With dire 'extreme weather event' snow forecast and not much food in the house - the result of being away from home for two weeks and being ill the week before that - I'm sorry to say that this morning I succumbed to a little panic buying / stock piling / hamster kaufen.
I called in at the butchers and the health food shop but my main shop was in Aldi where I had a trolley-ful of vegetables (the really heavy devils like potatoes, carrots, swede and onions), fresh fruit, tinned and packet goods that will be very useful at some point it the future (my stocks of tinned goods had gone right down and that's not good when you don't have a freezer), milk, cheese, eggs, bacon, shower gel (for P, not me, I'm still working my way through the summer car boot sale haul of toiletries), loo roll (fairly essential if we get the foot or so of snow that's forecast) yada, yada, yada - I'm sure you get the picture. That little lot came to £54.00, which is a lot for me to spend in one go but was not bad considering just how much food was in the trolley.
I knew I'd never be able to get it all home in the faithful shopping trolley so I splashed out and had a taxi. It only cost £3.00 and as I had six really heavy shopping bags I consider that bloomin' good value. I wouldn't make a habit of it but it was so nice to be able to buy whatever was needed and not have to worry about how I was going to lug it all home. Now I'm just waiting for the predicted snow to arrive.
*Hamster Kaufen (Hamster Shopping) is what P - a native German speaker - calls stockpiling / panic buying. If you've ever had a hamster as a pet you'll understand how that expression came about.
You didn't buy any dishwasher salt ! Apparantly, people have been buying this like it was going out of fashion, as an alternative to gritting salt. Having tried the Lidl dishwasher salt, which basically was unrecognised by my dishwasher, it's probably going to come into it's own as pathway grit.
Hope you don't get snowed in though, even with all your supplies.
Posted by: Ponytail | 01/05/2010 at 04:42 PM
Sounds like you should be set for a while. We don't have an Aldi by us, but when we were visiting Hubby's parents in Illinois they had one. They had the most gorgeous fresh pineapples for 99 cents each. We went through quite a few. Hope you stay nice and cozy.
Posted by: Jennifer | 01/05/2010 at 04:47 PM
I love the expression Hamster Kaufen!
Posted by: Trekky | 01/05/2010 at 04:55 PM
Hi there
I have recently found your blog and really enjoy it. I love the phrase Hamster Kaufen, it just describes it so well!
Posted by: Sharon | 01/05/2010 at 09:46 PM
Can't believe how cheap your taxi was - for £3.00 down here, I'd barely get 20 yards up the road!!
Posted by: Caroline | 01/06/2010 at 02:46 PM