Food safety during the Pandemic

Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, the food pantry Helping Hands in Livingston County did not allow walk in clients into their facilities like they normally did. This presented a problem for them, one is Helping Hands supplies much needed help to families in need in our county. Livingston County Extension has a good working relationship with the food pantry, helping with educational opportunities, food safety materials, and food preparation classes.

Livingston County ANR agent partnered with Livingston Counties EFNEP Program Assistant to provide nutrition information, information on staying safe during the pandemic, hand washing information and food safety information to the local food pantry to distribute to clientele. Over five hundred information fact sheets, calendars, and Chop Chop magazines were distributed to the pantry clients. All this information was also shared via social media outlets to the county, which was another fun and new way to reach our clientele. Livingston County ANR agent and EFNEP Assistant partnered to provide clients with easy to prepare, healthy, budget friendly recipes. The demonstrations were recorded via live Facebook videos.  The recipes demonstrated were from the University of Kentucky Nutrition Education Calendars and 4-H.  In some instances, such as the bread making class, clients were able to pick up bags from the Extension office that contained some of the ingredients to prepare the recipes.  Disposable loaf pans had been donated to the Expanded Food and Nutrition Assistant and these were made available to the clientele. These social media cooking demonstrations had 1881 views, on the ANR Facebook page alone.