Steven Helmer Publications

It had been a long while since my wife and I made a trip to our local Aldi store (we like Aldi, but it's hard to justify going there on a regular basis when we have two grocery stores within a few blocks of us). But, they recently completed some new renovations so we decided to check them out this past weekend. To be honest, the renovations didn't really excite us all that much. The aisles were wider but their grocery selection seemed a bit thinned down (or, at very least, it was more difficult to find items we were interested in buying). As a result, we didn't buy nearly as much as we were expecting to purchase. However, while we were walking through the store's freezer section, I saw these dinners and, since the $4.99 price seemed reasonable, decided to purchase a couple of them. My primary reason for this purchase was my wife and I have some week nights when things are really hectic and we don't get an opportunity to sit down and eat dinner together until ...

Normally, I try to bring my lunch with me from home. But, I just wasn't in the mood to do that this morning (I even told my oldest daughter I would pay for her to have hot lunch at school for the first time this year) and decided, instead, to just pick something up after my walk. I ended up going to Kwik Trip before returning to the office with the intention of picking up one of their burgers. However, when I got there, that section had already been picked clean and, since I didn't have time to wait for them to bring out some more, I ended up looking for an alternative. After a lot of consideration, I wound up buying this product for $3.59. When I purchased this item, I really wasn't sure what to expect from it. I've had similar products in the past and very few (actually, none that I can think of at the moment) were very good. However, I made this when I got back to the office and, overall, I thought it was a decent purchase. As far as convenience goes, I...

Normally, when my wife and I make a Costco run (like we did this past Sunday), it's not unusual for me to see something interesting on the shelf and throw it into the cart as a spur-of-the-moment purchase. However, that was not the case with this particular product. Instead, I happened to see this in the monthly flyer we receive as part of our membership and, thinking it looked good, purposely looked for it when we were shopping. And, after I saw it was just $6.99 (it's normally $9.99), I decided to buy it for dinner. After having it last night, I have to say I was pleased with this decision. I'm always a little skeptical when it comes to pre-packaged meals like this one (which is found in the refrigerator section). Most offer relatively decent convenience but very few offer quality as well. This was one of the few that did offer both. When I first looked at the package, I wasn't sure if it would be as convenient as I hoped it would be because, at least from th...