In a time of rising grocery prices and uncertainty about federal nutrition assistance, many Johnson County residents are facing food insecurity.
And while providing information about local food pantries is helpful, a newly relaunched website aims to be a “one-stop shop” for all things healthy eating and access in Johnson County.
The K-State Extension- Johnson County first created JoCo EATS — short for Easy, Affordable Tasty Solutions — in 2019 as a hub for recipes that could be made with shelf-stable items easily found at food pantries. They paused the website during some staff transition, but relaunched it in November with even more resources.
“The idea was to take it a step further,” said Chelsea King, Nutrition, Food Safety, and Health Agent at the K-State Extension program, “and not just provide recipes but to provide kind of this holistic approach for connecting food and people and resources and knowledge and education together.”
A broader approach
Besides easy and affordable recipes, the updated JoCo EATS website includes information on food budgeting, financial assistance programs, food safety and nutrition guidance — even growing food at home.
A major addition to the site is its emphasis on fresh and local ingredients. The website also includes recipes that use seasonal produce.
“A lot of gardens also donate to food pantries, and so people going to food pantries may get produce they don’t really necessarily know what to do with,” King said. “And so we have some recipes and other information on there.”
Part of the site’s “holistic approach,” King said, is helping people move beyond access alone.
“We really want to connect people with the resources they need, like kitchen items to cook or finding food pantries to get food, but then also helping them know what to do with that food once they have it,” she said.
In addition to recipes, the site features how-to guides and videos created by Master Food Volunteers. The content focuses on basic cooking skills, like measuring ingredients, cutting produce and preparing meals safely. The goal? Make cooking feel easy and simple.
“We know that it’s not just giving somebody a recipe, but if they don’t know how to cut or if they don’t know how to measure or don’t know how to build these other components of cooking, it can be a struggle,” King said.
One-stop shop
King said the extension office’s goal was to make the site a “one-stop shop for food and nutrition information” in Johnson County.
“Oftentimes when people are trying to find resources, they just go down these rabbit holes because one site has one thing,” King said.
King said that November’s relaunch has gotten positive feedback from community members.
Yvonne Gibbons, the manager of FUUD, a food pantry at the Shawnee Mission Unitarian Universalist Church in Lenexa, said JoCo EATS would be a useful tool for FUUD’s patrons.
“For a lot of our shoppers, this would be really helpful because it would give them ideas for some of the food they’d be getting from pantries,” she said. “I think it’s a great website.”
King and her team will continue to update the website with new recipes, videos and resources.
“It will be a continually ever-evolving website with resources and recipes and kind of that that makes it accessible for people to use and all that good stuff,” King said.
