Thursday 18 June 2009

Food shopping- no room for snobbery

I always had different shops for different food at home -
Asda/ Morrisons for staples like crisps/ baked beans/ detergents/ fruit and veg/ branded stuff (always had offers so good for stocking up!)
Tescos for fresh pasta/ dips/ nice bread etc
Indian shops for masalas/ indian veg and pulses
M&S for treats like Percy pigs/ tea cakes etc

Here, life is a bit more complicated!
There are only 2 main Supermarket chains - Woolworths (I guess Tesco) and Coles (Asda/Morrisons). The main problem is that they pretty much sell the same things, Woolworths is just more expensive!

The added contender here is.... Aldi!
The snob in me would never have dreamt of buying none branded Baked Beans etc in Aldi at home (I wouldn't normally even buy a supermarkets own brand for most food things unless it was Tesco Finest!)
New country, new rules! I figured that most of the brand names here would be new to me anyway, so why not try something different...
The added bonus is that Aldi here often have English imports too - I recently bought Marmite and McVities Digestives (milk chocolate and original!).

We always have to do a top up shop in Coles as you can't get everything in Aldi, but this new attitude has allowed me to not only reduce our shopping bill by about a third, but also led me to the discovery that Aldi Houmous is infact MUCH nicer than anything I have bought from Coles and Woolies!!

Lastly, Sydney has not yet suffered the death of the High Street like London has - there are lots of lovely delis, speciality shops and bakeries to buy yummy stuff - at a price though! I could buy proper Bisto gravy granuales from the Expat shop as long as I don't mind paying the equivalent of £4 for it!

On that note, please can I remind everyone that might be visiting soon to bring us any of the following:
Hula Hoops, Skips, Prawn Cocktail Walkers,Squares, Toffee Crisps, Mini eggs.... oh sod it - any crisps and chocolates!!!

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