Tuesday's tip: Make stock again with the same bones

OK, if you've been following Craving Fresh for a while, you'll probably know I have a thing for chicken stock. I LOVE it. Making it is the one thing I do in the kitchen that makes me feel like I am a domestic goddess.

Cooking up a big bunch of chicken stock turns what would otherwise be a waste product into a nutritious, tasty and super handy meal ingredient.

You can read my process for making chicken stock here.

Now I want to share with you something new I did the last time I made it.

After making the chicken stock as usual (using two chicken carcasses, some other drumstick bones and a bunch of celery leaves, plus carrot and onion ends) and sieving all the liquid into containers to freeze, I refilled the stock pot of bones and vegetables with water and cooked up another batch of chicken stock.

And then I did it again.

Yes you read that right. I made three lots of chicken stock with the same bunch of bones. And here's how it looked after the third time through:

It's still a really rich yellow, even after putting the chicken bones through the stock making process three times. To my eyes it was not as rich looking as the first and second lot, so I called it quits there, but I still think that's a wonderful result.

Because we have so much chicken stock in the freezer now, I've been using it to cook all my rice, millet and quinoa in. This adds a major nutrient boost to our meals, and I feel good knowing that even if Lily was only to eat one mouthful of rice, she'd be getting a whole lot more than rice in that bite.

Speaking of chicken stock, I'm going to be making a whole lot more of it soon. Check out the bargain I snagged at Moore Wilson's the other day:

Can you read that sign?

It says buy a carton of 8 frozen free range size 14 chickens and pay just $8.88 per chicken. Woot! That's the cheapest I've paid for free range chicken yet - about half what I would pay for them at the supermarket.

I bought the carton and jammed those chickens anywhere I could find a space in our freezer. (Rather difficult with all the chicken stock I've been putting in there lately.) It feels good to have found something that doesn't cost the earth. Grocery prices have been stressing me out lately.

So tell me, what bargains have you snagged lately? And what tips have you got for beating escalating grocery prices?