The Family and Consumer Sciences Extension Agent has been conducting Cooking Classes for the past seven years to reach clientele to teach about the skills of food resource management, food safety, and food preparation in order for participants to learn about affordable, healthy, nutritious food and make healthy choices when purchasing, preparing and consuming foods. A sampling of the participants in Cooking Classes both day and evening recently were contacted by phone to observe social distancing and asked questions to follow up with a survey conducted last year to learn their level of healthy eating, safely handling foods and using/reading food labels since coming to Cooking Classes and to evaluate cooking classes in the wake of the pandemic and how they have used previous information from cooking classes. After talking informally with participants --results indicate very good understanding of safe food handling issues. In the mist of the pandemic, participants from the classes agreed they had a very good understanding of safety measures surrounding food prep and clean up. From the previous written survey of participants there was an indication of needing more focus on reading/understanding food labels and using more easy-to-prepare recipes with vegetables. Cooking classes have not been held in person since March, but before then an effort was made to emphasize ease of recipes from nutrition calendar during preparation. More emphasis on label reading  was also included in classes. Unfortunately, the lessons toward label reading had to take a break as in-person meetings were suspended. They will pick up again when resuming classes. Other info gathered by informal discussion included the following.

40% reported eating vegetables 2 or more times a day; respondents did express the added effort of trying to make sure they ate healthier since the pandemic started

100% reported increasing their handwashing

100% reported always washing fruits and vegetables before preparations since pandemic started

100% reported being excited about cooking classes resuming as soon as possible

80% reported using recipes from previous cooking classes during this time and several reported trying the recipes not presented in class since suspension.