Aldi. Magnificent Enabler of Sin

Standing in line for a Truck Haven breakfast, carefully considering my choices, I am struck by another epiphany. The sort of epiphany that most people have before they reach double digits, but a thicky like me needs to be prediabetic to grasp.

If I have the eight piece breakfast, I don’t need to make a choice about anything, I can have everything that I want. Bacon, Sausage, egg, black pudding, haggis, hash browns, mushrooms, tomatoes, toast…but thats just way too much food. No wonder I am fat, I only need five items.

But here’s the rub. If I am limited to five items, I have to really think about what I want and choose wisely. My breakfast will be complete, and will be made up of the things I like the most.

And that is a handy segway in to my main point. There is a public health crisis at the moment. Too many of us are eating too much, and we are eating is shite. We all know that we should eat home cooked food, from scratch, using fresh basic ingredients. It tastes so much better than processed food. And how can it not? The main ingredient is love.

When we work long hours, travel long hours, the task of preparing something more elaborate than a cheese toastie during our few hours of freedom looms large and ominous, but we must maintain our resolve to stick to the plan, and to cook something decent.

And then we discover Aldi. With all of its choices and bright colours, and promising flavours. How are the regular customers not driven insane with the sheer range selection?

On Friday I cooked three types of ribs, and some wings, for just me and the youngest. We ate them outside in the garden, at sunset. It was lovely. I took a photo.

I don’t sit out in the garden often enough. We don’t seem to have the climate for it, though thankfully that seems to be changing, but when I do sit outside I am reminded of all of the gardening that I should have done but didn’t.

But anyway, back to Aldi.

I only went in for some chicken wings to have with sauce. I filled a large basket. Delicious processed food and sugary snacks and drinks.

Gluttony is perhaps the one sin to which I am most vulnerable, with Sloth as a close second. And with prices so low, it becomes a battle of spirit over will to deny one’s self these earthly pleasures.

I look back on the good old days, back to childhood, the seventies and eighties, when everything had to he made from scratch. If you wanted a pie, you needed to know how to make pastry. And there were fewer choices too, you had to plan it in advance, you had to put the effort in. Gluttony required some degree of work befire Aldi and its ilk enabled, packaged, branded and discounted that sin and sold it to us for pennies. And now we’re all fat.

Maybe not all of us. But the night is young. What was it Jesus said about cutting out your eye if it offends.