We needed to stock up on frozen food - we go shopping for freezer stuff about every couple of months. We decided to try FarmFoods instead of the usual Iceland Food Warehouse - they're next door to each other in our town and neither is ever busy when we go, quite frankly I don't know how they manage to stay open when they're in direct competition with each other and being next door. My main gripe with FarmFoods is that half the shop is given over to - well, crap basically - rows and rows of multipacks of canned pop, crisps, biscuits and sweets. And their fresh fruit and veg isn't up to much - not good quality and very limited choice. However, they do have some good bargains on fresh dairy stuff and frozen foods, although it is a bit hit and miss.....e.g. their frozen cauli and broccoli (I buy it for Betty's homemade food) is in smaller packs and isn't particularly good value. I buy big bags of frozen diced ready cooked chicken for Betty too, it's good value and convenient. They do big bags (1.5kg) of frozen tiger king prawns - really massive prawns, which I love. They're £19.99 each or 2 bags for £30 - I got 2 yesterday. They're expensive, but they last a long time as I don't need to use many because of them being so huge. Husband likes them too, I used them to make a Thai prawn curry for us both for dinner last night - scrumptious. They also quite often do special offers on butter - last time we went, they were doing 500g tubs of Country Life butter for 99p. No such luck this time, but they did have 750g tubs at £4.00, which is £1 cheaper than Sainsburys.
I noticed Lidl had some of their £1.50 veg boxes - fresh fruit & veg that's nearing the end of its life and will otherwise be thrown out. So I went and had a look - some people on FB rave about them, but I have to say I have rarely seen one that I would buy, even for £1.50 - the ones they had yesterday had veg and fruit that was so far gone I'd just throw it on the compost heap. Lettuces that were slimy, tomatoes so soft and squidgy they'd split, very brown bananas, carrots that were going mouldy. Yuck.
Seems lots of us count marrying our husbands as one of our best life decisions - which is just as well I suppose! Another good decision I made was to drive up to the Midlands to see my Mum in hospital on the last day of her life, on Christmas Eve 2019. We got there 10 minutes after she died, and to this day I don't regret that, as I said all along I didn't want to watch her die. However, I'm so glad I could give her a hug and kiss whilst she was still warm, rather than seeing her cold and waxy body in the sterile and soulless environment of a funeral home.
And of course another great decision was getting my beautiful Betty, she's my baby (I've never had nor wanted children) and brings me so much joy, she makes me smile literally every single day. It's her birthday today, she's 7 years old, we've had her since she was just 8 weeks old and I can't believe how quickly the time has gone by.
In common with some of you, husband's had a letter to say he's getting a payment of £500 for the Winter Fuel Allowance again. I'm so grateful for this, it really does make a big difference to us. We'll have no worries about turning the central heating up if it's cold this winter (we've not needed to put it on yet), and it'll mean we can put another big chunk into our moving house savings.
Those prawns sound like a good buy. Tony and I both love them. I'll have to pop into our local farm foods and see if we have them here.
ReplyDeleteThe packs of mussels are also good, we have them in a creamy mushroom sauce with spaghetti
DeleteOur Lidl is a bit out of the way for us, so we rarely go there, but I have seen their veg boxes. The ones I saw looked alright, but we didn't need any veg at the time and the stuff in them wouldn't keep too long. I can see if you lived close enough to pop in every day or two, you could pick up a bargain, though.
ReplyDeleteHappy birthday Betty!🐕🎂 xx
The prawns sound like a great buy as does the butter.
ReplyDeleteGod bless.