We are all feeling the credit crunch and alot of us have changed our shopping habits due to this. Recent surveys portray an array of trends from a increase in frozen food purchases, farmers markets, farm shops and home deliveries.

Looking at any of these options, we are all simply looking at ways to save money but without compromise in quality. Many of us are returning to cooking for ourselves from fresh, instead of going out to eat in a restaurant or pub, or getting a takeaway. To do this we are revisiting shopping back to how our grandparents would of food shopped.

We are shopping locally in farm shops,  markets, delicatessens, local butchers, green grocers, bakeries and specialist shops. Looking for fresh quality locally sourced ingredients, which we are comfortable with, as we know where it has come. Plus we have the added benefit of giving back to our local communitites by supporting local producers and maintaining local businesses and jobs.

We are also saving petrol, even though it has gone down in price your turn your back and next week its up again. Shopping in these ways we can walk to these shopping locations or drive small distances, rather than driving to a large supermarkets miles away. We are also looking to home delivery, this again saves on petrol costs and of course our time. Time is of a premium to all of us in the very busy lifes we all lead.  If we can order online or from a local shop, we have more time to do the things we want too, be this more time with the family or just me time.

The term Frugal cookery is becoming more popular. This is where we use basic ingredients and some ready prepapared ingredients together to produce a given recipe dish saving on cost and time. There are some great frugel cook books out there at the moment too.

I personally love shopping at farmers markets and so do my family. It gives them a great opportunity to try different foods and ingredients, and for me to find out if they like something before I take it home to cook or to use within a recipe. Its important to me to know where my meat etc has come from. I want to eat British meat etc and I want to  know that the animals have all been reared to certain standards and with care for their well being.

A good example of this happened only this week when my friend told me, she now realised what I had meant by ‘tasting and seeing the difference by buying fresh free range eggs and the difference etc. She explained how she really had not appreciated what I had meant, that was until recently when she moved into a new home in a small village. While out exploring with her 6 year old son, they had stopped at a small hamlet within the village, as her son Jack was fascinated by the free roaming chickens. Has they watched the chickens running around the lady who owned the property came out and started to speak to Jack. In the end she invited Jack into her garden where he had so much fun looking under bushes etc as he set about to search for the hens freshly laid eggs. My friend said how much fun Jack had that afternoon. In the finish their short tour of their new little village actually turned into a 2 hour epic. They returned home with a supply of fresh eggs from their newly found neighbour and they enjoyed a wonderful poached egg super that evening. In conclusion my friend and her husband said that ‘they were the best eggs they had ever tasted ‘, and ever since then they have popped in, not only for some fun for Jack to search for the eggs but to obtain some fantastic quality fresh free range eggs which taste and look completely different to the eggs they had been buying before.

How has your shopping changed? Send in your tips to help your fellow foodies out there through these tough times and keep on reading!