Lidl meal….Little Money!

Tonight Jimmy, Sam and I had a cook-in and we had decided this morning to have everything we would eat from Lidl….the supermarket chain from Germany, ostensably for those who are ’financially challenged’ but in reality..very egalitarian! I am a great fan of the Leatherhead store (the nearest to Cobham) as it is a rather stunning glass and steel structure, befitting of course what we are used to in Surrey !

We started with vacuum packed mussels in a white wine sauce. The mussels were bigger than those from Waitrose, and much…much less salty. We had it with a  nice brown bread. We shared a pack between the 3 of us, but what we lost in quantity, we made up for in quality.

Main course was our ubiquitous (is that the right word?) chicken breasts – they were fine and £2 cheaper than Sainsbury’s equivilant, though I think the latter’s pack has an extra one in it, so maybe it is kiff-kiff – wrapped in smoked ham.

Black Forest ham from Lidl is truly historic, having been very strongly smoked..or flavoured!  We put some garlic in the chicken, as well as a small quantity of Gorgonzola cheese, wrapped the ham around them and baked for 35 minutes. Brilliant, with a real contrast in tastes. We served it with chantennay carrots (59p) and mashed potatoes.

Pud was a ready made Panna Cotta. For the price it was not bad, but too sweet, so Sam and I poked at one, and set it aside pretty quickly. Old Piggy Jimmy ate 3!!

So nothing particularly out of the ordinary, but considering we probably paid 30 percent less than in Sainsburys and 40 percent less than in Waitrose, we thought we had done rather well.

Tomorrow I will be having dinner in Oxford…..Jamie Oliver’s restaurant where last time I had to send my pasta dish back 3 times (oversalted)…I wonder how it will be this time.

By the way, my WIHFDT book arrived this morning. People will have to judge its content for themselves, but the quality of the printing from Blurb.com was absolutely first class!