I Heart Aldi

For those of you that have never heard of Aldi, it is a discount supermarket chain which I currently love!

Since we live in a quite a rural area we have to drive at least 15 minutes to get to a supermarket. There are plenty of options around but Aldi is my favourite at the moment.

Here's why I like it:

1) It is much smaller than a regular supermarket. It's on one level and whilst the store does get busy, it's not that same heaving stressful experience that you get in larger supermarkets.

2) There are a limited number of products. You know how overwhelming and time-sapping it can be to look through an aisle full of different brand versions of the same product. Well, Aldi tends to have 1 brand of each product. E.g. there is only one strawberry jam option, one sliced ham option etc.

3) The majority of products are just as good as major brands. I admit I used to be a brand snob. I liked sticking to well known names but that all ended when I became a student. It was more important to save the pennies and I soon realised the alternatives were usually fine, if not better.

4) Their beauty products are excellent! I am in love with their little selection, see more on that later.

5) The store isn't over-done. By that I mean it's pretty basic. Products are often displayed and stacked in cardboard boxes. There is none of that harsh bright lighting you get in other supermarkets. And there are no advertisements hanging from the ceiling or in your face everywhere you look.

Overall, I love it! My next post will be about their fantastic beauty products!

Leave the gun. Take the cannoli.

On our last night in New York, we ate in an Italian restaurant and I had my first ever cannoli for dessert. Despite the famous Godfather quote in the title, I didn't actually know what this dessert was. For those who don't know, cannoli originated in Sicily and are tube-shaped shells of fried pastry dough filled with a sweet creamy filling.

They were originally made for Carnevale, a festival that occurs before lent as a celebration before fasting begins. I am very familiar with this festival as I studied Italian at school and each year we would produce a play and dress up in traditional Carnevale costumes. The masks are very intricate:

Cannoli are now very popular in Italian American cuisine. Some contain ricotta but others contain a simple custard filling of sugar, milk and cornstarch, which I think is what I had. The traditional Sicilian filling is made with mascarpone. The waitress said you could buy the filling ready made and she loved to eat it straight out the tube!

In Italian, the word cannoli is actually plural so one is a cannolo. As a student dietitian, I naturally tot up the calories of different foods. Not in an obsessive way - I decided to be a dietitian beacuse I love food and am also interested in health science. But we are taught to estimate the nutritional content of a wide range of foods so that we can estimate the intake for our patients.

After googling, it seems one large cannolo is about 375 calories which is about what I predicted. Pretty high but oh so worth it! Now I just need to find some in the UK!