A Well-Bread Lady Is Never Short of Bred - Uh, Wait, That's Not Right

Our family runs on bread.  White bread, pita bread, hot dog buns, crusty loaves of sesame-seed studded Italian, challah, panini, tortillas.  If there's no bread in the house it's a major crisis.  Today I was skating on the edge of disaster - I used the last soft bread for my father-in-law's breakfast sandwich and created some scrambled eggs-in-a-tortilla wrap for my husband.  Until I could get to the store, that was it for the day.  No time to bake.  I managed to keep the kids happy at lunch by offering rice and pasta, but I knew that I'd have to make a bread run before bedtime.

As often happens, that "quick trip" to the store for one or two items turned into a semi-major expedition.  I went to Aldi, and it's not for nothing that they call themselves "The Stock Up Store".  Milk, bread, bagels, coffee, kid snacks, cheese.  I got to the last aisle and saw that they had a lot of fruit on sale.  When you have five kids you are always trying to figure out how to afford enough fresh fruit and veggies for everyone.  In my family that means the kids eat a lot of apples and bananas.  Lots and lots of bananas.  But today they also had strawberries on sale for less than two dollars a carton.

Now, just yesterday hubby stopped by a local grocery store which will remain nameless  to get something (not bread, obviously) and he scooped up a couple of cartons of strawberries they had advertised for buy  one, get one free.  He made it to the checkstand but didn't have his store loyalty card.  Well, he never has had a card because a) he rarely shops and b) he'd just lose it anyway.  His keychain already weighs so much it knocks the Earth oh-so-slightly out of alignment so he can't put on one of those mini cards to scan at checkout.  We've changed phone numbers at least four times since we got that card so that didn't work.  The checker didn't try to offer any advice, like "Can I help you fill out a new card?" but just scanned the two packages at full price.  Uh, no, sorry dear, not gonna happen.  I'm not paying over three bucks for a pound of strawberries.  She was rude, too, which was unusual for this store, so hubby left sans strawberries and with a bad taste in his mouth due to the lack of customer service.

What I'm pointing out here is contrast.  I go to Aldi.  I stick my little quarter in the slot on the grocery cart and walk through the aisles in about fifteen minutes.  I grab what I want, knowing the price is right, without having to beg them to match an ad from another store or scan a card I can't find in the bottom of my purse.  I grab a couple of empty boxes for my stuff, pay, get smiled at, and load my stuff up and go.  No muss, no fuss.  And the rare times I've had an issue, all I did was write the website and bada-bing bada-boom!  Issue solved. 

Aldi is not the only store I shop at, but it's usually the first store I go to when I'm out buying groceries.  They don't have everything but they have a lot of my staple goods.  Butter, flour, sugar, milk.  Stuff for kids' school lunches.  Meat and produce.  It's a lot less stressful to go there because the store is compact and you don't have to stand in the aisle looking like a deer in the headlights of an oncoming SUV while you decide which of twelve brands of yogurt you should buy.  It's easy, and in this complicated world, a little easy goes a long way. 

I'm not shilling for Aldi (even though they are based in my mother's native Germany).  I just like shopping someplace that does it right.  Honest pricing, nice people, a reasonable selection, pictures of that Disney castle on a lot of their merchandise.  I've been to that castle, actually.  Not the Disney one, the real one.  It's called Neuschwanstein, and it's in Bavaria, and yes, it's really cool to walk through, and yes, it was built by crazy King Ludwig who, reports say, drowned under "mysterious circumstances" a la Natalie Wood.  Seeing the packaging brings back memories of walking up the really steep mountain to take the tour.  So every time I shop it's like a little European vacation.

The point of all this is to remind you all that it's not all that hard to save money around here.  Yes, it can be expensive to live in this far-flung suburb of D.C., though of course it doesn't hold a candle to the cost of living further north.  But if you do your homework and get to know the local stores, you'll know who always has the best price on produce and when they put the meat on sale.  You don't have to become one of those crazy coupon-obsessed people on TV, not that there's anything wrong with that.  Now, if you'll excuse me, the kids ate all the strawberries and I'm kinda peckish so I think I'm going to go make a sandwich.  I'm bread rich tonight!