Lidl Grocery Store

They’ve been renovating the old Safeway grocery store in our neighborhood for more than a year. It is being replaced by a Lidl. There is also room for three retail spaces - two of them will be restaurants. We don’t know much about Lidl, but have walked by it at least every week on our morning walk. The signs for hiring were up quite a while ago and the grand opening was last week. In the mail we received coupons for ten dollars off the first three weeks if you spend at least forty dollars. So we thought we would give it a try yesterday. It looks kind of like a small Costco inside. There is nothing fancy about it and it will take a bit to get used to the geography and products. We knew right away that we probably won’t be going there as our go to because it didn’t have the French bread or angel food cake that are staples in our house. But it did have crab cakes and fresh fish and some fruit we like. There were some products in different brands that we will try. There were some great wafer cookies with chocolate that my husband might like. We did get our savings at the register but we still needed to go to Giant for the other things we needed. Depending on how we like the rest of the stuff we picked out will dictate if we return. We are creatures of habit, but I think we will at least use the weekly coupons until they run out. 

Sendik’s in Whitefish Bay

We needed to do a bit of grocery shopping after stopping for lunch at one of our favorites - Harry’s Bar and Grill. I can’t remember where we did our grocery shopping when we lived in Milwaukee. The only name that comes to mind is Sendik’s. The names of the streets are fuzzy to me - luckily we have google maps now. There were Sendik’s in several locations - so we decided to go to Whitefish Bay because we thought the parking might be easier. It sort of was. The store was very busy for a Friday afternoon. For some reason it felt more like Saturday. What I remember most is the meat counter, and the huge variety of brats. In front of the store were pumpkins and mums - the prettiest season here in the Midwest. We are going to be in town for the next ten days or so and wanted to get some fruit, bread, cheese, orange juice, pistachios, cookies, water, diet ginger ale.... we probably won’t be cooking and I’ll probably put on a few pounds since our daily regimen has changed. We are hoping to see some old friends and relax! It’s nice to be in a routine - I always prefer that to last minute activities. So far so good. But we couldn’t live without a few familiar treats. 

Holiday, Snow Storm and Harris Teeter in Old Town Alexandria

I am already off on Monday with my part time schedule. But today is Presidents' Day and all federal workers are off. There is also the threat of a snowstorm this evening in to tomorrow, so we all may get another day off. Since we were in need of groceries, we decided to take a ride to old town Alexandria and check out the new Harris Teeter after we went to lunch at TJ Stones. Harris Teeter is located on St. Asaph Street right across from Royal Restaurant - a staple mom and pop Greek kind of place. It is the typical grocery store apartment mix with underground parking. I noticed signs for on-line pick up. It was quite busy for a Monday, but it always is busier when the weathermen threaten us with eight inches of winter ugliness. What we found most interesting is that they have a lot of items we can't seem to find anywhere else - in particular tiny cans of decaf diet coke and Keurig decaf tea k cups. However, they didn't have out favorite cheese, and I didn't see turkey in a bag. It seemed like all the workers took Disneyland customer service lessons, and the check out process is state of the art. The nicest part is that it is at least five per cent cheaper than DC. If you are not into bringing recyclable bags, it's not mandatory in Virginia, so plastic is the norm. In DC there is a charge for not being environmentally conscious. All in all it is another option for grocery shopping. I'm just glad my husband prefers to do it when I am working.