This is no secret.  I enjoy food.  Also, another fact that is not a secret- James enjoys food.  Really now? . . . who doesn’t?

All of my married life, I have been Wegmans snob.  Who wouldn’t love a grocery store that has the ultimate shopping experience?  Millions of choices, never a long waiting time in line, people who load your groceries into your car if you want them to, fun carts for the kids to ride in, a kids club where the older kids can play while you shop?  Really–it doesn’t get much better than that.  Also, Wegmans has great store brands.  We buy mostly name brand stuff and we buy the rest as Wegmans brand stuff–which in my personal opinion is right up there with the name brand.  Most Wegmans groupies would argue the same point.

But Dave Ramsey says we should live on a budget.  And Dave Ramsey makes us a put a set amount of money in an envelope in the beginning of the month and tells us not to spend any more than that set amount.  Unfortunately, shopping at Wegmans buying all name brand and Wegmans brand stuff doesn’t quite cut it with the money in my envelope.

And then God gave me a sign.  And another sign.  And another AND another.  I have never talked about a different grocery store so much in my entire life.  Four separate friends discussed shopping at a different store with me in the past month and all of them pretty much were saying, well, duhhh??? don’t you shop at Aldi?? you save soooo much money.  

And this is where the battle begins.  Aldi is one big gigantic generic store.  But today I did my entire list of shopping there.  I bought everything generic, and I struggled with it the entire forty-five minutes I was there.  I don’t think I’m a snob–I think I’ve just always had this stereotypic view in my head that no name food = bad food.  One of my friends at craft night the other day said that they promised they would try everything they normally buy at least once, and if they didn’t like it after they tried that one item, they wouldn’t buy it at Aldi anymore.  So that’s what we’re doing.  I guess.

It was an entirely different experience.  The store is small.  You have to pay a quarter for your shopping cart (but you get it back at the end if you return it to the place where carts go–a rather good system for making sure people put their carts back).  And you have to bring your own bags and BAG YOUR OWN FOOD.  That part killed me.  Bag my own food?  Sheesh.  But to be honest, I probably saved about fifty bucks on my shopping.  I guess that’s worth five minutes of bagging my own stuff.