Whole30 Shopping

Here is a list of things I've already bought to stock our kitchen.  This is certainly not an all-inclusive list of what's available, just what I've bought so far.  

From Target

• Nestlé pure life sparkling water - we love the any of the flavors
• Market Pantry raw, tail-off peeled shrimp
• Pace picante sauce
• Reese artichoke hearts
• Taste of Thai coconut milk (full fat)
• Celestial Seasonings tea (I found a great chocolate caramel flavor on clearance)
• California olives
• Sun-Maid dates
• Archer Farms frozen butternut squash
• Birds-Eye frozen broccoli

From Aldi

Fresh

• Romaine hearts lettuce
• Multicolored peppers
• Lemons
• Mandarin oranges
• Bananas
• Grapes
• Cilantro
• Fresh green beans
• Limes
• Organic grape tomatoes
• Avocados
• Cauliflower
• Broccoli
• Blackberries
• Raspberries
• Mangoes
• Pears
• Minneola tangelos

Frozen

• Steamable California medley
• Swai fillets
• Prince Edward vegetable medley

Pantry

• Yellow mustard
• Roasted red peppers in a jar
• Diced tomatoes in a can
• Black olives
• French green beans in a can
• Unsweetened dried coconut chunks
• Sliced beets in a can
• Decaf coffee
• Pumpkin purée
• Organic tomato sauce
• Any of the regular nuts in the baking area or snack area

Refrigerated

• Unsweetened almond milk
• Unsalted butter (to make ghee)

From Trader Joe's

Fresh

• Bananas
• Sliced mushrooms
• fresh pineapple spears
• Grapefruit
• Hothouse cucumbers
• Bananas

Pantry 

• Raw pumpkin seeds
• Raw mixed nuts
• Unsalted sunflower seeds
• Unsweetened dried dark cherries
• Organic Thompson raisins
• Hatch green  chile salsa
• Canned Skipjack tuna
• Canned albacore tuna
• 21-seasoning salute spice blend
• Pitted jumbo Kalamata olives
• Premade Punjab Indian eggplant dish
• Dried Turkish apricots unsulfured
• Black olives
• whole raw cashews
• Salsa autentica (red salsa)
• Raw almonds
• Kosher dill pickles
• reamy salted almond butter
• Capers

Refrigerated

• Spicy Italian chicken sausage
• Applegate organic beef hotdogs
• Organic chicken tenders
• Prosciutto
• Sliced uncured roast beef lunch meat
• Smoked wild sockeye salmon

Frozen

• Chili lime chicken burgers
• Frozen turkey burger patties
• Vera Cruz marinated fish
• Grass fed Angus strip steak

Less Money: Our Aldi Favorites

This post is for my mom and my friends Rachel and Renae.  All three of them now shop at Aldi.  I convinced my mom to try it and she likes it.  My friend Rachel knew that I went there and she has looked back at my blog posts to see what I've bought.  And Renae and I share our awesome Aldi scores with each other on almost a daily basis. 

I love that the new Aldi I go to is on Bunny Trail road. It just tickles me. I discovered it around Easter, and I thought it was maybe an Easter-related joke on the receipt.  I sing "Here Comes Peter Cottontail, hopping down the bunny trail" every time I go to the store.

I just started buying some housewares at Aldi.  We have a coffee maker at home but husband Jeff drinks regular while Sonny D and I drink decaf so we were always ending up only able to make one type of coffee in the morning. So I bought an insulated carafe so we could make one type of coffee and put it in the carafe and then make another pot of the other type. The packaging shows the Aldi store brand "Crofton", but it's marked Emsa brand on bottom. Emsa is a good brand, their similar carafes are around $20 but the Aldi one I bough was only $10. Nice!  I also picked up a cute $4 rag rug for the spot between our garage door and the basement because Husband Jeff makes frequent trips between the garage and the basement when he's doing woodworking projects.

I also love how Aldi is a small store, they don't always have everything I want but I can be in and out really quickly.

On to our favorite things...

These are not really in any order.  I took pictures as I walked around the store, so that's the only order to any of this.

In addition to all of these items, I also love that I can get organic items at Aldi.  I recently bought organic steel-cut oats and there are quite a few other items you can occasionally find. 

The SimplyNature hot salsa is really good, but the medium one is sweet and not spicy at all.  Get the hot stuff!

Hot organic salsa

The Southern Grove retreat trail mix is really good, not too sweet and a little salty.  Only almonds, chocolate chunks and cashews. 

trail mix, for all the non-hiking I do. 

We go through a lot of peanut butter, we buy the creamy stuff in the biggest size they've got, and we usually need a new one every other month. 

Creamy peanut butter all the way!

I like this SimplyNature almond butter.  I don't think it's the best price around since I bought a larger jar of organic almond butter at a different store for not too much more, but it's yummy.  And not thin and runny.  I like that they have more unusual/non-standard things like this at Aldi so I don't have to go elsewhere for them. 

Pre-Zumba workout food, almond butter on toast.

I love Millville multigrain crispy oats!   It's less sweet than multigrain Cheerios and they seem a little crunchier. 

Just add milk!

They have really good nuts in their baking section -- walnuts, almonds, and pecans in various forms.  No salt or anything on them.  I put them in my oatmeal and throw handfuls into my pesto. 

I'm nuts for their nuts!

I picked up this tomatoes, okra, and corn blend on a whim and was pleasantly surprised.  I don't remember if Sonny D and Husband Jeff ate it, but I recently picked up another can because I liked it. 

Tomatoes, okra, and corn.  I assume this is a Southern thing?

I love all the fresh produce at Aldi!  The selection is limited, but the prices are sometimes totally amazing!  Avocados for $.49, pints of blackberries or raspberries for $1.50, etc.  Plus they have some organic items, love that! 

Fresh fruits and veggies.

This guacamole is so good!  We've had both the spicy and the regular and love both.  And the spicy version is definitely spicy!  You get two pouches in the box. 

Get chips and a box of this guac and you've got the start to a good meal!

Real Parmigiano-Reggiano only comes from Italy, the rest is just called parmesan.  This stuff is authentic! 

Parmiginano Reggiano straight from the old country.

The regular fresh salsa is really tasty, haven't tried any of the other flavors though.

Fresh salsa

Vanilla Greek yogurt is the way to go.  Husband Jeff says the yogurt from Trader Joe's is too runny and prefers this.  Sonny D calls it "malinda yogurt" (is 'vanilla' hard to say?)

Thick Greek yogurt.

Zipper dog chillin' after waiting for me to finish grocery shopping.

Here's a photo of everything I bought at Aldi one day.  Starting on the left and going clockwise:

My haul from a recent trip to Aldi.

• Heads of romaine lettuce - I used to buy the bags of salad greens, but we go through them so quickly.  They usually only feed Husband Jeff and I for two dinners.  So I switched to the heads of romaine lettuce and I chop it up, spin and wash in the salad spinner, and store it in the fridge in the salad spinner.  Lasts us forever!
• The orange box is protein bars for snacks for Sonny D (and us!).  These are chocolate-peanut-almond or something like that.  
• Their croutons are the crunchiest we've ever had!  I buy whatever random flavor appeals to me at the moment.  
• Husband Jeff says their chianti and red zinfandel are decent.  
• I'm forever buying French vanilla coffee creamer, we drink it in our coffee and pour it on our oatmeal.
• We love their unsweetened original almond milk, same ingredients as the Trader Joe's version.  And no carrageenan. 
• The El Milagro tortilla chips are great, less salt than most brands, extra crunchy, and made from non-GMO corn.  
• We also buy a lot of fresh produce there, grapes, organic grape tomatoes, avocados, conventional and organic apples, bananas, Cuties clementines, carrots. 
• Sonny D loves canned mandarin oranges, he calls them "juice oranges" because they come in liquid.  

We tried the Priano roasted garlic and onion spaghetti sauce and Husband Jeff found it bitter, so we tried the pomodoro version.  Much better!  It's your basic red sauce.

Priano pomodoro sauce.

If you like sweet wine, this Moscato is pretty nice.  I wish it were a sparkling moscato though, makes it a bit more refreshing rather than cloyingly sweet.

Pink Moscato wine.

I loved these spicy fried pickles!  I baked them on a rack in the oven and they crisped up pretty good.  We skipped the dill cream sauce and ate them with ranch dressing.  Quite spicy. 

I can't turn down fried pickles. 

We like this Millville Honey Crunch 'n Oats cereal. 

More tasty cereal.

We're not gluten-free, but I recently bought some of the Live GFree pasta and pretzels and were impressed by both of them.  The pasta didn't get mushy and the pretzels are a much cheaper alternative to our absolute favorite pretzels from Glutino.

I don't have photos of it, but we also love the organic grass-fed ground beef, it's much cheaper than the similar product from the local grocery store.

I also completely love the mixed flower bouquet, I've had them last for two weeks with essentially no maintenance (I rarely remember to change the water).

Oh, and I totally love the country-style chicken breakfast sausage.  It's so good and there's only like 5 ingredients (chicken, a couple different spices, salt, sugar.)

Your Favorites

I've started a new habit of asking the checker about their favorite Aldi item.  The first gal I asked said the take-and-bake pizza, which I have read recommendations of online. She also mentioned the frozen ravioli. Husband Jeff likes frozen ravioli so I might have to pick some up.

I would love to hear what you like from Aldi.  Send me an email to share your favorite buys!

My Latest Trip to Aldi

Aldi's cute design on their paper bags

Before last year, I hadn't been to Aldi in a long time.  Here's my blog post about my last shopping trip at Aldi. When I went last February, I was impressed by the selection, quality, and general nicer feeling it was to shop there.  They have really cleaned up in the 10 to 15 years since I was there previously, so I was quite willing to go back.  The only drawback is that it's slightly inconvenient to go to Aldi since I know they likely won't have everything I want. Plus it's a lot of convenience food and not a lot of real food.  I was curious to see if it had changed, so I went to Aldi over lunch on Tuesday.

What I Thought

I was surprised to see so many brand name items available -- General Mills cereal, Oscar Mayer lunch meat, Boca vegetarian burgers, Nabisco crackers, Jif peanut butter to-go cups, Taco Bell taco kits.  And more food variety than I remembered, this time I saw things like steel-cut oats, frozen pierogies, whole refrigerated ducks, 4-5 flavors of deli mustard, specialty cheeses, agave nectar, and K-cups.  They also had a good number of diet, gluten-free (they're currently having a big sale on gluten-free items), and organic items. And a lot of the produce looked pretty good.  I was also impressed with their knock-off package design, if you didn't look closely, you wouldn't notice that it wasn't the big-name product you're used to seeing.

This time I was sad to find they didn't have some of the things that I liked last time, in particular the marinated mushrooms and veggie-enhanced pasta. I suppose items come and go, but if I find something I like, I want to keep buying it!

I was annoyed by the other shoppers.  The store was relatively empty, but it seemed like there was always someone standing right in front of an item I wanted and completely oblivious that someone else was even next to them, so they rarely moved over to share the space. Complete tunnel vision.

I was slightly in a hurry so I pretty much skipped over the fresh meat, plus I was also a bit hesitant about buying something so perishable.  But after seeing their weekly specials/flyers and noting that it's USDA Choice (check out the beef grades to know what it means), it's likely the same quality of meat you buy at your regular store, so I shouldn't be so worried. 

Our kitchen table loaded with what I bought (click for larger version)

What I bought (and price, if notable) 

Dairy/Refrigerated

• French vanilla non-dairy creamer (Sonny D & I use it for a "milk" float on our oatmeal, Jeff uses it for coffee)
• 2 half-gallons unsweetened original almond milk (we go through this pretty quickly since it's the only milk we have in our house)
• 4-pack of strawberry Greek yogurt cups for Sonny D's school lunches (I had to search to find the ones that were already blended, he doesn't know he needs to stir it.)
• country style chicken breakfast sausages (was surprised at the minimal ingredients, I think it was pretty much just chicken, salt, sage, and thyme. This is their SimplyNature brand, it tends to be organic or not loaded with chemicals/preservatives.)

  Fresh Produce

• head of cabbage
• three multi-colored bell peppers
• bag of Gala apples ($2.99)
• mango ($.99)
• sweet potato
• 2 grapefruit ($.49 each)
• 2 avocados ($.79 each)
• pint of blackberries ($.99)
• sliced mushrooms (these might even be the same brand I've bought at the regular grocery store)

Dry Goods

• ground fair trade coffee ($3.99)
• ground decaf coffee (Husband Jeff mixes regular and decaf to get a half-caff blend)
• cheddar cheese rice snacks (for Sonny D's lunches again)
• 2 cans mandarin oranges (these were popular last week when I opened some for Sonny D's lunch, so figured might as well get more)
• can sauerkraut (canned isn't as good as homemade but I figured sometime soon we'll grill hot dogs or brats and I'll really want sauerkraut with mine.  Eventually I'm going to try to make my own.)
• can pumpkin puree (on clearance but the price wasn't that great, $.99)
• crushed pineapple
• canned pink salmon (it's motivation to make salmon cakes/patties)
• pure vanilla extract ($1.99.  I'm pretty liberal with my vanilla for recipes and this is a good price for real vanilla.  Don't ever buy imitation vanilla, it's made from wood by-products. Yuck!)
• loaf of 12-grain bread ($1.89, amazing price for something nicer than generic white bread.  It has a variety of whole grains as the first ingredients and it tastes good.)
• chocolate and peanut butter protein bars (for Sonny D's lunches or a weekend snack)
• Glutino pretzels (the best pretzels ever! $3.49)
• package of 6 100-calorie bags of light microwave popcorn (good afternoon snack when you're hungry at work.  I split the box half, some for me and some for Jeff to take to the office.)
• high-fiber multi-grain crunch cereal (I'm hoping this is similar to Sonny D's favorite Trader Joe's 9-grain crunch, I think both are knockoffs of the Kashi Go Lean Crunch)
• bottle each of tempranillo and Chianti wines for Jeff ($4.99 each)

My total for this trip was $67.83.  The most expensive item was the bottles of wine for $4.99 each and the cheapest items were the grapefruit and mango at $.49 each. 

It wasn't until I looked back at my blog post about last year's shopping trip that I realized I had bought a few of the same things on this trip -- the Chianti wine, fresh avocado, canned mandarin oranges, and mushrooms.  

Verdict

Once again, I was impressed. I think everybody should take a look at Aldi to check it out and pick up a few items.  They might not have everything you need, but the stuff they do have seems to be good and the sale prices are cheap!  If you come to our house for a party this summer, don't be surprised if you find that most of the food came from Aldi.

It's nice to find quality items at Aldi, but the selection is limited.  Think of it as a trip to a store like TJ Maxx or Marshalls.  You can have ideas in mind for what you want to look for, not an exact list.

Tips For Shopping At Aldi

• Go with an open mind, you might not find what's on your list, but you might find something you'd like to try.
• Take a quarter, you'll use it to get a shopping cart.  Return your cart to get your quarter back.
• They only take cash or debit cards, not credit cards or checks.
• Take your reusable bags, grab the empty cardboard boxes you see while shopping, or buy plastic/paper bags when you get to the checkout lane.  
• You'll bag your stuff yourself at the counter past the checkout. Bagging was difficult for me since I'm so obsessive about how things are packed, but it's nice to know that it's exactly how you want it, like cold items together, bread and tender produce not squished, etc.

Followup: Aldi Product Reviews

A while back I went shopping at Aldi, the discount grocery store. (Read about my shopping experience.) I bought a few things to see what we thought of them before buying more.

Roasted-chicken noodle soup

Sausage, peppers, & onions pasta entree

• marinated mushrooms (these are normally really expensive, these were only $2) Verdict - tasty.  I love having a couple with my lunches for a little something extra to snack on. 
  
  
• canned pumpkin (this is like the brand-name version, pumpkin only, maybe $.59 each)
  Verdict - I made iced pumpkin cookies with it and had some remaining that I used in a couple bowls of my morning oatmeal. Excellent, wouldn't know the difference from the regular brand, but how different could it really be?
  
  
• blackberry spreadable fruit
  Verdict - haven't opened this yet
  
  
• artichoke hearts
  Verdict - I don't remember using them, either they're still in the pantry or they were just like any other artichoke hearts I buy.  I love artichoke hearts, which are really expensive, so finding them for less is a total score. 
  
  
• sweet potato tortilla chips
  Verdict - these are still in the pantry.
  
  
• mandarin oranges
  Verdict - I bought them particularly for the recipe for orange fluff. They seemed perfectly fine but I don't buy canned mandarin oranges often (this might have been the second time ever?) to know how they compare.
  
  
• Hormel turkey pepperoni
  Verdict - I buy these all the time, they were the same as what I get at my usual grocery store.
  
  
• light whipped topping
  Verdict - used this for the orange fluff recipe along with the canned mandarins, it tasted like any light whipped topping, no weird aftertaste or anything.
  
  
• sausage & peppers frozen pasta entree
  Verdict - I only had a quick taste of them when it was first made, but it seemed good and a little spicy.  When I finally tasted the leftovers, they were slightly spicy, but generally bland.  It was only ok, wouldn't really recommend it.  Not that it was bad, but more that there wasn't much good to say about it.
  
  
• frozen chicken noodle soup
  Verdict - really quite nice.  The noodles were thick, the chicken was all white meat and no gross bits, and the veggies were fresh. 
  
  
• shrimp (I figured shrimp is shrimp, plus it was really cheap!)
  Verdict - I should have looked closer, I thought they were shelled and deveined, but the shrimp was only deveined, there was a shell and tail I had to remove.  So more work than I usually want to fuss with, but still an awesome price. 
  
  
• yogurt covered raisins
  Verdict - Sonny D likes these, we use them as his treats for going potty.  The raisins seem bigger than normal, almost like they're double-dipped, so there's lots of tasty "yogurt" coating.
  
  
• gummy bears
  Verdict - Husband Jeff devoured them.  The flavors are great, tastes like they're made with real juice for flavoring.  I thought they were actually better than the standard Haribo gummy products.
  
  
• twisted elbow pasta
  Verdict - These have a serving of veggies in a 2 oz serving, so it's nice to get that extra little bit of nutrition.  I bought these specifically for Italian Wedding soup and they were great.  They're a good shape (bigger than a regular elbow mac) for a toddler to eat with silverware rather than resorting to his hands.
  
  
• 2 bags of mixed salad (I think butter lettuce and a spring mix)
  Verdict - excellent.  Cheap, the quality was good, like any nice bagged salad.
  
  
• bag of spinach
  Verdict - excellent
  
  
• Chianti wine for Husband Jeff
  Verdict - he liked it and said I could buy it again. 
  
  
• Cutie brand clementines
  Verdict - excellent, just like the ones I buy anywhere.
  
  
• avocados
  Verdict - amazing price at $.59 each and they were great. 
  
  
• whole raw mushrooms
  Verdict - excellent, just like what I get at the store, and much cheaper at $.59.
  
  
• spray canola oil
  Verdict - I like it.  I love the Trader Joe's version, which doesn't spray much at a time, letting you get only a tiny bit. This sprays more at a time, but it's great for using on popcorn instead of butter. 
 

Verdict 

I was pleasantly surprised by the selection and quality of products at Aldi, particularly the fresh produce.  Not all of the produce was awesome, but the items I bought were.  They've definitely done an excellent job of sprucing up the place.