly.

I bought prawns in Asda and got a got less for my money, with the usual stuffing underneath to make them look more. I had run out of shampoo and spent twice as much in Asda for shampoo as I would in Aldi. I did buy bed linen in Asda and that was a good price and so too were the towels. They were good quality too. My guest cooked chicken wings in Coca Cola (boiled with a little 5 spice) which tasted nice, but too sweet for me. I cooked turkey for her, which she liked so much she asked if we could have again on the following Sunday when she took a photograph! My guest has gone home to China now and I’m all alone again!

I did notice that Banks’s beer has gone up from 99p to 1.09 in Aldi. That was bad news, but it’s still cheaper than many of the foreign beers and a local beer for me. It is probably the best bottled beer around now, so worth a little extra. We should all buy British beer, it’s not only better, we’re protecting British jobs. I note that despite the economic recession sales of champagne didn’t suffer. The MP’s in the Palace of Westminster show no signs of curbing their consumption.

That’s it for this week. Have you spotted a bargain? Please share your thrifty bargains and tips in the comments box. You can also follow me on Twitter. I don’t play golf, but I saw some thingies for practising your golf putting half price in Aldi yesterday.

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