Fresh fruit and veg, very poor quality from ALDI, LIDL & CENTRA and packaged goods mislabelled

mathepac

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Annoyed about the above purchases from ALDI LIDL and CENTRA recently.

ALDI, Sweet Clementines are anything but. Stringy, dry, and sour tasting with decay obvious behind the discoloured skins. Avoid at all costs. Somehow the packing for these survived the recycle bin, survived longer, and was in better nick than the fruit, see below.

CENTRA, baby potatoes, skins damaged, greenish tinge not initially visible inside the plastic bag. I steamed them, skinned and ate the best of them with plenty of pepper to try to instill some flavour, and fed the skins and the rest of the spuds to the dog. She's a gourmand rather than a gourmet so they vanished pronto (French & Italian in one sentence, now there's value for you!)

CENTRA, 4 tomatoes for €1. I should have known. Skins like leather, hard to slice with even my sharpest knife, they rendered a couple of ham & cheese sambos almost inedible. They're still in the bottom of the dog's dish. Corvid fodder.

ALDI LIDL Pink Lady apples, cardboard package of 6, discounted, see the receipt. Again, skin like iron, flesh dry and tasteless. The corvids at the bottom of the garden got the skins and cores, the flesh went into a stew.

CENTRA, Breakfast Muffins, both labelled as "sausage" as ordered, but on opening, one had soggy rashers, not sausage inside. Bought as a quick on-the-road snack for myself and my companion, this was not an enjoyable experience. We were headed to Cork for medical stuff and advance food was permitted. I got the soggy rashers, which I detest almost as much as the claggy "cheese" they contained. These seem to be clones of the O'Takeaways versions, but much, much worse. The bin on the first layby on the motorway ate better than we did. €8.00 wasted.

Photos and receipts for all are attached.

Cheap groceries are in danger of turning into the expensive, unenjoyable option. I'll give a couple of real shops a turn for a change.
 

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ALDI, Pink Lady apples, cardboard package of 6, discounted, see receipt. Again, skin like iron, flesh dry and tasteless. The corvids at the bottom of the garden got the skins and cores, the flesh went into a stew.

Pink ladies from LIDL Thurles?
 
I regularly pick up lots of "yellow sticker" discounted items from Lidl, Aldi, Tesco, Dunnes and the odd time Centra and have rarely had a problem. Usually meat and veg but only seldom fruit. I do find the fruit and some of the veg (usually soft fruits and spuds) in the deep discounters a bit hit and miss even even not discounted. Overall in spite of the price increases over recent years I still find it possible to get reasonable value, achieve low food waste, and put varied and decent nutritional meals cooked from scratch on the table with a little bit of effort.
 
These were not yellow-stickered, discounted, short-dated items which I also buy from time to time, after close inspection of course! A bunch of nasty, disappointing surprises.

Reflecting on the apples, Pink Ladies usually have a sticker on each piece of fruit IME. None of these 6 did.
 
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