A sticky end to nail biting

We found a low cost and easy solution to helping our daughter stop her nail biting habit. We used good quality sticking plasters and stuck them to the ends of each finger, cutting to fit where needed. It's best to use a 'good' brand like Band Aid, which will stay on for a while. These days, Kinesiology tape would probably be my go-to, as I think it sticks best (when heat activated). Sometimes I would paint the bitter tasting polish over the top of the sticking plaster as a reminder if her fingers got to her mouth. She was motivated to stop, and we promised she could have nice nail polish on when her nails grew out, so there was a carrot as well!

DIY 'mixed vegie bags' makes meals faster and easier

This simple tip saves me money and time every day when preparing meals. Whenever I buy frozen vegetables, I bring them home and immediately divide them into portions, placing them into ziplock bags, then popping them in the freezer. I often divide up broccoli, peas, cabbage, sprouts, carrots into the same bag. This way, they take up less space in the freezer and I know exactly how many meals they will serve. None ever get wasted and they can be either stored together or placed with other food to make it instantly possible to grab a complete meal. The same method works well with fresh food in preparation for things such as school fruit or lunch breaks, when time is at a premium in the mornings!!

14 meals from one chicken!

Imagine getting 14 meals out of a single cooked chicken! It's my biggest food saving and this is how I do it.

Buy a whole chicken (on special of course)! Get a large pot. Place chicken in it and add chunky chopped carrot, onion, celery and mixed herbs (I grow my own so save more money here)!

Boil until the meat is starting to fall off the bone (I have a wood heater so I cook on that, saving gas in winter) Take the meat and vegetables out, reserving the liquid. Serve some of the meat and all the vegetables with mashed potato and white sauce.

With leftover meat, make up some chicken sandwiches and freeze them for quick lunches. Use the rest in curries or whatever other suitable recipes you have.

Back to the liquid. Add a little more water, chop up whatever soup vegetables you have or add lots of lentils, a dash of paprika and salt and slowly simmer to make a few meals of wonderful thick soup. This way, I feed two of us 14 meals out of the one chicken! Not only is it cheap, it is good for you and has helped the purse strings through many tight times over the years.

Big savings on seeds

We have saved over $150 in seeds alone this past year. Instead of paying up to $5.00 for packets of seeds which may or may not sprout, we have started grabbing packets of seeds from the herb sections of Woolworths, Coles and IGA. Most mustard, coriander, fennel, cardamom or celery whole seeds that you get as a spice for cooking will sprout for you in your garden. These normally cost around $1.05 per packet and you will get a lot more seeds than if you bought them from a gardening shop. We also get the full dried peas (not freeze dried) from the soup section and have planted these successfully for three years now. They give us the sweetest sugar snap peas ever! A packet normally costs $1.53 and you get close to 100 seeds. In comparison to buy 'packet' seeds it would cost you over $12.

We also cut the ends off shallots and replant them, it takes about three weeks before they start to recover, but then you have an endless harvest of shallot leaves to use in salads. We do the same with old onions that have hidden themselves away in our cupboards and have sprouted. Plant them in your garden, let them go to seed and you will have a great seed stock for the next few years. No need to buy more!

Garlic can be done in the same way. Grab a clove and plant it flat end into the ground. After about four months you will get a great bulb of garlic from your original clove. Be aware that garlic from China or Mexico has been treated with Bromide (cancer causing agent) so only use Australian grown garlic.

Old potatoes and sweet potatoes that start sprouting can be replanted and will give a good yield. Just cut a 3cm piece around the sprouting part of the potato and plant it, from one potato alone you could get up to seven new plants.

Pumpkin, cucumber, capsicum and other vegetable seeds can be cleaned, dried and then planted out to give you more seed stock to play with. Try planting two different types of pumpkins near each other and you might get a hybrid created which tastes great. Our family had a butternut mix with a jap pumpkin and it was the sweetest tasting pumpkin we'd ever tried. We also let one or two of each vegetable go to seed so that next years planting will cost us even less. Our goal is to go totally self sufficient in the garden. So far we have an abundance of butter lettuce, silverbeet, rocket, mint, corn, tomatoes and sugar snap peas all from previously saved seeds.