Aldi Feed the Family for £70 Challenge Review
Reviewed by Louise Totton
Being very budget conscious at the moment, and especially during the summer holidays when the kids seem to be eating twice the normal amount, and our money has to cover school holiday days out, I am eagerly looking for ways to save money on our day to day expenses.
I was therefore absolutely delighted to be asked to take part in Aldi’s challenge to see how little it was possible to feed our family for in a week. I have shopped at Aldi, for quite some time, although I was yet to attempt a full shop there. I have always found the quality of the vast majority of Aldi’s products to be absolutely excellent, and was looking forward to challenging myself to see just how much of our weekly shop we could get from Aldi.
At this point, I need to point out that we can’t buy all of our weekly groceries from Aldi as I suffer from coeliac disease, and can’t eat any food containing gluten. As yet, Aldi don’t stock a dedicated free from section, so things like bread, pasta and biscuits have to be bought elsewhere for me, although I do buy these things for the rest of the family from Aldi. Because of my dietary needs, it means that as a family, we eat very little processed or pre-prepared food because gluten is often unavoidable in such products. We eat a lot of naturally gluten free foods, such as meat, vegetables and pulses, and these are the products that can very often bulk up the cost of a shopping trolley in some of the bigger supermarkets. I know a lot of my friends, who are equally on a budget, find cooking fresh and from scratch more expensive than using frozen and pre-prepared meals, so I was looking forward to showing that this didn’t have to be the case.
I decided to spend £60 of my £70 budget in one shop, leaving £10 for buying fresh bread and milk later in the week. I also have a reasonable stash of store cupboard ingredients, although nothing out of the ordinary.
My meal plan for the week was as follows:
Tuesday
Breakfast – cereal and toast
Lunch – boiled eggs with soldiers
Dinner – sausages with roast potatoes, Yorkshires, peas and gravy
Wednesday
Breakfast – cereal and toast
Lunch – ham and tomato sandwiches
Dinner – meatballs and spaghetti (recipe from Aldi’s website)
Thursday
Breakfast – fruit and toast
Lunch – picnic in the garden (pitta, ham, cherry tomatoes, babybel, cucumber) Dinner – minced turkey curry
Friday
Breakfast – cereal and toast
Lunch – egg and toast
Dinner – ate out
Saturday
Breakfast – omelettes
Lunch – bratwurst / sausage baps
Dinner – pork stew (using half the joint)
Sunday
Breakfast – Bacon and eggs
Lunch – chicken thighs and salad
Dinner – aubergine and butternut squash curry
Monday
Breakfast – cereal
Lunch – picnic (sandwiches, frankfurters, babybel, cherry tomatoes, yoghurt, cans of pop, biscuits and crisps) Dinner – sweet and sour pork (other half of the joint)
Snacks – throughout the week, as it was school holidays, the four of us all managed to munch our way through crisps and biscuits as well drinking cans of diet coke and various other snack type foods.
We don’t really vary our breakfasts very much, toast and cereal seems to suit everybody really well and it is quick and easy in the morning. We buy both the Aldi Both in One bread as well as the seeded farmhouse loaf, and both are excellent. They’re as good as the well-known branded equivalents, and are so much cheaper. The Both in One bread at 49p is particularly good value at less than half the cost of the branded equivalent. It tastes just as good, and is a real find on the Aldi shelves. As a family, we have always liked Aldi’s cereals. Whilst not specifically marked as gluten free because they contain small amounts of barley malt, some are considered safe by Coeliac UK, and it means that I can eat cereal for a fraction of the cost of the specific Free From products.
On that note, whilst Aldi don’t offer a dedicated Free From section, I have found that many of their normal products are safe for me to eat and all are really well and clearly labelled. Aldi’s Vive Diet Coke is one of the very few non-branded Diet Coke drinks I can drink, and they represent a massive saving over branded drinks. The same is true of their Snackrite crisps; major branded ones are not considered safe for me to eat, but I can have most of Aldi’s, and at a very reasonable cost. The taste of these are completely indistinguishable from the more expensive alternatives, but are safe, cheap and clearly marked.
As part of my challenge, I was asked to cook one meal from the recipes section of the website. I decided to make the spaghetti meatballs recipe, as that night I wanted a quick and simple meal that would please the whole family. I did have to substitute the Aldi spaghetti for gluten free pasta, but this was the only substitution that I had to make. The meatballs are gluten free, and not bulked up with cheap breadcrumbs which was great to see. I cooked them on an oven tray, as per the instructions, and was really impressed that they didn’t shrink at all.
We all really enjoyed the meal, the kids had theirs with cheese grated on top, whilst my husband and I topped ours with chilli flakes. The sauce was really nice and the meatballs were excellent. They were really meaty and tasty, just like we would expect from fresh mince. The pack of 12 was probably about right for us (2 adults, a 6 year old and a 3 year old). In truth, we could all have eaten more meatballs, but the quantity was sufficient and we were probably being greedy wanting more!
All of the food we bought had a really decent shelf life. The veg I’d bough on Monday night was still fresh enough to make an excellent curry the following Sunday evening and it hadn’t deteriorated at all. All of the fruit and veg we bought stayed fresh for longer than we expected and we had very little wastage.
One of the favourite meals of the week was the sausage / bratwurst baps we had outside on Saturday lunchtime. As Aldi don’t offer a specific free from range, they don’t have any standard sausages that I can eat, but we have recently discovered both the frankfurters and bratwurst from Aldi are gluten free. The bratwurst are really reasonably priced at £1.65 for 6 huge sausages. They are really meaty and tasty, a real winner for us. I always take a pack of frankfurters on a picnic with me, and they make a cracking gluten free alternative to sausage rolls, and are just as nice cold as they are warm.
As part of our shop, I spent £3.73 on a really good sized joint of pork. As we’d had such good weather, I really couldn’t face making a roast dinner so I split it in half, making a pork and chickpea curry with one half and popping the other half in the slow cooker with onions, peppers and a jar of Aldi sweet and sour sauce. Both meals were delicious, quick and packed full of veggies.
We also bought a whole chicken, but found that we’d managed to make so many meals with the rest of our shopping, we could pop it into the freezer for next week. Within our £60 shop, we purchased lots of items that would last the month, including tins of chickpea, pulses, tins of tomatoes, crisps, drinks, pasta, baby wipes and a few other bits. We actually didn’t need to return for a top up shop either, as the goods we bought lasted so well that it wasn’t necessary. I did notice, however, whilst in Aldi that they have a range of great quality school clothes that was very reasonably priced. It would be more than possible to kit a young child out for school, excluding the logo sweatshirts, for £10, making the £70 challenge even better. With my £70, we have all eaten really well, I have meat and store cupboard ingredients left for the next couple of weeks, and I can get one of my girls sorted for school in September.
I really have been so impressed with the range, quality, price and very clear labelling at Aldi. I also find that I’m not bombarded with BOGOF offers that make me spend more than I want to on things I don’t need, which is great. I had always thought that Aldi was good, but didn’t think I could do my weekly shop there. I was wrong, Aldi is better than good, and (barring my special bread and pasta), I can do my weekly shop there quite easily.
Top marks, Aldi, thanks so much 🙂
Rating: 5/5
To find your nearest Aldi store and see how little you can feed your family for visit www.aldi.co.uk.
