The Lazy Genius Podcast - #11: The Lazy Genius Shops at Aldi

Episode Date: March 4, 2017

You should be shopping at Aldi, and if you already are, you could be shopping smarter! Kendra shares her favorite tips and items from the store that saves us all so much money. For after you listen: An Aldi Pinterest Board Bizarro Meal Prep That Changes the Game - my personal take on not wasting anything, especially with all that inexpensive Aldi produce Smoothie Booster Cubes - all of those extra greens get blended up with hippie seeds and powders and frozen into cubes for quick and healthy smoothie making If you like what you hear and don't want to miss another thing, join the mailing list! I promise to keep my visits to your inbox purposeful and super fun. Welcome to the Lazy Genius family! Follow Kendra on Instagram @thelazygenius This podcast is hosted by Kendra Adachi and executive produced by Kendra Adachi, Jenna Fischer and Angela Kinsey. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey guys, this is Kendra Adachi and you are listening to the Lazy Genius podcast. Here, I help you be a genius about the things that matter and lazy about the things that don't. Today's episode, The Lazy Genius Shops at Aldi. Here's our pitch for today. You should be shopping at Aldi. And if you already are shopping at Aldi, you could be shopping smarter. So today we're going to help you do that. Today in the playbook, we're going to talk about four things to bring,

five things to buy, three things to skip, and three extra tips. Now, before we get into those things, I want to acknowledge those of you who might have once been like me, who would drive past an Aldi and think, pretty sure that place is run by rats. Don't know why I think that, but it's full of like sixth level off-brand cereal. There are no lights. It is completely dirty. I don't know what it was about Aldi. It was such a mystery. and in my brain, I automatically made it like a dystopian grocery store that like no human had set foot in and yet they were still selling jeez.

Let's jump into the playbook. Here are four things to bring. The first one is a quarter. Now, this is one of those kind of mysterious aspects to Aldi where you're like, I have to put a quarter into a machine to get my shopping car. It just feels very frightening and robotic. But let me explain to you how this works because I wish someone had done it for me. Okay? So all these saves us money by doing things like locking their shopping carts.

So no one else has to, they don't have to hire someone to go through the parking lot and bring the carts back to the front of the store. So it's our responsibility. We bring a quarter. You go up to the rack of carts and on each cart handle is a little red box. There is a little slit in the front of that red box. that is the perfect size for a quarter. You pop your quarter into that slot until you hear it click. Once the click happens on the back of the box, there is this little S-shaped key that is connecting the cart that you want from the cart that is behind it. And the click of the quarter disconnects

that key so that you can get to the cart. Now, when you return your cart, you do that in reverse order, right you take the s-shaped key from the cart that is in the in the front of the line you slide it into the back of the red box on your cart that you're returning and out pops your quarter okay so that's how it works but you you need a quarter to get a cart and it's hard to shop without a shopping cart so bring a quarter that's number one number two bring cash there is nothing worse than going to aldi for the first time a little overwhelmed, looking for the rats, not sure what to buy, but you get some things and you get kind of excited about your bag of lemons and your box of arugula and your sleeve of mozzarella cheese. And then you get to the cashier and you realize you realize you can't

swipe a credit card. Like they just take cash. So it's a little terrifying. I have friends who this has happened to and you either become like super mortified or really, really angry. They won't take a credit card and no one told you to bring cash. So bring cash, bring a quarter and bring cash. Number three, bring something to put your food in, grocery bags, a box, whatever. Aldi does have like packing boxes lying around from, you know, the boxes that the food came in. And so you can totally grab one of those if it's empty. But there's no one to bag your groceries and there are definitely no bags to put your groceries in. So bring something to put your groceries in. And number four, bring low expectations.

Not because there are rats. There aren't. Aldi's are really lovely run by lovely people. No rodents. But you don't always get, you don't always know what you're going to get in terms of the selection. The reason that Aldi is so inexpensive and can save you so much money is the company has decided that they're going to cut as many unnecessary corners as they can in order.

order for you to get the food at the cheapest price possible. So they sell what is available to them. If there are no apples that day, there aren't apples for you to buy. So you can't go in with a specific list and expect to get everything on your list. So go in with low expectations of what is available to you and look at it more like a treasure hunt than a shopping experience. And you might be a little bit more pleasantly surprised than if you just were going to get mad that they didn't have great fruit, you know? So the four things to bring. A quarter, cash, bags, and low expectation. Okay. Now let's jump into the five things to buy. All right. This is where it gets so fun. All right. I mean, yeah, I sing songs about shopping at all day. I don't care. It is the most

magical grocery store. All right. Number one. Produce. This is the bread and butter. Not really, though because it's produce but this is what makes shopping and Aldi so great the produce is extremely inexpensive generally really great quality and they are selling more and more organic food by the day their goal is to have exclusively organic produce and you can get a bag say of organic gala apples for the same price if not less than a bag of regular gala apples that you would get at target okay So it is magical when you find these things. I bought like quart packs of organic strawberries for $1.99 a container. Are you joking?

That is insanity. Now, they don't have them every time I go. It was just this one magical time. And I grabbed them like it was like quarters coming out of a machine in Vegas or something. It's like, give me all the strawberries. But when you find those things, oh, it's the best. So you're going to buy, you're going to buy produce there, okay? Citrus, magical.

They have like five pound bags of grapefruits and lemons and oranges for anywhere from $2 to $4 a bag. There's zucchini and tomatoes and peppers and brussels sprouts and berries and just so many types of produce that are really, really great quality. Now, if you are a person who, you look at all this produce and you're like, oh, it's so pretty, I don't know what to do with it. As always, for this episode, there is a Pinterest board for you that's going to give you all of the ideas of things to do with a bag of lemons. So if you go to Pinterest.com slash the lazy genius, there will be a board there that's called The Lazy Genius shops at Aldi.

If you go to that board, you will see all of the different ideas. They don't necessarily have Aldi in the title of all those different pins, but there are things that I've created or collected for you. I didn't create them all. That would be insane. That's why Pinterest is awesome. But there are things that I have collected for you to help you figure out what to do with all this produce. Okay. So produce is the number one thing to buy. I just hit the table. I was so excited. Did you hear that? Okay. So the second thing to buy is cheese. They have fresh balls of mozzarella, which are really perfect for pizza Fridays, which I know a lot of you guys do. I do as well. it's so fun to make pizza on Friday or to buy pizza on Friday. But if you make your own, their mozzarella is great.

They have blocks of Parmesan and Asiago. They have goat cheese and feta cheese and blue cheese. And generally, those cheeses are in pretty small containers. So you're not committing to a million pounds of cheese like you would at Costco. Such a great thing to buy at Aldi. Number three of the five things to buy, nuts and seeds. I buy my walnuts, almonds, and pecans at Costco generally, because that is the cheapest place for me. If you don't have a Costco in your town, but you have an Aldi, definitely buy your nuts there.

But I buy things that aren't at Costco, like pistachios and cashews and sunflower seeds and pumpkin seeds or pepitas. Those are things that Aldi sells for so much cheaper than Walmart or to. target or anywhere else. So if you're looking to buy nuts or seeds, Aldi is a spot to do it. Number four, baking items. Just your basics, flour, sugar, cornstarch, vanilla, spices. They've got really great options. Generally, your spice options are pretty limited, but they're most commonly used.

They're the most commonly used ones. So there's cinnamon and cumin and chili powder. you can get sugar and flour. They've got, sometimes they have, like, there were vanilla beans there a couple of weeks ago when I was at Aldi, which was crazy. So you never know what you might find in terms of like specialty items, but powdered sugar, brown sugar, they have coconut sugar, they have agave nectar and honey.

There are definitely things that you can get there for cheaper even than Walmart and Target. It's nuts. It's so nuts. But if you're just looking for like regular sugar, regular sugar, regular sugar. So get it at the cheapest place and all day is the cheese. Aw isn't something we need to travel for. It's something waiting for us in everyday life, whether in a city street or a moment with a work of art. I'm Dr. Keltner, host of the Science of Happiness podcast. Join me for Cities of Aw. A special series on how our public spaces can spark awe, wonder, and enhance the quality of public life. You can find us wherever you listen to your podcasts. The fifth thing and final thing to buy there, I mean there are other things to buy, but these are my five suggestions.

The fifth thing, cereal, snacks, salsa. So I kind of include all of those in like a general snack category. But like their tortilla chips and potato chips. the Aldi brand fruit loops, you guys, they're better than actual, like, two-can fruit loops. They're so incredibly tasty. And the color of them,

it looks like they were used with natural coloring. So they're like a little bit more muted, which makes me think they're healthy, even though they're just sugar. I mean, they're not healthy, but they look like it. So it's fun to pretend. It's fun to lie to myself.

Aldi's salsa is our home salsa. If I don't make it, that's where we buy it. Because my husband, I eat ice cream at night. My husband eats chips and salsa. And so we go through lots of those jars. And it is half the price, if not a little bit, more than that, than buying like a jar of paste at Walmart or something. So salsa is great.

Serial is great. Chips and snacks or pretzels, that kind of thing are great. Okay. So we're still in the playbook. We've done four things to bring, five things to buy. Now, here are three things to skip. Now, there may be lots of other things, but these are the three things I have personally tried that I just want to save you from trying and wanting to die. The first one is Cheetos.

They're not real Cheetos. Any item in a snack aisle, I think that uses like fake powdered cheese, don't do it. Run, run far away. Don't do it. Our favorite chip in the house of me and my husband and my middle son are Cheetos. Like, you guys, I can eat so many cheetos. And we were going through them so much that it was like, well, let's see if the Aldi brand is good because they're a lot cheaper. They are not cheetos.

So do not buy them. Oh, number, like we threw them out. That's how bad they were. Number two to not buy is the pizza. Now, it may have improved since the last time I had it. But the last time I had it, it was not very good. So just go ahead and skip the pizza. Dominoes runs enough specials that it's about the same thing.

Costco has a really good pizza if you feel badly about like ordering pizza and feel better about buying it from a store. Which we don't have to go into the mental gymnastics of that. But Costco actually has really good pepperoni pizza. And this is my favorite pizza tip. This is bonus. This would be included when we have a lazy genius shops at Costco episode. but here is my favorite Costco tip is to buy their pepperoni pizza. It's like when it's on sale for $6, that's the best because it's the most giant pizza ever.

And it is covered with literal pounds of pepperoni. I take off almost all of the pepperoni. I put on, you know, like seven or eight pieces and I'm left with like a literal stack. It looks like I'm holding a stack of money of pepperoni that I freeze. And so it's like $20 for the pepperoni. It's crazy. That's my, there's bonus tip for today, ready? But skip the Aldi pizza.

And then the third thing to skip is the flavored cream cheese, like to spread on your bagels. It's just not tasty. It's not worth, like spend the extra few cents to get, like, you know, the on brand or to go to your local bagel place and get really, really delicious cream cheese. Another bonus, if you live in my town, if you live in Greensboro, New Garden bagels, you have, cinnamon roll cream cheese. It is the most magical item of food that has ever been invented. Please go buy it to me. Okay.

So, final thing in our playbook, let's just do three quick bonus tips that didn't fit in any of those three categories. My first tip is to shop at Aldi first. Going back to what I said about bringing low expectations, you don't always know what you're going to get, right, when you shop at Aldi. So go there first. See what's there. You may be inspired by what looks.

good there and you'll buy it and then you won't buy something substitute it from another store. So shop at Aldi first whenever if you shop like once a week or even mentally shop there first. Like if you're starting to run low on groceries and you're like, I need to go to the grocery store. Go to Aldi first no matter what day it is and just see, see what the Aldi gods have in store for you. My second tip for you is to shop when you have time after. Because you're probably going to get more produce than other things generally at Aldi. I find that it is helpful when I have a little bit of time after to do things like, hmm, make the food easily accessible.

So I will cut all the citrus out of those like scary red net bags. So I can just grab one, right? I'm not wrestling with one of those bags on my counter. And it also doesn't look cute. When your counter is loaded, like when your counter is loaded with those red nets of onions and grapefruit, like it's just not cute. So I, and that matters. I really believe that that matters.

So I will release everything from its restrictive net and I'll put it in a bowl. That way I can just reach for it and it's ready. Other things like for zucchini and peppers, they are usually wrapped in, they're packaged on like a styrofoam tray and then wrapped in plastic. And I just think anything that is wrapped up like that is not going to get used as much. So I will take things out of their wrappers. I will go ahead and wash them in my produce drawer. Again, so I can just grab it.

I might buy a pineapple, cut it up when I get home so it doesn't rot on the counter. This kind of dovetails into how I do lazy genius meal prep or bizarro meal prep. I will link to that in the show notes, that post. but that is doing prep with what you have already in your kitchen before you make any meal plans. Okay. So it's things that are like on their last legs. And having time after you shop keeps those foods from necessarily getting on their last legs. You know, if you go ahead and free things from their bondage, from their skin, from their netting, from their wrapping, you're more likely to use them quicker.

And the third bonus tip I have for you is to shop before you planned it. Again, this is kind of what I was saying before, but don't say, okay, we're going to have chicken and broccoli with rice. And then you go to all the expecting broccoli and there's no broccoli. So it's nice to just go there first before you make any plans. Again, if you have that margin, whether it's on a weekend or just an hour when you get home, just to kind of think. Think through, okay, I got this food, I got this beautiful food. What are I going to do with this now? Now, if that is not how your brain operates, if that's a struggle for you, by all means, plan what you're going to eat or maybe you don't even plan what you're going to eat. And that's okay too. But go and buy what you feel comfortable cooking at Aldi. And if it's not there, then go get it somewhere else. You know, you don't have to buy food and become inspired by it unless that gives you life. If that stresses you out, just buy what you know, buy what you know how to use and then buy the rest of what you need at a different store.

but shop before you plan especially since you don't know what you're going to get okay so that's it for the playbook four things to bring let's do a quick recap four things to bring a quarter cash bags and low expectations five things to buy produce cheese nuts and seeds baking stuff and cereal salsa and snacks three things to skip the quote unquote cheetos such a misnomer pizza and their flavored cream cheese and they're like and three bonus tips shop there first shop when you have a little bit of time after and shop before you plan your meals so here's our payoff for shopping in aldi we save money we save money without sacrificing quality and that is such a beautiful thing when it comes to grocery shopping please give aldi a try all right so before we go lazy genius

tip of the week this one comes from my friend mary and visher she is is at Marian Visher on Instagram. And she posted this a really long time ago, but it's one of my favorite things. And I always forget about it. And I love it when someone reminds me. So I'm going to remind you today, thanks to Marion. And that is the timer trick.

When you are stuck with a task that you really don't want to do, like for her, it was cleaning the kitchen. She posted a photo of her kitchen that had been taken over by her children and by life. So there were groceries, there was dinner stuff. There was a school project. You know, the kitchen is where things tend to happen. And she was like, I don't want to do this. But she set her timer for 20 minutes.

All right. How much can I do in 20 minutes? And I know that we've all heard that tip, but it's such a good tip because you can still feel like you kind of accomplished something and you don't necessarily have to finish. Because frankly, when is the kitchen ever really clean? You know, you can clean the dishes off the counter. You can wipe off the counters. and then you see that your cabinets are dirty. And then you're like, oh, I haven't watched the microwave in a while.

And they're like, oh, my goodness, I really need to clean out my fridge. Like, it never ends. And so giving yourself an end helps you not feel overwhelmed by how grand the task can become. But also, it shows you how much you can get done. Because I know I spend more time being like whining about wanting to clean the kitchen. And I could have been done already. You know, I say that to my kids all the time. my oldest when he doesn't want to do his homework.

Like, dude, you could have been done. Like, by the time, with the time he's been whining, you could have already been finished writing the word frame seven times. So the timer trick is such a great, great lazy genius tip. That is our lazy genius tip of the week. Thank you, Marion, for that reminder. All right, guys, thank you so much for listening to this episode. If you have anything that you would like for me to talk about on the podcast, you can contact

me, Kendra, at the lazy genius collective.com. of send me an email. You can tweet at me at lazy, lazy genius on Twitter. My favorite place to hang out is on Instagram at the lazy genius. And you can always go to the show notes as well, the lazygegelective.com. This episode, it's slash lazy slash all day. And check out the show notes. You can comment. I would love to hear from me. Thank you so much for listening. And remember, friends, be a genius about the things that matter and lazy about the things that don't. I'll see you next week. you ever felt like you were living just a B or B plus life? It's so dangerous to live that. More

dangerous than a B minus or a C plus life? Because when you're living a B or B plus life, you don't change it. You think it's good enough. Is it? I'm Susie Welch. I host a podcast called Becoming You. People think, okay, an A plus life is not available to me, but there is a way. We are all in the process of becoming ourselves. Listen to Becoming You wherever you get your podcasts.