Grocery Shopping - Price Comparison

Whilst I sometimes post about my grocery shopping highlights, I never normally show you everything I buy. This morning, however, I was so shocked by how much we spent that I decided to show all. We have two main choices for supermarkets in our town - Lidl and Waitrose. We always go to Lidl first for the bulk of our shopping (I find the quality of their fruit & veg is better than Waitrose, but they don't always stock such a wide range) and then to Waitrose for anything we haven't been able to get in Lidl.

So first up, here's what we bought in Lidl.

Bready stuff - part-bake rolls and bread are usual purchases, plus I made the mistake of letting Toby choose something for breakfast (waffles), so then Izzy (scones) and Liam (scotch pancakes) had to choose something as well of course! ;)

Vegetables - carrots, peppers, broccoli, tomatoes, mange tout and cucumber:

Fruit - bananas, grapes, strawberries, blueberries x2 and a red grapefruit:

Fresh stuff - full fat milk for the others, skimmed milk for me, ham for Liam & Izzy's sandwiches and little yoghurts for Izzy & Toby:

Tomatoes - lots and lots of tomatoes!! I don't like fresh tomatoes at all (those are for Izzy's packed lunches) but get through loads of chopped tomatoes and passata in meals!

Random stuff - biscuits for Liam, lemon juice and yeast (this was only 25p so I thought I'd give it a try - will it be any good for making your bread recipes Maria?)

And free range eggs, on their own because I forgot about them until I'd packed everything else away...

Total for the Lidl shop: £24.66

I was really impressed by how much we got for that amount of money. Unfortunately that's when things started going wrong - I only had a "few" things to buy in Waitrose but a) their stuff is so much more expensive and b) Liam had had enough of shopping by then so he took the kids for a walk whilst I went round the shop on my own - bliss! Here's what ended up in the trolley...

Frozen - peas, blueberries & raspberries. I could have bought these in Lidl but I was worried about them defrosting, and that's also a good excuse to buy the nicer raspberries - when I make smoothies with the Lidl ones they end up full of seeds, but then these raspberries look almost too perfect to blitz up!!

Fresh - 2x cheddar (on offer), 2x 0% Greek yoghurt, Quorn "chicken" ham (not sure I'll like this - it looks like plastic - but I thought I'd give it a try!), sesame smoked tofu (I also love the basil one but I still have some of that in the fridge) and chocolate cheesecake for Liam & Izzy (they're under strict instructions not to give me any!!!)

Savoury Dry Goods - noodles, wholewheat spaghetti and curry powder (Lidl didn't have any of these), plus a couple of tins of soup for Liam to take to work on the days Izzy has school lunches:

Sweet Dry Goods - instant coffee, ground coffee, cocoa powder, chocolate chunks (to make biscuits later) and Bear granola nibbles:

Random - asparagus and the Waitrose magazines:

and a cute mug that I, again, forgot to photograph until the rest of the shopping was packed away. This was "only" £2.50 so I figure it can be my equivalent of Liam & Izzy's cheesecake!!! ;)

Total for Waitrose shop: £47.24

Yikes! I think we bought many more things in Lidl than we did in Waitrose, for almost half the price! I suppose we do tend to get the harder to get, and therefore more expensive, things in Waitrose and more branded products as well, but still. Definitely glad we only shop at Waitrose once a fortnight now - when I worked there I used to pick up things after work most days!!

Which shops do you do your grocery shopping at? Do you notice a difference in price between the different shops? & are you any good at sticking to a shopping list? When I go to Lidl during the week I'm great at sticking to my list - I rush around (with Toby trying to climb out of his pushchair) and only get what I need - in and out as quickly as possible. Taking Liam and Izzy shopping with me is a bad idea though - even in Lidl, we wouldn't have got grapes or ham or all the breakfast breads if they hadn't been there. The extras in Waitrose are down to me though - going there is a bit of a "treat" now so I tend to get drawn into buying too many things!!