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!!

Starting the day without coffee + a Waitrose food shop

I don't necessarily show it very often on the blog, but I start every morning with a latte. My few moments peace before the rush of getting everyone ready for the day.

This morning, however, we were completely out of milk. Uh oh. No point nipping to the shops to buy some as we were aiming to go to Waitrose as soon as it opened at 10am anyway. I'd also run out of my squash, so no drink for me.

Luckily I remembered I had one carton of chocolate soy milk left in the fridge, so I ran downstairs to get it, ran back upstairs, drank it in bed and then got dressed. Yup, I'm strange.

FYI, chocolate soy milk is delicious, but a cold drink through a straw is not a substitute for a hot latte on a cold January morning!

After that we were off to Waitrose to buy some "essentials". The January budget has been going pretty well, so we only go to Waitrose occasionally now to buy things we can't get elsewhere. I think this was actually our first trip in 2012. I'm finding that it works out cheaper to do an almost daily small shop in Lidl, rather than a big weekly shop in Waitrose. Plus I prefer the quality of Lidl fruit and veg, so we only really need Waitrose for the more speciality stuff.

The first thing I did when we got home from Waitrose was have my missed drinks - a latte and a glass of Ribena squash:

And then I took some photos of my favourite purchases, as you do...!!

The best find? Waitrose are now doing frozen yoghurt!! I was so excited that I took a photo to Instagram and Tweet whilst still in store:

and brought home a tub of the pomegranate flavour. We were meant to be sticking to just the things on our list, but my justification was that I didn't know that Waitrose sold this to put on the list in the first place, did I?! I haven't tried this yet but I'll be sure to let you know when I do!

I couldn't decide whether to buy this one or the plain flavoured one. The passion fruit one has pulp in it whereas this one seems to be made with just pomegranate juice. I'm not always keen on seeds in things - I'd much rather add my own toppings to change the texture!

Other less interesting, but still tasty purchases were...

Fresh section - caramelised onion houmous, tofu, paneer and cottage cheese:

Drinks - Alpro chocolate soy milk (which is 2p cheaper in Waitrose than Tesco, whoop, and much cheaper than the cows milk equivalents) and Ribena squash. I really should drink plain water, but this stuff makes it so much tastier!

Dry goods - tinned pineapple and coconut milk (for Thai fried quinoa) plus coconut cream, quinoa, wholewheat pasta:

Plus the usual milks, childrens' yoghurts, squash for Liam etc. No fruit and veg except for bananas and apples (we were completely out & Liam takes them to work each day) as I can buy those for cheaper and better quality at Lidl tomorrow.

For lunch the others had tuna quesadillas, so I had breakfast for lunch that I could have actually made before we did the food shop - no milk required!

Averie's Microwave Blueberry Banana Oat Cake. Every time I have this, I ask myself why I don't make it more often, and then forget about it again for another month or so! It is so delicious though, especially with melty peanut butter on top, and super easy to make.

We're having quite a relaxed day today - the children are both having naps at the moment and Liam is visiting his Nan in hospital...I suppose I should get on with the washing up after I finish writing this! Yesterday we took the children swimming as Izzy needed a bit of practise to get her confidence back before her lesson tomorrow. Toby managed half an hour before the teeth chattering got too much for him - a record for him - although he was less cold sitting on the side playing with the toys (we went at the toddler toy bit time) rather than in the water, odd.

What have you been up to this weekend? What would be your "essential" treaty bits when doing a food shop? Things like paneer and houmous for me! I haven't found anywhere else in my town to buy paneer - which I love in curries - so it is always a treat when we have it. I did actually spot it in a big Tesco I went to the other day, but their version seemed much more cottage cheesey. I know that's what it is, but still - the Tesco one had lots of holes in it whereas the Waitrose one is firmer so that I can fry it into cubes of "squeaky cheese" as Izzy calls it! I like buying nice granolas too, but I bought a box of "apple and cinnamon crisp" from Lidl a couple of days ago, which is granola in another name really, so I couldn't justify a trip to the cereal aisle today!

Waitrose Treats

Hello! How are you all today? I'm loving the sunshine we've got here...even if it is still really cold, it makes such a nice change from the grey lack of light we've been having lately!

One little boy didn't agree this morning though - this was him this morning, at the time we normally leave the house to take Izzy to school:

He doesn't normally sleep this late so I didn't have the heart to wake him (never wake a sleeping baby!) so I left it until the last minute and then scooped him into his pushchair. He inevitably did wake up, but was quite happy munching on some Nature's Path O's on the school run!

I took this photo of Izzy on the way to school - it feels like it's so rare to have sunshine these days that I wanted to capture it!

All of the photos in today's post are from my iPhone - I hope it doesn't affect the quality too badly! Liam took his laptop into work today, and we are still waiting for our camera to come back. For some reason my little sister's camera - which I have been using - will only upload to Liam's laptop, not mine, and I didn't want to have to wait until this evening to write this post. So phone photos it is!

After dropping Izzy at school, Toby and I carried on walking up to Waitrose. I'd forgotten how steep the hill was - I don't know how I managed it when I worked there, especially whilst pregnant with Toby!! My friend suggested that the walk meant I deserved a lemon yum yum (doughnut) - good thinking! As I've actually managed to stay relatively on track with healthy eating the last couple of days, I decided to treat myself with a few slightly healthier things instead.

I first gravitated towards the juice aisle. They had a couple of new things that caught my eye - cold-pressed apple juices (apple & passionfruit, pink lady apple, and golden delicious apple):

Interesting smoothies - I liked the sound of orange & carrot, and orange mango & pumpkin...not so sure about the raspberry & red pepper though!

In the end, I was a bit put off by the prices for a tiny bottle, so decided to stick with an old favourite instead. I always used to think of Tropicana as expensive, but not compared to the newer ranges! Orange and raspberry juice, mmm!

I used to drink so much fresh juice when I was younger, but don't drink as much these days. A couple of weeks ago, Liam thought he was treating me by buying me a carton of apple & raspberry juice drink. Bless him, he didn't realise there was a difference between juices and juice drinks but I hate how much sugar they add to the "drink" versions - completely ruins the flavour of the lovely fruits! This was much better, delicious!

I also treated myself to a pack of Vietnamese vegetable spring rolls for lunch:

These were quite nice - when I first started eating, I really enjoyed them (hence my positive comment on Instagram) but by the time I got to the third roll, I couldn't finish it. :-( I don't know what it was - they just had a weird aftertaste, which I've also found with Waitrose vegetarian sushi, don't know what causes it though. These rolls also had loads of fresh coriander in them, which I hate, so they turned into a very messy lunch with me picking them all out!!

Luckily this was just part one of lunch. Once I've finished this post, I see carrots sticks dipped into one of these in my near future...

Love! Houmous was on my list of "necessities" anyway, but as they had the flavoured houmous on offer 2 for £2, I couldn't resist!

I also bought a few Nakd bars as they were 4 for £2.50:

I didn't really mean to end up with two of the cashew cookie ahead of the other flavours - I started with two cashew cookie and two pecan pie, and then noticed the ginger bread on the shelf below so swapped one of the pecan pies out without thinking about my flavour preferences. Oh well, I love all of these flavours so can't complain - I probably wouldn't have been able to choose which one to have two of anyway!

I do enjoy shopping in Waitrose. We used to shop there regularly when Liam or I worked there, as we got 15% discount. Now neither of us work there, we tend to do most of shopping at Lidl, which is closer anyway, but sometimes need to go to Waitrose to buy some things that can't be got in Lidl. Todays "needed" purchases were quinoa, tinned coconut milk, paneer and (yuck but Izzy loves them!) cheese strings. But as you can see above, I ended up buying quite a few things that weren't on the list as well! I've often said that about Waitrose - their basic products (milk, cleaning products etc) are actually often comparable to the other supermarkets, but when you go to Waitrose you (or certainly I!) tend to get drawn into buying their more luxury products as well and that's when the shopping bill adds up!

Do you shop at lots of different supermarkets/shops or do you tend to stick to one main one? What are you favourite "treat" foods to buy? Like I said, we do most of our shopping in Lidl these days - I find them especially good for fruit and veg (better than our Waitrose in fact, in terms of quality as well as price) and they often have good prices on branded products. I do also shop in Tesco Express for convenience, health food shops for "my" foods, and Waitrose for treats and things like tofu, quinoa etc which I can't get elsewhere.

I've just realised that most of that rambly paragraph will have no relevance to people who don't live in the UK, sorry! My favourite "treat" foods are often fresh fruit and things like yoghurt - I find it sad that berries, for example, are so much more expensive than biscuits! Of course I also loving buying things like dark chocolate (Lindt sea salt, mmm!) and often get tempted by Waitrose's patisserie counter as well...but I managed to skip that entire section of the shop today! Helped that I had to fit everything I bought onto Toby's pushchair, so space was limited!

Oh, also, while I remember! Thanks for all the comments on my colourful knives - I love them! I got them from my local shop but the brand is Taylor's Eye Witness.

Home Sweet Home

When we got home this afternoon, I was greeted by this on the doorstep...

My iHerb order a day earlier than I was expecting!

This is the 3rd time I've ordered now, and I use airmail delivery (much cheaper, so long as your order weighs less than 4lbs). The last two times my order took 14 days to arrive...yey for only 13 this time!! Although I'm not so sure about the freebie - some kind of mushroom coffee??! It's the same as I got in my 1st order, and last time I received the hot chocolate version...Has anyone received the same samples? And tried them??

Aside from the freebies, my order looked like this...

Peanut butter filled pretzels (a random item I added in because I had some weight allowance left!!), lots of stevia - I'm loving stevia sweetened coffees at the moment! I bought two more bottles of vanilla stevia drops, and one bottle of cocoa stevia drops to try. And finally, a jar of sunflower seed butter - I've heard great things about this so I have high hopes!!

We had a great time away - I will write a few blog posts about it over the next few days - but I think we're all glad to be home. The kids are certainly pleased to have more space to relax in!!

The mobile home we stayed in was nice, but a bit on the small side!

Once we'd unloaded the car of all our suitcases etc (there would have been no room for any shopping else!) we headed to Waitrose to re-stock our fridge! After a few days away, eating lots of stodgy carbs, all I really wanted was fruit and veg! We picked up some bargainous grapes...

Because of the 2 for £5 offer, the reduction made the grapes 22p total for both packs...gotta love staff shopping!! :) These went straight in the freezer - I have been loving frozen grapes recently, so refreshing!! We also picked up reduced plums and blueberries, as well as full priced nectarines, apples, bananas, spinach, courgettes, sweet potatoes etc...lots of fresh produce for us to enjoy this week!

We did also pick up some convenience food - Liam and I were both way too tired to contemplate "proper" cooking tonight, so fresh pasta it was!

Two packs of goats cheese and caramelised red onion fresh pasta that were on offer, and roasted pepper pesto sauce that was reduced...I was loving the bargains today!! This made a simple, delicious dinner that was ready in just a few minutes...

I loved the pesto sauce - lots of yummy pine nuts in it! :)

Question time! Whilst I'm talking about food and orders, does anyone have any suggestions for foods to buy from Wholefoods Kensington?? My Dad went to Wholefoods Soho for me a while ago, but this time he is going to be closer to the Kensington one and apparently that one is bigger? :-D I wish I could go myself to browse all the aisles, but as I can't I need your recommendations - my Dad will need a list with pretty specific product names or he will be lost!! Can you get Cliff bars there? I've never even seen them in 'real life' so don't know which flavours you can get in the UK/which are best? And what about Pulsin' bars? I've seen them on quite a few UK blogs, a raw chocolate brownie flavour? I'm not a big fan of protein bars (well Trek ones are the only ones I've tried) so am I likely to like these? So many questions! I liked most of what my Dad bought me last time, but some things (like bee pollen!!) have sat in the cupboard unused so I want to try to just ask for things I'll love and use this time!!