Pasta e Fagioli, minus the Pasta

Whenever I eat Pasta e Fagioli soup at Olive Garden, i always eat around the pasta. I just don't really like pasta in soup. So when I decided to make Pasta e Fagioli, I left out the pasta. I based this recipe on Pasta e Fagioli a la Chez Ivano at Allrecipes.

Pasta e Fagioli, minus the Pasta
1 lb ground beef
1 tsp coarsely ground black pepper
64 oz beef broth
2 cans diced tomatoes
8 oz tomato sauce
2 1/2 tsp Italian Seasoning
2 1/2 tsp dried basil
2 1/2 tsp dried oregano
6 tablespoons dried minced onions
2 tablespoons dried parsley
1 can kidney beans
1 can Great Northern Beans

Brown and drain ground beef. Combine ground beef and all other ingredients into crock-pot, cook on high for 4 hrs

If you like pasta in your Pasta e Fagioli, I think you can cook the pasta (original recipe calls for 2 cups, but that sounds like a lot to me!) and then add it in maybe the last half hour or so. You wouldn't want it in the crock-pot the whole time or it would probably get mushy.

The only ingredient that I'm not sure you can buy at Aldi is Parsley. I usually get my spices as Costco because I use them quite a bit when I make spaghetti sauce. But I have bought the Italian Seasoning, Basil and Oregano at Aldi...I just use sooo much of the Parsley in the sauce that I need a big container!

Beer Batter Fish

This is becoming one of our favorite meals. You can buy all the ingredients at Aldi, including the beer at some locations! We replace the cod with the frozen tilapia. We buy the big value size bag of tilapia and I grab what I need for each meal since they are individually frozen.

We had this last night with the shoestring french fries that were a special purchase a week or so ago.


Beer Batter Fish

Why Eat At Aldi?

I've been an Aldi shopper for almost 10 years. I first went to Aldi when my in-laws told me they had a small inflatable pool as a special purchase. So I drove to my local Aldi to buy it.

I had never been in an Aldi before, although I had driven by them numerous times. My Aunt was a devoted Aldi customer. She ran an in-home catering business and used Aldi products. But I had never even been in one before.

So I took my then toddler son and we went to get this pool. I walked in the store and had flashbacks of the old box store from when I was a kid. Remember those? They had bins full of the cardboard boxes at the front of the store and you loaded your food into them instead of bags? Kind of like Aldi's, huh!

After I got past my wave of nostalgia, I panicked. Yes, I panicked in Aldi. I had no idea how this store operated. I had enough trouble figuring out how to get myself a cart, now I had to navigate the store. Yikes! I quickly grabbed my pool and a box of juice boxes for my son, paid, returned the card without retrieving my quarter and went home.

And a year passed before I entered Aldi again.

In that year, they opened a new Aldi closer to my house. My husband suggested we try shopping there. We became off and on Aldi shoppers, as I still felt the Aldi wasn't close enough to my house.

Then the other new Aldi store opened and I no longer had an excuse, it was too close.

So now we are loyal Aldi shoppers, and honestly, I can't imagine shopping anywhere else. I have two major chain grocery stores, a super Wal-Mart and a super Target all within five minutes of my house but I still do about 90% of my shopping at Aldi. Wal-Mart is my other vice. I love Wal-Mart and pretty much refuse to shop at Target.

A lot of people wonder why I shop at Aldi. Both my husband and I are fortunate to have good jobs, and yes, we can afford to shop at the major chain stores. But why? I have yet to find any product at Aldi that does not match the quality of the brand names. I can pick up groceries at Aldi for my family of five for around $85 a week. And I cook almost every meal so we aren't eating prepared foods either.

I think a lot of people are intimidated by Aldi and can't figure out how to cook using their products. I know it took me awhile to figure it out.

So this is how this blog was born. I'm going to post the recipes I make using Aldi products. Most will use at least 75% Aldi products, some will use all. And yes, some might be I bought the special purchase pizza and we had that...because sometimes we have Soccer, or Scouts, or I just don't feel like cooking!!!

Sometimes I'll also talk about the special purchases, both food and non-food items. We've bought so many non-food items at Aldi. We just put in new linoleum tile in our laundry room that we bought at Aldi. We've also got a pressure washer, deck box, and toy bin from there as well. The special purchases are my favorite part about shopping at Aldi,especially the seasonal items. Right now we are looking forward to this week's Halloween baking special items!

I hope that I can help you realize that you CAN cook meals for your family and save money!