The government-funded GROCERYchoice supermarket comparison site has survived its controversial first month and has been refreshed with a new set of data. The latest calculations suggest that Coles is the cheapest supermarket chain in 40 of the 61 regions assessed, reducing its dominance from the first survey. However, the fundamental issue remains: with no knowledge of the contents of the test baskets used, it's hard to meaningfully relate this information to your own weekly shopping habits. As money-saving tactics go, eating a cheap meal every week or taking up minimal cooking would probably help you out more.

Personal finance weblog The Simple Dollar explains how to cook a whole chicken and use every last bit of it for a frugal alternative to buying more expensive chicken breasts.

From [$11.50], you can produce a meal of chicken and vegetables to feed a family of four, a meal worth of leftovers, a bag full of chicken pieces in the freezer for a future meal for a family of four, and a bag of chicken stock for another meal or two. That's five complete meals and the key ingredients for eight more meals.

Read More »

Frugal money blogger Trent recommends a weekly "soup and bread night" to save on food costs. You don't literally have to eat soup and bread, it can be any kind of meal as long as it's cheap:

if you have one supper per week that's intentionally as cheap as you can possibly make it, you'll save a lot of money over the long run. And, since it's only one meal a week, one can easily just focus on the cheap and not worry that much about taste.

Read More »

Got a sudden urge for a slice of cake, but don't want to head out to the local bakery or risk dietary ruin by cooking an entire cake which you know you'll end up gorging on? Blogger Dizzy Dee offers up a handy recipe for a single-serve cake which you can make in a mug in your microwave. (Don't stress about the reference to cake flour; as the Australian Women's Weekly Test Kitchen points out, you can use plain flour as a substitute, just reduce the quantity by a teaspoon or so.)

If you're faced with a recipe that requires you separate some eggs, either for the yolks or the whites, there are several different ways to approach it. Tutorial site WikiHow demonstrates how to use the hand, shell transfer, funnel, and separator methods so no matter how few or many culinary tools you have on hand you can get the job done. Hit the play button above to see how to use the hand method.

Read More »

When you're looking for a recipe with certain ingredients or by a particular chef, hit up Five Mushrooms, a multi-recipe site search engine which includes results from Allrecipes.com, the Food Network, Yahoo! Food, Cooking.com and Epicurious among others. Search by ingredients—like carrot celery onion—or specific quantities, like 1 egg, or by chef and ingredient, like emeril beef. You can even use advanced operators like the minus sign to exclude results (i.e., cookies -"chocolate chip"). Where do you turn when you need a good recipe for dinner? Let us know in the comments.

Read More »

Like microwave popcorn, but don't want to risk chipping a tooth on one of the rock-like kernels that never met its potential? Get rid of unpopped kernels with a simple shake. After removing your popcorn from the microwave, carry the bag to a garbage can. Pull the bag open only enough that the opening is slightly larger than an unpopped kernel. Turn the bag upside down and shake the bag up and down vigorously for 10-15 seconds. Gravity will cause the unpopped kernels to fall from the bag and then out into the garbage, and the fluffy popped corn will remain in the bag. Enjoy!

Looking for some warm food ideas for the colder months? Download Coles Winter Magazine as a free PDF for 40 recipe ideas. (Don't stress about the Coles branding, all the ingredients are standard pantry fare.) Some of the ideas are a tad basic (omelette, anyone?), but there should be something here to get you stimulated -- I especially like the sound of the lazy man's chicken and corn soup. [Coles Winter Magazine]

Food writer and uber-cook Mark Bittman keeps it timely with 101 picnic-friendly dishes that can be made, he claims, in 20 minutes or less. As with his other 101-item lists of 20-minute party appetisers and 10-minute meals, there's bound to be a few fudges on the timing (especially with anything involving boiling noodles), but the list is bound to inspire a great picnic idea. Photo by Miss Pupik.

Read More »

Your average container of milk contains a protein called casein, which, once reduced with a little vinegar, can be made into a homemade plastic and formed into anything you'd like. The plastic takes less than an hour to make and two days to dry, and, with a little sanding and painting, can be made into some seriously impressive homemade gifts. Hit the link for the full instructions, which require only some basic kitchen equipment to pull off.

Read More »