{"id":409,"date":"2011-09-04T18:28:58","date_gmt":"2011-09-04T18:28:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.leilappetit.com\/blog\/?p=409"},"modified":"2011-09-04T18:28:58","modified_gmt":"2011-09-04T18:28:58","slug":"gourmet-girl-goes-to-lidl","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/leilappetit.com\/?p=409","title":{"rendered":"Gourmet girl goes to …LIDL"},"content":{"rendered":"
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This article appears in September’s edition of Bite Magzine.<\/a>\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

A quick glance at my monthly bank statement reveals the extent of my food-shopping mania. In my younger years, fancy shoes were my Achilles\u2019 heel. These days it\u2019s a quest for the finest edibles. We all love supporting independent stores, but reality also says that most of us are in a supermarket at least once a week. Waitrose is always top of my list for quality, but it knocks a serious dent in budgetary terms. When I\u2019ve over-spent once more and can\u2019t quite give up my Parma ham additcion, a trip to LIDL will always keep me sweet.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s an ugly \u2018ol place, and a visit here will never have you leaving with a warm and fuzzy feeling but neither will it seduce you into multi-offer buying, or chasing \u2018loyalty points\u2019. I\u2019ve been known to quickly pack my bags, push the trolley to the car park and have a sneaky look at the receipt to verify that I managed to buy \u2018all of this\u2019 for \u00a326.94.<\/p>\n

Some of the stuff on the shelves is uninspiring, and frankly weird. However, many products are the same as (if not better than) the average supermarket version, only here it can be up to 50% less pricey. Some of my faves are the Italian tinned tomatoes, passata, basmati rice, \u00a0extra-virgin olive oil, organic eggs, walnuts and cartons of juice.<\/p>\n

The fruit and veggies aisle is always worth a look. I recently picked up a box of organic heirloom tomatoes, pots of fresh basil and coriander (all between 80p- \u00a31.50), and rooster potatoes. Far from all being Euro-imports, the majority of the \u00a0fresh produce is from the UK, and things like apples are great in season.<\/p>\n

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Fresh meat can be hit or miss, but they do have good Scottish free-range chickens (\u00a33.29\/kg) and farm-assured pork chops which are tops for the BBQ. \u00a0The deli section is my fave, and whilst there are some dubious processed items, there\u2019s also some highlights including the D.O.P Parma ham and aged Parmesan, the Gorgonzola and Jam\u00f3n Serrano. The Greek-style yoghurt is creamy and tasty dolloped onto their own-brand luxury muesli (\u00a31.89)<\/p>\n

I couldn\u2019t swap to LIDL for my main shop, but it\u2019s well worth a monthly visit to stock up on some of these goodies. The shoes can wait.<\/p>\n

Stores across the UK. www.lidl.co.uk<\/a><\/p>\n

ps – we used loads of the LIDL goodies for our pizzas on PIZZA NIGHT\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This article appears in September’s edition of Bite Magzine.\u00a0 A quick glance at my monthly bank statement reveals the extent of my food-shopping mania. In […]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[20],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/leilappetit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/409"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/leilappetit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/leilappetit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/leilappetit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/leilappetit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=409"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/leilappetit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/409\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":412,"href":"https:\/\/leilappetit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/409\/revisions\/412"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/leilappetit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=409"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/leilappetit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=409"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/leilappetit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=409"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}