THIS IS JUST NUTS!

I love nuts.  But of all the nuts I love, I love pistachio nuts best of all.  It is impossible for me to open a bag of them and eat just a few.  Or at leat it was until yesterday.

Yesterday was Saturday and we decided that we would rent a couple of DVDs and have a movie night.  And for movie night as we all know, we need munchies.  In our house our favourite munchies are nuts and chocolate coated raisins.

So DVDs rented we prepared for movie night: roaring fire, drinks (freshly squeezed orange juice with sparkling water), chocolate coated raisins and nuts.  Squeezed the oranges, dropped in the ice cubes to the glasses and added orange juice and fizzy water, popped the chocolate coated raisins into a bowl and then ... disaster ... no nuts!  It seems someone (ahem) had devoured all the pistachios. 

So, being a Saturday evening the only supermarket open in our town was Tesco so husband was duly dispatched to fetch the pistachios.

And we settled in on the sofa, all munchies and drinks arranged beside us plus a spare bowl for the pistachio nuts shells.  Perfect.  Until ...

... I tasted the first pistachio nut which to say the least, was a disappointment.  But these things happen as any pistachio nut lover will confirm and so I persevered and tried another.  As with the first, it was a dried out, hard, tasteless ball of nothingness.

 I tried another.  Same.  And another.  And then gave up, furious that I would now have to watch the film minus my much loved pistachio nuts. 

The chocolate coated raisins somewhat made up for the disappointment and I made a mental note to return the dried out husks to Tesco first thing Monday morning.

Pistachoi nuts

Today, Sunday, my husband was out for the paper and returned clutching not only the newspapers but a bag of pistachios nuts too!  He had been in Lidl and saw them there and thought he would take them home to see how they compared with the Tesco pistachios.  I can report back that the Lidl ones not only look entirely different to the Tesco ones, they actually taste like pistachio nuts!  Imgine being delighted that something tastes like it should?

Lidl nut on left ~ Tesco nut on right

If you look at the photograph above you can clearly see the difference in the two nuts.  There is colour and vibrancy in the Lidl one whereas the Tesco one looks exactly as it tasted, dry and without any life at all.

And then to top it all, the Lidl pistachio nuts are much, much cheaper than the Tesco pistachio nuts ~ slightly over half the price in fact.  The Tesco bag had 200 grams costing €3.79 (.019 per gram) and the Lidl bag 250 grams costing €2.58 (.010 per gram).

You nut lovers have been warned!

NOTE: I have emailed a link to this post to Tesco Ireland asking them for a comment on both the price difference and the distinct lack of quality of their pistachios.  I will add their reply, should I receive one.

UPDATE: I did receive a reply from Tesco who offered to refund my money (provided I had a receipt).  They made no comment about the price or the lack of quality of their product.