I love Lidl

I'm all for shopping locally and supporting local businesses. However, when you're on a low budget and scraping together money to put on an Opera and all the other million projects we've got going on, whilst supporting two little kids and waiting for months and months to be paid from places, there's nothing better than scooting down the road to Lidl.

Lidl's a funny one though, don't you think?! Some people won't shop there and turn their noses up at even the mention of it. Wouldn't dare be seen with any thing with the Lidl branding on it. I'm not entirely sure why it's branded as being 'uncool' to go to Lidl. Does the cost of the food being cheaper suggest it's bad quality? Out of date? Horrible? Unfresh?

Well, afraid, I'm the complete opposite! I love Lidl. There's a great range of food, the fruit and veg is always fresh (contrary to some people's beliefs), you still get named brand bits and pieces there, but a wide variation of food from other countries and to top it all off, the prices are bloody brilliant!

Last week when we had visitors here (we've had nonstop visitors for almost 3 weeks now) we scraped together £13.64 between us all. (Yes...it has been tight recently!)

And with this I got;

• One bottle of fairly tasty red wine
• Block of butter (£0.99)
• Peppers
• Mushrooms (£0.85)
• Huge block of Emmental cheese (£1.99)
• Two packs of (6) breadbuns
• Bottle of worcester sauce (£0.69)
• Generous pack of pasta (£0.49!)
• Couple of courgettes
• Jar of black olives (£0.59!)
• A pack of mars bar type choc bars

Chickpeas were from Co-op & lemon juice just snuck into the photo for some reason...as has the marmite (which was from Lidl!)

I've tried to remember all the prices but most of them have escaped my bursting to the brim of things brain.



If I had gone along to another shop I probably would have only been able to get half of what I did. I went into Waitrose not so long ago (I do shop in other places too) and was looking for some emmental and a block half the size was double the price of the one from Lidl.

I'd love to know what it is that people don't like about Lidl. Do you know? What do you feel about it?

We go there pretty much every weekend now to get a big shop in for the week. It lasts us a good while and are always surprised by how much we come back with for, say, £50.

It's funny because I've noticed quite a few people mentioning Lidl on twitter recently, it's like we've all had it on the brain recently as I'd been planning to do this post last week. And I also missed the waffle iron that I was intending to get that fellow lovely lady blogger This Girl Is... got for an incredible £12 from Lidl!

Well, with all the lovely food I cooked up a very yummy pasta with lots of veg in a tomato and red wine sauce, with herbs and spices and a good helping of emmental cheese on top. (And a glass of wine too!)

My trusty Lidl pan I have had for years now!

And it was very tasty indeed!

The pan above, I have had for nearly two years now (or just over) and it's also from Lidl's amazing selection of sometimes quite odd, sometimes brilliant and wonderful assortments of household bits in the middle section of the shop. Every single other pan we've ever had has ended up handle-less or broken or just plain rubbish and never last.

So then! Lidl rant over!! Phewph... glad that's out my system now.

Lidl always reminds me of when we were living in France too. Our kind English neighbour took us there every week to do a shop as it was too far away to walk. Shame the wine in the UK isn't as cheap as it was out there. And the Cidre! Oh the Cidre! My my! It was good... but that's another story...

Keep an eye out... going to change my blog around a bit... bit sick of all these flowers now...