Friday 9 May 2014

Bank holiday shopping! #Morrisonsmum

You know you don't get out often when you get excited at the prospect of shopping in a different supermarket than usual.....

Last week, Morrisons reduced the prices of over 1000 items, and to launch the new "I'm Cheaper" campaign, they teamed up with BritMums to offer a select few bloggers the chance to try out their products with a very generous £80 worth of vouchers. You can imagine how delighted I was to be selected, and the smile on my face when this arrived in the post...

Even better that it arrived on a particularly skint week, when lots of unexpected bills arrived, so a week's worth of free shopping was a godsend!

I've always liked Morrisons, but the nearest one to me is more than a half hour drive away, so I tend to stick to my more local supermarket. I was very excited to be trying somewhere I wasn't very familiar with, and couldn't wait to see what they had that my local shop didn't.

I wasn't disappointed! When we first arrived, we were very impressed by the huge range of fresh fruit and veg, all presented in a bright and tempting way.
Everything looked beautiful, and we were particularly excited to see such a wide range of loose chillies. We are absolute chilli fiends, but our local place has precisely one variety, in a sealed plastic bag, which means that you have no control over how many you can buy. The choice in Morrisons was brilliant!


What's more, they were really cheap, with the scotch bonnets working out at just 10p each, and the long finger chillies working out at just 3p each! Bargain! We bought loads :)
I also liked the wicker baskets they were in, giving more of a market feel. 

The next thing I got all giddy about were the fresh herbs, sold in little tied bunches, rather than sealed plastic bags, and were kept nice and fresh with a rather dramatic blast of dry ice....


I bought a lovely big bunch of mint and one of coriander, at a bargainous 75p each.They had a massive range of herbs, I was most impressed.


We liked that a lot of the fruit and veg were 3 for £1.50, so it was easy to work out what we were spending as we merrily chucked things into the trolley!


There's a great selection of meat and fish, and lots of it is 3 for £10, which again makes budgeting much easier. I chose a pack of mini chicken fillets (half of which we grilled and had with salad, and half of which we mixed with vegetables in a curry), a gammon joint (which I slow cooked and served over two nights - once shredded with salad, and once sliced and served with potatoes and peas), and a pack of diced casserole beef (which I slow cooked with peppers, onions and sweet potatoes to make a chunky chilli).
Almost a week's worth of meals from £10 worth of meat, awesome!

Nobody can resist a cheese counter!


The selection of freshly baked (and still warm!) pies was awesome. We chose creamy chicken pies and scotch pies for lunch and both were delicious.


The salad bar is a brilliant idea, you have several clear plastic boxes to choose from, and just pay a set price according to the size of box, so you can fill it with any combination of salad you like. I took a spicy chicken pasta salad and a pesto pasta salad, both gorgeous.



When biscuits and crisps are this cheap, why the hell not? And I can balance it out with all that gorgeous fresh fruit and veg I bought....

Anyway, we decided to make the most of the weekend with a trip to a beach, so we visited Lunan Bay in Angus. It's seriously beautiful, a huge sandy beach with loads of massive dunes for climbing on. The kids had a ball, and our haul from Morrisons gave us a really lovely picnic. The kids are not fans of sandwiches, so our bag was stuffed with various other nibbles - our pasta salads, cocktail sausages, hummous, crisps, olives, fruit, cold meats etc. Plenty to keep us going all day!




We also decided to make a yummy homemade pudding of Berry Mess, with the leftover berries from our fruit salad. Here's the recipe we used:

BERRY MESS


INGREDIENTS

  • 260 g mixed berries, including blueberries, blackberries, strawberries, raspberries
  • 1 tbsp plus 1 tsp icing sugar
  • 125 ml double cream
  • 1/4 tsp vanilla extract
  • 200 g Greek yogurt
  • 2 x 35g meringue nests, broken into nests



 


METHOD

1. Put the berries in a bowl. Add 1 tablespoon of icing sugar and mix, crushing a few of the berries.

2. In a separate bowl, put the cream, the remaining 1 teaspoon of icing sugar and the vanilla and whip to soft peaks. Stir the yogurt to loosen slightly.

3. Carefully fold the yogurt into the cream with the berries and the meringue.

4. Spoon the mixture into 4 glasses and serve. 





Unfortunately, it was so delicious, we ate it before I remembered to take a photo of the finished result, oops!
It was really nice, and worked out at just 68p per portion, can't complain!

Anyway, I was incredibly impressed with Morrisons, beautifully fresh food, very friendly staff, delicious meals, and amazing value for money. Well worth the drive, they've definitely found a new regular customer in me!

Thank you, BritMums and Morrisons!

1 comment:

  1. So lovely to hit the beach over the Bank Holiday. Great photos. Thanks for the feedback on your Morrisons experience. Commenting for myself and on behalf of BritMums and thanking you for taking parrt

    ReplyDelete