Caitríona Redmond: Waste not, want not — especially this delicious raspberry poke cake
Raspberry Poke Cake: why would you poke a cake?
In my weekly quest to save money on my grocery bill, I can occasionally lose the run of myself and get up crazy early to rummage in the yellow sticker in my local Tesco. All the meat goes straight into the freezer unless I cook and use it immediately. I always find a use for what I see in the corner of the chilled aisle. Then I remind myself it’s more money to put towards our trip soon. I enjoy transferring money from my shopping budget into the trip vault in my online savings account.
I’ve tried to use the TooGoodToGo app again this past week. I don’t live in a big urban area; we are a ‘tractors in the Paddy’s Day parade’ kind of town (or at least it used to be until the Council stopped it last year for environmental concerns). Aldi joined the app recently with their €3.99 bags going down very well; several readers got in touch with photos to tell me how they benefitted from the arrangement. I had serious food haul envy, and then I heard that some Musgraves stores, such as Centra and Spar, had also joined up, so I was determined to get a bag and more savings.
The beauty of the TooGoodToGo app is that it is tailored for businesses to move on time-sensitive food, but this can often happen at awkward times for families. Want an Aldi bag? Depending on your local store’s opening hours, you must collect it from 8.30 to 9.45 pm. That is if you have selected one in the app first and competition is fierce for what appears to be only two bags per store. After trying for four days, I gave up on gleefully dashing away from my evening bedtime responsibilities to collect a food bag.
Olio is another food waste app I have used to collect food that has passed its sell-by date (but not use-by date). This app depends on volunteers in your local area willing to collect food, photograph, and list for collection from a central point. That’s a lot of responsibility and time needed for a volunteer, and small wonder that there is no longer a regular food waste champion in my town.
This week Lidl launched their €3 fruit and vegetable box called “Waste Not”, which can be bought in-store when available. The stock of boxes is replenished up to 4 times a day as staff check the shelves for multipacks with maybe one sad piece of fruit that is a bad influence on the rest of the package. They liberate the sad fruit to go to compost and place the rest of the contents into one of these magic boxes.
Lidl Ireland kindly sent me one of their boxes to try, and the quality was so good that I was sceptical that it had been cosmetically enhanced. I walked to my local store and discovered my box hadn’t been. I got messages from friends who were delighted with their fruit and vegetable boxes, and people have been tagging me online in their hauls.
I cannot get over how good value the box is at €3, and it is chock full of fruit and vegetables that you will use throughout the week. They are fruit heavy, so they would be suitable for making smoothies and fruit salads. There was a fine head of broccoli and onion in my box, and I had the perfect soup in mind that I’ve shared below this week.
After a break for the midterm, the price check is back this week, and it’s been a very interesting update. This week's cheapest large chicken is SuperValu, priced at €5.49 as of our check every Wednesday morning.
Regarding price increases, the cost of a 1kg bag of carrots is on the move and has recently increased in 2 supermarkets to €1.05 and €1.09, respectively. I expect the other supermarkets to follow this trend in the next month.
Other products may be on the rise, and it’s worth keeping an eye out for. These include cheese, half a dozen eggs, and dried pasta. All of these products have remained static for quite some time. It seems likely that there will be more grocery price increases to come by the end of March.
If you take anything away from my column, it should be that you have plenty of budget options available to you, from apps to shops. It’s just a question of finding the right fit for your lifestyle.
From yellow stickers to apps, there is a choice for the tech-savvy to those who still want to rummage around the supermarket shelves.
