i died.

Nah, I'm just kidding. The truth is, you died. You've been a ghost this whole time... Bruce Willis!

Jeez, has it been over a year since I last posted? Perhaps I should explain. Back when I began this blog, I had taken all my product photos using my smartphone. It never occurred to me to transfer those photos to my laptop, or a flash drive, or the cloud . Then the microSD memory card where the photos were stored crapped out on me, and there was no way to recover the files. I've since replaced the memory card, but some of my enthusiasm for the blog was dampened.

Mostly, though, the main reason I haven't posted is that I've wanted to post something overwhelmingly positive about a product that I've purchased from ALDI. Last October, my sister and I thought it might be fun to compare pumpkin bread mixes from ALDI and Trader Joe's:

Here was the result:

Welp.

Of course, the logical explanation why things turned out they way they did is simply due to the fact that the Trader's Joe box contains more mix. I should also note, that there was nothing wrong with the Baker's Choice pumpkin bread. I personally thought it had more pumpkin spice flavor than the Trader Joe's mix. The trouble is it just doesn't look good when placed side-by-side with the Trader Joe's loaf, so I put off writing it up. Besides, the pumpkin bread mix is a seasonal product. By the time I had collected my thoughts, it probably would have been hard to find in stores.

Why am I posting today, then? Well, today so happens to be Cinco de Mayo. Maybe it's the due to the warming weather or the fact that I got out of work early, but I felt like celebrating a little in spite of having absolutely no Mexican in my family makeup. Guacamole is the only remotely Mexican dish in my repetoire, and avocados happened to be USD$.79 at ALDI. Here's my recipe for a basic guacamole. It's probably too late in the day for you to use it, but store it away for next year (or whenever you feel hungry).

Basic Guacamole

Ingredients

• 2 avocados
• 1/4 onion, finely diced
• 1 clove garlic, minced
• 1/2 jalapeno pepper, finely diced (remove ribs and seeds to reduce heat) 
• 1 lime
• salt (to taste)

Directions

Slice avocados into halves and remove the pits. Using a large spoon, scoop the flesh from the halves into a large bowl.. Add onion, garlic, jalapeno and salt to bowl. Squeeze the juice from the lime into the bowl. Mix the ingredients with two forks, breaking up the avocado into smaller chunks. Make sure the ingredients are well mixed but leave the avocado on the slightly chunky side. Serve with tortilla chips.

Did you know that aside from Super Bowl Sunday, the greatest amount of guacamole is consumed on Cinco de Mayo? At the very minimum, all you need to make guacamole is avocados and salt. Everything else is optional. The key is to make sure your savory ingredients are diced as fine as possible. Nobody wants to bite into a chunk of onion. I occasionally like to add diced mango to my guacamole; and even though mangoes were $.49, I left them out this time around.

There you have it: one quasi-apology, one quasi-review, and one quick-and-easy recipe! Logging in today, I noticed this blog is still drawing in traffic. Thanks for stopping by. I hope I can give you reason to stop again soon.

update: ALDI donates to wisconsin food bank

In a follow-up to Thursday's story of ALDI refusing to release milk to Hunger Task Force, television station  WISN reported on Friday that ALDI contacted the bankrupt dairy's trustee and authorized the release of the milk and other dairy products:

... Aldi spokeswoman Julie Ketay told WISN 12 News reporter Nick Bohr that Aldi had contacted the trustee for Golden Guernsey "to let them know that the product can be donated."

Ketay told WISN 12 News on Friday morning that the company was willing to donate the milk that was produced for them and told that to Golden Guernsey on Thursday.

Ketay said Aldi wasn't contacted about the milk until Thursday.

Parks said Friday was the last day Hunger Task Force will be allowed inside the dairy.
He said believed that would be enough time to remove any product that could still be useful.

There's an accompanying video on the page.

I'm glad to read that everything has worked out in this particular case. It's probably a small comfort to the dairy employees that suddenly lost their jobs, but at least families in need will have an opportunity to receive food that would otherwise have gone to waste.

ALDI withholding milk from food bank?

A Milwaukee-area television station is reporting that ALDI is preventing a local food bank from distributing milk rescued from a dairy that recently declared bankruptcy:

Since Monday's decision by the bankruptcy trustee for Golden Guernsey Dairy to donate the bottled milk inside the plant that suddenly closed Jan. 5, volunteers have been racing to get it to people in need.
[...]
An estimated two semi-truck loads of milk were packaged for Aldi. The grocery chain can't sell it, and the Hunger Task Force's Sherrie Tussler said so far, they won't give it away either.
"It's all ready to go, but we need the Aldi's company, we understand they're out of Illinois, simply to sign a release. Understanding that they're protected under the Good Samaritan law, their purchasing agent there still refused to sign the document today," Tussler said.

There's also an accompanying video on the page.

First, I think it's a tragedy that the workers at this dairy lost their jobs. Reading some of the related stories on the site, it seems that the capital investment group that owned the dairy shut it down without warning.  Second, why do people feel the need to put an "S" at the end of ALDI? There's only four letters in the sign, and none of them are an "S." It also drives me up the wall when people say "Barnes and Nobles" when referring to the bookstore chain. It's Barnes and Noble. Singular!

I would like to think that ALDI is simply taking extra precaution and double-checking with their legal department to make absolutely certain that they are protected from potential liability. They're legally unable to sell the milk, and it would seem rather miserly if they would rather let the milk spoil than allow it to be donated. However, we can only make assumptions at this point until ALDI either releases the milk or issues a press release explaining their position. I hope that they arrive at a decision sooner than later.

trip report: january 14, 2013

I bought some things yesterday:

• Friendly Farms 2% milk (1/2 gal)
• Brookdale Beef Stew x 2
• SimplyNature Instant Soup Cups (Chipotle Black Bean, Spicy Thai)
• SimplyNature Sesame Lo Mein x 2
• Happy Farms spreadable cheese wedges (1 Blue, 1 Green, I forget what the distinction is)
• SimplyNature Uncured Pepperoni Thin & Crispy Crust Pizza
• Clancy's garden vegetable straws
• Clancy's guacamole-flavored tortilla chips
• SimplyNature Sweet Potato Corn Tortilla Chips
• Savoritz sea salt pita crackers x 2
• Clementine oranges (3 lbs)
• Navel oranges (4 lbs) x 2
• Friendly Farms All-Natural Honey Greek Yogurt x 5
• Large Eggs

My cashier was Nancy.

Notes:

• The clementine oranges were marked down from US$2.99 to US$1.99 at the store that I visited, because the oranges were overripe. I tried finding a bag with the least amount of burst oranges and still managed to get a bag with about five compost candidates. It's still not a bad deal, and clementines are fun to pack into lunches. I encountered the opposite problem with the navel oranges, many still looking a little green.
• I went a little wild with the SimplyNature products. I'm most excited to try the instant soup cups, but I'm prepared for disappointment. Countless woeful meals of Cup Noodle and its imitators have left me justifiably wary.
• Are Friendly Farms and Happy Farms really two distinct farms?

My recommendation for the day is the Savoritz sea salt pita crackers. The crackers are crisp but don't have the hard crunch of Clancy's pita chips (which is a plus in my book). Also unlike the pita chips, the crackers are lightly salted. They're good on their own or paired with cheese or dip.

2013!

I'm not dead, and I haven't abandoned this blog. You probably know how hectic things get during the holidays. Mercifully, a new year has begun. I promise to have new reviews and a couple of thoughts posted in the near future. ALDI is hitting the ground running and rolling out a new line of all-natural food products under the SimplyNature banner in the weekly in-store ad for January 9:

SimplyNature is simple food made only with all-natural, honest ingredients and without artificial colors, flavors or unnecessary enhancers. Just great tasting, wholesome food you can trust... made the way nature intended.

I'm intrigued, to say the least, by the offerings. Do come back, and look forward to reading reviews of these products and many more in the year to come. Happy New Year!

review: Summit Diet GT Cola

Summit Diet GT Cola

Since their introduction in the 1960s, diet colas have steadily taken a bigger chunk of the soft drink market. In 2010, Diet Coke surpassed Pepsi-Cola to become the second-best-selling soft drink. According to PepsiCo's 2011 annual report, the public purchased over US$5 million of Diet Pepsi product. It may pale in comparison to Diet Coke's sales, but sales like those are still attractive enough for smaller companies to chip away at Coke's and Pepsi's profits by offering their own line of sodas-- diet or otherwise. ALDI offers a line of carbonated soft drinks under the Summit brand. Today, we take a look at Summit Diet GT Cola.

I'm partial to diet sodas. I'm not a diabetic, and I'm well aware that "Diet" doesn't mean it's particularly healthful. It's just that I don't care for the way that high fructose corn syrup in regular sodas seems to linger inside my mouth and on my tongue. Between Diet Coke and Diet Pepsi, I prefer Diet Pepsi. Diet Pepsi does a better job of approximating the flavor of its regular variety. Diet Dr. Pepper comes a close second. One look at the silver/red color scheme of the Diet GT Cola can, and you know which cola brand they're trying to evoke. Despite the obvious parallel being drawn to Diet Coke, I remained hopeful that the contents would resemble Diet Pepsi.

The flavor is... different. It has faint caramel undertones, falling somewhere between Diet Coke and Diet Dr. Pepper. It's not overly sweet. However, there's a medicine-y aftertaste that's difficult to overlook for the sake of saving a few cents. I took a look at the list of ingredients on the can to try and figure out what was giving the soda its peculiar aftertaste:

Then I took a look at the list of ingredients on the back of a Diet Pepsi bottle that I fished out of the recycling bin:

If you weren't already aware of it, FDA regulations require food manufacturers to list ingredients in decreasing order of predominance. What we can then gather from looking at these two lists is that not all diet colas are created equal. The Summit diet cola actually contains more Potassium Benzoate than the Diet Pepsi, which may explain the aftertaste (exactly how much more is a mystery). Also, caffeine is listed last on the Summit can. That may not have much bearing on its flavor, but those of you looking for a sugarless buzz may want to look elsewhere. On the other hand, "natural flavor" is listed higher up on the Summit can than it is on the Diet Pepsi bottle. Give ALDI some credit for attempting to give their product some personality.

It's not a bad cola, mind you. It pretty much falls in-step with my experiences with other "store brand" sodas. It's just not the cola that I grew up drinking. The major bottlers offer frequent promotions that make any potential savings practically negligible. I would still drink Summit Diet GT Cola if I was in desperate need of a soda fix,  but it won't replace my favorite brand anytime soon.

trip report: november 25, 2012

Here's what I bought yesterday:

• Baker's Corner Pumpkin Quick Bread and Muffin Mix
• Reggano plain couscous
• Millville 100% whole grain old fashioned oats
• Happy Farms spreadable cheese wedges (x2)
• More orange juice

Last week's cream of mushroom soup was surreptitiously incorporated into last week's Thanksgiving green bean casserole. I am pleased to report that there were no (valid) complaints, although I do suppose it's possible that people might not have voiced any complaints out of politeness.

In other news, I started a tumblr blog for some reason.