london
I did not intend this post to be about praise for aldi.
I was about to talk of the hot weather we were having, and why i find myself being very sleepy at the middle of the day because of it and wanting to take a nap. it does make me miss out on a lot of things, because unlike europe where everything close down for their afternoon siesta, here in uk, and london everything stays open. it is one of the nicests things about uk that i like over and above europe.
I was on the bus to the supermarket earlier today and the hot weather seems to be affecting the kids a lot more than the adults. certainly the kids on the bus were all dozing off.
though reading a blog , i see europe is having a glut of summer vegetables and big bulgy tomatoes that we dont get here.
I have noticed they do have these big tumourous tomatoes, but they taste like tomatoes and are no different in taste from smaller tomatoes, so their size is the only difference.
they go well with buffalo mozzarela in a tomato salad, in that they look very nice, but of course u can have it with small tomatoes and they taste just as good. but i know some europeans like the look of things.
perhaps the beefy tomatoes also taste different. but i think they only look as if they taste different. certainly i have not noticed any difference in taste, partly because the olive oil dressing and basil herb masks any taste they might have. maybe that is why they are not so popular here in uk, certainly i dont see many of them on sale in the supermarkets.
i remember the european summer fruits, like the peaches that i bought in capdagde are just delicious, they are always just ripe and bursting with juice and comes off the core very easily. unlike peaches here in the supermarkets , where it is either not ripe yet, or too ripe. And no matter what state they are in they are never juicy or sweet. and they are not cheap either. That is something that europe has better than uk. but it seems the downside is that come winter, in europe, the range of vegetables on sale is severely restricted… at least if i read that blog entry correctly.
whilst here in uk, we get veg all year round, no exciting summer vegetables, but the staples like brocolli, lettuce,plain tomatoes, cauliflower, cucumber, celery are always available. not very exciting perhaps but people know they are there. And human beings being creatures of habit, we like eating what we are familiar with. maybe that is why in summer the supermarkets just dont bother to bring in other types of vegetables. people just dont buy them. if they are not familiar with it, they dont buy. that is my impression anyway, maybe it is a false impression.
but just using myself as an example, i too dont buy fancy vegetables that i dont quite know how to use. also some of the ones, like rocket , i find bitter and not very nice. as for kale, forget it, it is really a difficult veg to cook, and tastes of nothing and looks worse. haha.
in fact they found out that people who plan their meals, stick to the same dish for each day of the week and repeat that for years. so if it is monday it must be lasagna. or if it is lasagna today, it must be monday. haha.
this morning, i was browsing the daily mirror and saw a advert by lidl, where they featured celery for 50p, so i decided to go there, but since it was in peckham, i decided to go first to the aldi , and there i find celery was 45p. as well as lots of other veg for 45p instead of the usual 50p in the other supermarkets… except sainsburys strangely. for some reason, sainsburys are not caught up in reducing their price. i wonder why? their customers dont seem to be bothered that their stuff is higher priced. what makes the sainsbury customer so price insensitive i wonder, when we hear so much of tesco losing business to the likes of aldi, and having to reduce their prices. i was browsing in sainsburys recently and went away without buying anything as their prices were so much more. it is why i have not bought anything from sainsburys for ages. i have a feeling i will not bother to go there anymore. do others also feel the same way about sainsburys as i do?
in fact i ended up buying all my veg at aldi, and dont bother to stop over at asda or lidl, and caught the bus straight back. aldi never advertise these prices, so i was not aware of it. instead they advertised fruits at 69p, which i was not interested in, as i know those fruits are not as juicy as in europe. i am glad i decided to go to aldi first in spite of not finding anything in their reduced priced adverts.
I have come to the conclusion that i shall go to aldi first thing, before i go to the other supermarkets, unless they have really good offers.
Added 8.8.14 read today here that the russian embargo of fruit and veg imports from europe starts today for a year and the article says it means europe will have cheap fruits and veg as apples and pears from poland gets diverted. coupled with the good weather making the harvest in uk for fruit and veg the best so far, let’s hope it will filter down to us and we get cheap fruits and veg, though the cost of transporting those goods may up the prices. it is not good news for the farmers. they might let the fruit rot. what else can one make out of apples and pears… cider?
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Tags: aldi, fruits, grocery, supermarkets, veg
alifesgayventure 
Aldi is such a depressing shop though. The checkouts are always backed up with 4-5 people, because there’s nowhere to put your shopping so each person takes longer. Last time I went to the one in Peckham I saw a supervisor berating a cashier in front of everyone, and the woman was almost crying. Seeing bad managers who bully staff really annoys me, so I haven’t been back. now I use Asda instead.
i think you have to interpret it differently. i dont find the store in peckham depressing. i find it rather efficient and down to earth. with none of those silly tricks that supermarkets like to do to get people to spend, like those arrays of sweets and overpriced rubbish all along the check out queue.
the 4-5 people queues, sometimes more with some people with a huge lot of shopping, is a result of them being more popular as more people realise they are good value, and the queue moves very quick, because there is no room to hang around people take their goods to the counter and clear the way for the next person. you think that delays the line, but it is the opposite. many a time i have noticed in other supermarkets , a person packing slowly everything up right there whilst the cashier and everone else waits i have noticed the queue is fast moving.
the cashiers are really very good at mental arithmetic, because the till does not show the change. unlike many supermarket bills that tells the cashier and the customers how much change to give. maybe the machine only shows the change to the cashier and does not print it out. and as for the manager berating the cashier, i am neutral on that, because he might have good cause to do so. and it will delay the queue even more if he were to ask the cashier to go to an office to scold her in private. some people need to be scolded and that is not bullying. i know nowadays no one is told off for doing something wrong, but it means us suffering customers have to be at the blunt end of really bad cashiers. whilst a manager pulls up that cashier immediately means we dont have to wait till hundreds of us get bad service enough for some of us to complain before the manager takes notice and then still have to give 3 warning notices to the cashier, and then when that person finally gets sacked, get a discriminatory hearing on unfair dismissals. no one asks the customers whether they are happy to see the last of that cashier.