Aldi Haul | Holiday Items + What’s For Dinner?

Hi Everyone!

Welcome back to my channel! Today we have a fun Aldi haul plus some bonus items I got from Publix.

I’m also sharing three meal ideas for you, Chicken Pot Pie Soup, an Autumn Salad and a Penne Ricotta Bake.

The soup and salad I got through a meal plan service I signed up for here: https://macrofriendlyfood.com

My marinara sauce recipe is as follows:
3 tbsp Extra Virgin Olive Oil
3 cloves garlic, minced
1/2 onion
1 green pepper, finely diced
1 carrot, grated
1 15oz can fire roasted tomatoes
1/4 cup parsley, chopped
1 28 ounce can of crushed tomatoes (San Marzano style)
1/2 cup Chicken Stock
1 6oz can tomato paste
1/4 cup Parmesan cheese
1/4 tsp red pepper flakes (to taste)
1 tsp salt
1 tsp black pepper
2-3 tbsp granulated sugar
2 tsp oregano

Place all ingredients in the crockpot and cook on low for 5-6 hours. Once fully cooked, check for seasonings (add more salt or sugar at this point). Then using a blender, puree to smooth consistency.

*Note: you can toss in any vegetable you like here. I’ve done squash, spinach, celery, zucchini, etc.

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What up my friends welcome back to my Channel today we got a haul for you and this time it’s from Aldi okay unpopular opinion I don’t go to ALDI a lot here’s why one I’m afraid that at some point I am going to understand the hype of Aldi

And I’m going to be Unleashed and it’s not going to be great for my checking account you know what I mean two I don’t understand the hype of Aly there are products that are very cheap and that’s great but I feel like it’s not cheap

Enough to make it worth me going to a separate store and they don’t have enough for me to have it be like a standalone moment you know what I mean like I would need to piece together things from like Publix and Costco and ALDI so it’s like why throw a third in

The mix because I could just spend a couple extra dollars and get it at Costco do you know what I’m trying to say do you shop at Aldi do you agree with me are you mad at me right now did you just exit the chat because I said

These things I would like to know in the comments do you even know what Aldi is if you don’t know what Aldi is it’s a grocery store and they keep their prices low by not being insane with marketing they also do not provide free shopping

Carts you have to put a quarter into the shopping cart to be able to rent it for while you walk around the room but then you go put it back and they give you the quarterb so I mean it’s smart because it keeps the employees from having to

Collect a bunch of carts out in the parking lot but at the same time last night I went and people must not care about their quarters because there was still shopping carts everywhere so there’s that and then also you have to bag your own groceries and bring your

Own bags which I lived in Hawaii for 13 years they had like plastic band and I think California does too so like bringing your own bags isn’t like revolutionary anymore because a lot of places are doing that and you don’t get cheaper groceries you know so anyways

That was a lot so in this video you have an Aldi haul there’s also a mini Publix haul because today today as I’m recording this and actually as you’re viewing it cuz it’s going up today is John’s birthday so happy birthday John John is my husband we have been together

Now for 19 years so we have celebrated 19 of these things together and we’ve been married for 11 of them so that’s exciting today is his birthday we have like his birthday stuff from Publix I also have three what’s for dinner Inspirations for you so we have a salad

A soup and a pasta dish plus I show you how I make my marinara sauce and the crockpot super easy if you are new here hi welcome thanks for giving me a chance my name is Kate normally I do haul videos over here generally Costco sometimes Trader Joe’s Target sprinkle

And some other stores that I like we also go to Disney quite frequently so you will see some of that every so often and once a month I do a wrap up on all the books that I’ve read if this sounds like your Vibe be sure to subscribe

Before you leave it means the absolute world to me and without further Ado let’s get into the video all right friends we have an all oldie haul for you I don’t know if I’ve ever done an Aldi Haul on this channel so I’m psyched for that I also have a mini little

Publix’s haul for things that I couldn’t get at Aldi John’s birthday is tomorrow so we got some goods for that so I could not believe the prices on this fish big thing of salmon 5.97 and a big thing of cod for $6.89 John requested Cowboy stew for his

Birthday meal tomorrow so I got some of the stew meat pound and a half for only $99.50 come on now he also asked for some appetizers some poo poos if you will so I grabbed him some toasted ravioli because he loves that he’s also

A big fan of green grapes so I got some of that my sister-in-law told me these are delicious chicken breast fillets specifically this red Kirkwood bag she said those are the ones you got to get beef steak tomatoes this is for the cowboy stew I just always see recipes

That that need queso fresco and I always forget to get it and this is good until mid December so I grabb that just in case I end up needing it grabbed a couple bags of frozen vegetables I pretty much always grab that also for John’s poo poo request I grabbed some

French fries strawberries for Oliver and then mini cucumbers for us for salads and snacks baby carrots will be for the stew I grabbed a bag of sweet potatoes this whole bag was $1.99 I don’t know how much weight it is 3 lb for $1.99 that’s for the twins food some tortilla

Strips those are going to be for John to be able to dip in the stew meat these were $2.99 or maybe it’s $1.99 I don’t remember but I thought this would be great to make like some breakfast sandwiches so I grabbed that this is for the cowboy stew just some sausage I wish

They had Kil basa but they didn’t so I just grabbed this one I also finally am going to try this cheese Advent calendar supposedly it always sells out but mine had plenty so I don’t know if I just got lucky or what um but it’s 24 days of

Cheese and I’m here for that okay and then John loves peanut M&M so for his birthday I grabbed some of those for him also he loves these Heath bar cookies from Publix so I grabb some of those up Publix it’s a 13 count a Baker’s Dozen

If you will got him a couple cards and a bag for one of his gifts I saw these and he loves peppermint as you guys know so I grabbed him that and then last but not least his cake and his balloon he requested an ice cream cake but last minute changed his

Mind and said he just wants a good old frosting Extravaganza so that’s what he got the birthday boy gets what he asked for you know so that is everything all right next up we have a slow cooker chicken pot pie soup if you hear my dishwasher dying in the background I

Apologize this is a recipe from I think her name is alely Ellis but she has a specific company I can’t remember what it’s called so I’ll link it down below I’m spraying the Bott botom of the crock pot with just some avocado oil spray the first

Step is to put chicken down so I took a shortcut this time I normally just dice up my own chicken but this was on sale so I grabbed it now the recipe calls for a bag of mixed frozen vegetables I didn’t have that but I do have these

Green beans so I’m going to use that and then I’m going to add a can of corn so now I also had prepped some food last night and I had onion carrot and garlic left over from that so I’ll be using that up okay now the only thing with

This recipe that I did not dig is the fact that she did not season the chicken so I’m just going to do a little salt good amount of pepper and I also am going to be using some of this everything but the leftovers seasoning from Trader Joe’s cuz this is supposed

To be a chicken pot pie soup so I just thought that would be a good seasoning for it but you could just use like seasoning salt or poultry seasoning whatever you have on hand and then you top it with the frozen vegetables it says there a lot of green beans I think

We got a toddler to eat them and then it says the onion potatoes garlic cream cheese and bullan powder I have to get the potatoes prepped so I’m going to do That you guys know how I feel about these cream cheese containers the recipe calls for 4 oz I’m doing about 6 oz total because we love cream cheese and I had like a 2 oz block to use up so that’s my justification for why there’s extra cream cheese going in here it doesn’t

Have to make sense to anybody besides me get in there get in the hot tub and then it says to use bullion powder I don’t have bullion powder I don’t even have chicken stock and it calls for chicken stock what we’re going to be using instead is this better than bullan base

So I’m going to mix this in four cups of water and just be generous with it and that’ll be good that’ll be good enough you guys are so mean to me you almost let me forget the corn the can of corn so that was R uh drained I didn’t

Rinse it or anything but corn also going in ready to go this is going to cook on low it says 4 to 6 hours and that sounds about what I’m going to be doing what we’ll be doing next adding in like a milk and Greek yogurt mixture with some

Cornstarch to let it thicken up so that’s what’s going to be happening There okay my friends next up we have my marinara sauce that I am going to be making in the COC pot this is one of my favorite ways to do it because it can just cook low and slow all day long and this produced about I’d say like 40 to

50 o of marinara sauce I have a 4 and 1/2 quart crock pot if you have a larger crock pot or if you have like a big stock pot you could do it on the stove I’d 100% recommend doubling this but I have this small crock pot so I just do

Small batches at a time I will leave a recipe in the description box on my marinara sauce however what I love about this marinara sauce is it’s an opportunity to clean out the fridge so if you’ve got half a thing in Parmesan cheese you want to get rid of if you

Have some carrots that are looking real suspicious if you got an onion that’s about to go bad um you can really like put any produce that you want in it I’ve made it with spinach I’ve made it with bell peppers bell peppers is a great one

To throw in there I give a little zest onion garlic carrot is my main ones I mostly always try to do onion garlic and carrot because carrot gives it a natural sweetness today I also added some butternut squash because we had a lot of butternut squash that I was making for

The twins so I figured I’d just throw that in there it’s a great way to get a lot of nutrients into something and if your kids like pasta and sauce you’re going to be able to sneak in some vegetables okay or you could always use this trick

On your spouse like I did when John and I first started cohabitating because he fundamentally didn’t believe in vegetables at the time so I used to have to come up with crafty ways to sneak them in and this was one of them now he has been converted he loves vegetables

Now okay great so in this there’s going to be a bunch of tomato things I have tomato paste I have fire roasted diced tomatoes and a can of peeled Tomatoes San Marzano style and then I have the onion garlic and carrots going in all of the seasoning parmesan cheese I also add

Some chicken broth and then I’m doing salt pepper and then you’re going to see me add about 2 tablespoons maybe 3 tablespoons of granulated sugar I would start there and then if you like a sweeter sauce you can always add more to it but we’re going to be putting in

Butternut squash and like I said the carrots and both of those are going to add like a natural sweetness so I started off with just the 2 to 3 tablespoons of sugar and it ended up being perfect for me so just taste as you go for the butternut squash I’m

Getting it all peeled up I’m going to get the guts taken out isn’t that fun and then this is going to get diced up and steamed in a rice cooker I’m using it for both baby food and then also for this recipe to add some extra vitamins as well as some natural sweetness

Another great thing about this sauce is you can get rid of all of those extra packets that you might have laying around from like takeout pizza the home Chef or meal delivery kits I had like a zesty Italian seasoning packet I’m just tossing it all in there now the key to

This is you take either a imion blender or a regular blender and you blend this so nobody knows what you put in it it’s a secret between you and I okay this sauce is going to get end up getting used for a pasta dish that I’m making so

I’m going to share that with you next okay so here we are making a ricotta pen bake I’ll call it it’s basically just a baked pasta dish that in this case I’m using some Italian sausage I’m using pen pasta the sauce that I made and then just various cheeses but the most

Important part is at the end you’re going to witness me scooping some ricotta cheese on top of the entire thing and baking it in the oven so I’m just going to play some music you’re going to see me put it all together dreams are going to come true it’s going to be Great say you think about me because I’m starting to doubt we will find our way back to each other when you’re on the other side of the world I’m here and I’m waiting but I know I can’t say that we didn’t end it for good reason still I’m hoping we’ll be meeting

Soon everybody need Some okay friends now the last recipe that we’re making is another one from Elise Ellis so I will again link this down below and I will say she just kind of served as inspiration for this because I didn’t end up having all the same ingredients she had but this one’s

Kind of like an Autumn salad and so it has some apples in it and you can see me putting the apples in water here what I do is I put some honey in very very cold water and I let the Apple soak for about 10 to 15 minutes and it helps them from

Browning and it doesn’t give them any type of like a vinegar taste it works every single time so I would 100% recommend that hack for you other than that I’m also while prepping this salad I’m also getting some meal prep done so just chopping up some fruits and veggies

For us and the kids and all that good stuff for this salad I did a couple chicken breasts in the crock pot on high with a maple vinegarette dressing from Trader Joe’s but you could use any type of vinegarette dressing you wanted to or whatever salad dressing is your favorite

A zesty Italian would be good or if you have that Panera Fuji apple dressing I bet that would be really good on there but anyways I’m just chopping up all of this stuff I’m going to put all of this good stuff together you’re going to see in this salad there’s going to be

Chicken uh some strawberry there’s going to be some apple there’s going to be cucumber there is going to be sweet potato that was the star of the show you guys I never would have thought to put sweet potato on a salad but it gave it some

Girth did I already say goat cheese I also put goat cheese on this feta would have been great as well and I just finished it all off with that same same Maple vinegarette that I used to cook the chicken in is what we dressed the salad with I’m going to play a little

Bit of music for you guys while I assemble everything enjoy still have hope I’m waiting every day for you to come back and tell me we can work it out forget about the best now time moov slow I’m not high or M without You I feeling so lonely when you never pH me I put your picture on my window still to make myself feel all right but I knew it would not be easy spending time apart and I almost can’t believe it believe that you’re gone and I don’t think this will get better until

You come around I guess that everybody need some time to figure themselves out but I want too close and I still have hope I’m waiting every for you to come back all right you guys thank you so much for spending a slice of your day with me I

Know you’re busy people I know you have great things to do and you decided to spend it with me that means so much so I hope I delivered whatever it is that you needed today maybe you needed some meal inspiration maybe you wanted to write some extra items down in your grocery

List I don’t know I hope I delivered if I did the rules are you need to reward me with the thumbs up so go ahead and do that before you forget and if you like to party head over to my Instagram I’m on the gram okay partying constantly at

Kate Costa it’s always linked down in the description below and I hope you have a magical day bye