The Aldi report

I'm not adverse to buying weird-label, generic stuff, if the ingredients on the label are identical to the comparable name-brand item.

I'm cheap like that. As long as the can/bottle/package doesn't have high fructose corn syrup listed among the first 4 or 5 ingredients, and the ingredients match the name brand, I'm all over the Great Value, Archer Farms, all-white packaging.

And I know many people aren't as fortunate, but I'm generally not in a rush to get my shopping done. So I have time to read the labels.

So I think I have to give Aldi a thumbs up, but...

I doubt I would ever consider it my "main" grocery store.

We have an Aldi right close to us. It's by no means an out-of-the-way trip. (I guess that says something about the neighborhood in which we live, since Aldi stores would be laughed out of Bay Hills and Heathrows.) Also within a few miles of Chez R-H, we also have a dingy strip-mall Walmart (is that a redundancy?), at least two Publixes and, as of this Sunday, a shiny new SuperTarzhay.

Since Aldi is in our vicinity, I think just their price of milk ($2.80) is worth a regular trip. That's about a buck cheaper than most other places. If we were well off, I'd be more concerned about buying organic and hormone-free, but for now, I'm my conscience is somewhat clean by eating vegetarian. I'll go nondairy or organic when money isn't as much of a factor.

I think we also can pick up other nonperishable items there, such as canned fruit -- Aldi's "Fit N' Active" no-name brand, LOL -- and non-calorie sweetener without worry. (I suppose you could concern yourself with how much or how little each company is compensating their workers to pick the fruit you're eating, but I'm sure there's always something you could be outraged about.)

I'd have to sample Aldi's other dairy products and bread before deciding whether it's edible/worth it. I'm very picky about yogurt, cheese, cottage cheese and bread. I hate thin yogurt -- I hated yogurt period until a few years ago -- and insist on buying 100 percent whole wheat bread that isn't enriched, which I could not find there.

We get our fresh fruit from a local produce market. Their prices are low, which, like Aldi, tends to attract the lower-income crowd. But it's always clean, there are middle-class shoppers there, and I love the strong smell of fresh produce that hits you when you walk in.

Definitely not on my Aldi grocery list: the $0.50 vegetable soup (shudder -- full of high fructose corn syrup), the pasta sauce (heard it was runny) and things such as garbage bags that we've been burned on when buying generic in the past.

As for their reputation: When we visited, the place was clean -- but it is a brand-new store -- and the aisles were packed full of low-income shoppers. We wondered what the over/under was (couldn't be long) on when the inside of the store would start looking like the Walmart down the road. One man who passed me smelled not so fresh. Again, not anything that I hadn't experienced in the aisles at Sprawlmart at 3 a.m. I liked that you had to insert a coin to get a cart; there weren't any abandoned carts floating randomly in the parking lot.

I'd say for us, since it's nearby, it's fine as a convenience store. Good for popping in for milk and canned goods. But for the bulk of our groceries, we'll stick with Publix or SuperTarzhay's Archer Farms.