Good Bye

I'm sad about this but my time with this blog is over. I'm now working for a local chain grocery store so my ability to be fair, honest and unbiased is over.

I've had fun with this but conflict of interest is conflict of interest. Don't want to get myself fired over a blog. Joe shall continue on.

Bye guys.

Aldi Nutty Bars and Other Snacks

So I'll confess I don't know the brand name. I think they might be Baker's Choice? All I know for sure is that the Aldi near me always has them.

You can buy a pack of nutty bars, though they call them something like peanut butter wafers (I swear I meant to post this before my husband threw away the box) for 99 cents and they taste just like what you get from Little Debbie.

In general, we go to Aldi on a monthly basis to fill our snack drawer. 20-30$ usually fills it to the top and we have more than a month's worth of snacks for the entire family.

My kids especially love their fruit snacks. You have to be careful though because they have two brands. One brand comes in the shape of dinosaurs and sharks and they are basically compressed pure sugar. The other brand promises they are made of real fruit, are shaped like real fruit and they are pretty much awesome.

Aldi also has a great selection of Granola Bars and other wonderful treats for the family.

As long as you stay away from the dino and shark shaped fruit snacks, you can't go wrong with Aldi's snack selection.

Kroger "Value" Brand Mayonnaise

First, please don't confuse this product with Kroger brand "Classic Mayo". They are two completely different products.

The first thing to note: While the main ingredient for mayo should be egg whites, it's not even listed as an ingredient in Kroger's "value" mayonnaise. The egg part that is listed is egg yolks. Yeah, that makes a big difference. The taste and consistency is off. Pretty much all of it is way off.

My dad bought the "value" stuff hoping to save some additional money and the rest of us pretty much refuse to touch it, save for what I tried on a sandwich for the sake of this post. You're welcome. My dad is using up what's left (waste not, want not) and then is going back to the "classic".

Want to save money on your mayo? Go with Kroger's "Classic Mayo" and stay away from the "value" stuff.

Kroger Brand Cheese

Ok let's be honest here. They've been making cheese for at least a few years now. So theory is they have it down to an art and it should be pretty hard to mess of cheese. Well maybe the first few times an individual makes it. But still. A big business? You'd have to be trying to not make it right, in order to mess it up.

With that in mind, save a few bucks and buy the store brand. I don't even care what store you're at. Cheese is cheese. Save some cash.

Now, on the other hand I do openly acknowledge that some cheese is better than others, even if the others aren't bad. And if better than good cheese is your thing and you have the money to splurge, go for it.

Otherwise, Kroger brand cheese is pretty good. I, for example, love their muenster cheese.

Kroger Brand Pasta Sauce

Ok let's be clear on one fact: I'm picky about pasta sauce. I don't know what it is about the different sauces that make me picky, but I am. For example, I LOVE Prego but HATE Ragu.

So when my husband bought the first couple of jars of Kroger's sauce, I was ready to pitch a fit and refuse. But for the sake of being a broke adult I decided to give it a try.

I also wanted to hate it. I wanted to hate it so I could refuse to eat it so we could go back to the Prego. Because I'm mature like that. I also have a few slight issues with change. Pasta is one of my comfort foods and changes to my comfort foods are hitting below the belt. So yes, I wanted to hate Kroger's Pasta Sauce.

Only I didn't.

I in fact fell in love with it.

We stick to the mushroom sauce for basic pasta. We also use the six cheese blend for chicken Parmesan. I'm sure the other blends are just as good.

So go give it a try!

Grandessa Peanut Butter Chocolate Chunks with Peanuts cookies (Another Aldi brand)

Photo: Copyright ©2010 Joseph L. Harris Photography

I love Aldi's Grandessa Chocolate Chunk and Toffee cookies. They're the best store-bought cookies that I've had. But I didn't buy them this time, so I'll talk about them later.

On my last trip to Aldi, I bought a 1 pound package of Grandessa Peanut Butter Chocolate Chunks with Peanuts cookies. 10 cookies in the package (instead of the 8 in the chocolate and toffee cookies). In any case, 1 pound of cookies was $2.99, which makes about 19 cents an ounce for these cookies.

I had expected a crispy chocolate chunk cookie with peanuts and peanut butter bits in it, but they're actually more like the soft peanut butter cookies you get with that distinctive hash-mark on the top, plus the chocolate chunks, peanuts and peanut butter bits.

They could stand to be a bit more chocolaty, but there's plenty of peanut flavor, and they're a Hell of a lot better than Chips Ahoy or most other name brands. Still, I like my cookies more the buttery, crispy type. But that's a matter of personal taste. I recommend you give these a try yourself.

Dakota's Pride Baked Beans (from Aldi)

I like to think I'm picky about baked beans. In general, the only baked beans I like straight out of the can are Bush's. I got a couple of 28 ounce cans of Aldi's beans (Dakota's Pride) and we had the "Country Style" for dinner tonight. They were excellent, and I highly recommend them. As I bought them a few weeks ago, I don't recall how much I paid for them so I cannot offer an ounce to ounce cost comparison to Bush's, but I'm certain there is a significant price difference.