Eating clean on a budget with Aldi #shop

This shop has been compensated by Collective Bias, Inc. and its advertiser, Aldi. All opinions are mine alone.

I take my food pretty seriously nowadays, and apart from the occasional fall off the Paleo wagon, everything that I chew down tends to be natural, good, clean food.  I have read so much on nutrition over the last nine months that I am becoming a dinner party bore, but still there is no stopping me.  My trips to Aldi consist of label reading and simple shopping, which then comes home to be turned into great homemade food.

We live in a society which develops more and more chronic illnesses by the day, and when you read the list of ingredients that are in many of our day-to-day foods, you cannot help but think that there may be a connection.

I know from personal experience that clean eating can boost your metabolism, help starve off common illnesses, and make you feel incredible.

So obviously I want this for my family.

But herein lies the question, can you each clean on a budget?

Simple answer: yes.

I have been an Aldi shopper for years, my shopping budget was almost halved when I started frequenting it on a regular basis, and I now make all my meals from scratch using their ingredients.  You can buy free range meat, good quality vegetable and decent olive oil and eggs.  This forms the basis for a Paleo/clean living diet.

Family ‘clean’ meals

Eating with the kids is important to me, table manners are still a work in progress, and if I don’t sit with them as we eat, then elbows run amok and mouths hang open displaying content for all to see…

I try and eat with them at least once a day, and it is a family rule that Sunday involves a big roast and time spent chatting together over decent clean food.

A trip to Aldi in the week set me up with all I needed to create this weeks feast.

A free range chicken, sweet potatoes, sausages, carrots, broccoli, parsnip, all easily cooked, all favourites of the kids, and all clean foods.

Firstly in order to begin my Sunday cooking extravaganza the little one must be kept entertained, so she was popped with a paintbrush in hand and left to decorate my table whilst I got on with the job.

Preparing the chicken was quick and simple, a pat down with paper towels, a coating of sea salt and pepper and a squeeze of a lemon to keep it from drying out.  Popped onto a tray filled with coconut oil and put into the oven at 180 degrees.

 

The sweet potato and parsnips were added around the meat 3o minutes later and the chicken basted to keep it succulent.

 

Gravy was made from the natural juices of the joint, and the yorkshire puddings were set to grow 25 minutes before the meal was due to be served…

(I know yorkshires are not strictly a clean eating food, but a paleo diet is usually 80/20, and as my blood line is northern I simply cannot serve a roast dinner without a giant pudding sitting on the plate).

Then dinner was served.

The paintwork was cleared away and the kids scurried to the table excitedly, shouting of their hunger and ready to dive in.

 

The water spray was on hand for any hopeful kittens who tried to make their way onto the table in search of more dinner!

The usual discussion about the merits of broccoli festered on, and a compromise was made that each child have one tree in order to qualify for pudding.

We talked, ate, discussed the end of the holidays and what was coming in the upcoming term at school.

We ate well, for less than a tenner, and enjoyed good clean, delicious (if I say so myself) food.

Clean family eating on a budget!  Easily done! Thanks to Aldi.