Money Saving

One of the ways often cited to save money in these harsh economic climes is to grow your own fruit and veg.  Now, as keen owners of an allotment for 4 years, we are firm fans of growing your own, but we would urge a bit of caution before you get digging.  Whilst we have grown some gorgeous vegetables that have been infinitely more tasty than anything you can buy in the shops, we have had our share of disappointments which have wasted our time and money.

So, if you fancy giving growing your own a go, what should you choose to plant?  Here are a few criteria we use:

• It should be something the family likes eating.  It’s easy to get carried away in the garden centre, but if they don’t like Swiss chard, is there really much point growing it?
• It should be something that is relatively expensive to buy in the shops.
• It should be something that is more tasty than what you can buy in the shops.
• It should be easy to grow.

For the above reasons, we’ve given up on carrots – you need to sow loads to get enough to eat, they are cheap in the shops, and ours kept getting eaten by pests!  We lovingly tended celeriac for months, only for everyone else to declare they didn’t like it.  And we’ve never managed to grow a butternut squash that is big enough to eat!

So, what has worked well? The new potatoes we’ve grown have been absolutely delicious, easy to grow and everyone loves them.  Our strawberries are always so much tasty than those in the shops, and the children love helping to pick them.  Same story with raspberries – we found the Autumn Bliss variety particularly easy to grow.  And the cherry tomatoes you grow are sweet enough to make even tomato-hating children eat them.

If you feel inspired, you could get started on new potatoes now – they are ideal for planting in large pots if you don’t have much room.  First earlies (eg Swift) can be harvested in mid-Summer, whilst delicious salad potatoes (eg Charlotte) are ready later on.  Buy a bag of special seed potatoes now from the garden centre, and spread them out (eg in egg boxes) inside in a light and frost-free place for 4-6 weeks so that they sprout little shoots.  Plant them in April with a few centimetres of soil covering them, and then keep covering with more soil as the plants grow (otherwise you’ll get green potatoes).  Keep watered, and start harvesting about 10 weeks after planting!

The discount supermarkets, Aldi and Lidl, are becoming increasingly popular in the UK’s current economic climate as families try to reduce their food bills.  In fact, a recent Which? survey of its members saw them come 2^nd and 3^rd out of all UK supermarkets, beaten only by Waitrose.  Yet, they still remain a mystery to many shoppers so we thought we’d do some research to see just what has made them so popular.

Overall Impressions

We paid several visits to Aldi and Lidl, buying a selection of items to test for quality and value, either by ourselves or other mothers.  In general, we were very favourably impressed on both counts.  On quality, we found some products (eg Aldi’s premium washing up liquid at 59p) came with the Good Housekeeping Institute seal of approval, and we were surprised to find quite a bit of organic fruit and veg at Lidl and free-range chicken at Aldi. There was even frozen sea bass and tuna steaks at the Aldi we visited, as well as some unusual finds such as dried oyster mushrooms and tinned lychees! Price-wise, we thought most products came out about 30% cheaper than the standard supermarket own-brand equivalent, making a great saving on our weekly grocery bill.  Click here for our verdict on individual products.

Why are they so cheap?

Although we like a bargain, we did wonder how Aldi and Lidl are able to offer these groceries so cheaply.  Well, they are “no frills” supermarkets who focus on selling food at low prices.  So you won’t find any extras such as cafes, customer toilets, customer service desks or loyalty cards.  Goods are displayed in the cardboard boxes they came in, with no fancy displays.   With a few exceptions, most products aren’t brands you will have heard of with many coming from abroad.  There aren’t many staff around, and on each of our visits (which were admittedly off-peak) there was only 1 till manned.  That said, the staff, in particular in Aldi, were helpful and were amazingly fast at scanning.  Don’t expect anyone to pack your bags (which you bring yourself, or pay extra for), and in fact you should just pile your goods back into your trolley to pack at leisure in a separate area.  Neither store faff around marketing special offers such as 3 for 2s like the Big 4 supermarkets do, concentrating instead on offering genuinely low prices all the time. We much prefer that!

What’s the difference between Aldi and Lidl?

Not much.  We found Lidl had a greater number of known branded products, eg Cadbury’s biscuits, Silver Spoon sugar, Heinz baby food, whereas these were few and far between at Aldi.

Any downsides?

Only a few.  Aldi and Lidl don’t have as many branches as the likes of Tesco or Sainsbury’s, so it might not make economic or practical sense to shop there if far away.    They both stock smaller ranges than the big boys, so you are unlikely to be able to do all your weekly shopping there.  Finally, they don’t take credit cards, just debit cards or cash, so make sure you ’ve got money in your account if shopping at the end of the month.

The Menu4Mums verdict

If you haven’t been before and there’s an Aldi or Lidl nearby, we strongly recommend you give it a visit.  Maybe pick up a few everyday products the first time so you can compare the quality yourself with your normal brands.  Then, once you’re as impressed as we were, go back and fill up your trolley with more.  If you can’t get everything on your list, you can always visit your usual supermarket for the extras.  Oh, and please let us know your verdict too on our Facebook page!

All the best

Menus4Mums xx

This week, we came across an article in The Telegraph reporting a survey from Sheffield Hallam University that families could save almost £8 per supermarket trip by simply replacing fresh meat, fish, and veg with their frozen equivalents.  That works out at about £400 per year.  We at Menus4Mums already knew frozen food was good value – after all, we are Mumbassadors for The New Ice Age.  But the benefits don’t just stop at saving money, handy though that is!

In the depths of winter, we much prefer using frozen berries in our cooking than the expensive “fresh” versions flown in from the other side of the world.  They are great in crumbles, pies and smoothies.  We also like heating up mixed berries and stirring them into natural yogurt for breakfast.  It’s a similar story with herbs.  With our herb garden under a few inches of snow, we find frozen herbs save on so much waste compared to the packs of fresh herbs.  And frozen fish is good value too.  As it’s frozen whilst still on board ship, it’s going to have more nutrients in it than the “fresh” fish that’s had a long journey to us in the middle of the country.

With the current cold snap predicted to carry on for a while yet, we will be putting a couple of extra frozen food items in the freezer in case we’re snowed in.  If nothing else, we generally find that being prepared for bad weather heralds a mini heatwave!

Thanks for coming back! 

Last week, we promised to let you know of our first impressions from our research of discount supermarkets.  Well, in general, we are very impressed!  We were pleasantly surprised to find some branded products (particularly in Lidl) and to find at least a limited selection of organic vegetables and free-range meat too.  On the whole, we reckon the prices are about 1/3 cheaper than supermarket own-brand products.

…continue reading here

Welcome to the first post of Menus4Mums new Bargain Spotting blog.

Don’t worry!  We know you love our regular lists of the best supermarket offers around.  You can still get these by clicking on the link on the left.

However, so many busy parents are feeling the pinch and trying to save money at the moment that we wanted to share our tips more widely.  So every week, we’re going to publish a short, informal blog post covering a particular subject matter, be it a way to save money, a product review, or maybe a guest post from another money-saving site.  (Occasionally, a link may be an affiliate link which gives us a few peanuts towards running the site – but we promise never to link to anything we wouldn’t have recommended anyway and which we wouldn’t try ourselves).

So, what’s in store?  At the moment, we’re mad busy researching the world of discount supermarket – ie Lidl, Aldi.  It’s been a real eye-opener I can tell you!  Come back next week for our initial findings.

All the best

Menus4Mums xx