We haven't had any issues with any of it. There was a TV doctor who was in the nervous bunch, but all the public health experts have said that there is no known transmission from food or food packaging. I know Texas is more wild west than some places. We have a restaurant grading system for health department regulations. A "C" means safe though can't do all the recommended routines, but the pressure to have an "A" is immense, so they push to do everything they can.

We haven't done pickup, though i know someone who is pretty lax about precautions, though should be in the don't leave the house group, and picks up dinner most days, buys groceries once or twice a week, and does other errands. He's fine. Locally, the infection rate is about 4-5%.

We order in, once every week or two. I try to remove the outer bags which are supposed to be the most likely vector, then wash my hands, but I don't worry about the containers or the food (which arrives hot).

Re the food itself, you don't have enough of the right kind of receptors for the virus to get into in your alimentary system to get it going down, and your stomach acid will kill it. The latest word is that how badly you get it depends on strength of exposure. Being coughed on (as nurses are) is the worst. A few odd viral particles from incidental transfer, are supposed to be very unlikely to get you sick. Someone coughing into their hands then handling your packages, and you getting your hands all over the packages, and sticking your fingers in your nose, are what to look out for. Wash your hands. Wash your hands. But the food should be fine if you wash your hands.

We order in once a week. I transfer the food to bowls and put leftovers away in our own containers. I throw out the takeout containers, wipe the counters and wash my hands. The food arrives hot and we don't reheat it. We have also eaten salads. All has been fine, and if I do get the virus I don't believe it will be from the takeout food, though I obviously could be wrong.

We rarely pick up or have delivery unless it's something simple like pizza, cheesesteaks or hoagies - and that's usually because the kids have come over. It has nothing to do with fear of the virus. I'm just very picky about food quality and most meals don't travel well.

We had cheesesteaks yesterday after a long day of working in the yard. It was delivered, the box went on the island, the food on a plate and after washing our hands (as usual) we sat down to eat.

I order groceries online and pick up at the store. I unload onto the island and then we put everything away - with a few extra hand washings - but I don't wipe down any bags, boxes or containers of food, just the counter.

We're just not doing take out. I cook all our meals myself. He is a truck driver and sometimes will stop and get some sort of snack while he is working but even though he is okay with THAT,he is not comfortable eating a real meal from a restaurant right now. Neither am I really. We used to get takeout a few times a week but not at all since the end of January.

I am not really sick of cooking all the time but I get tired of the clean up sometimes and I get very sick of coming up with something to cook everyday.

Tonight I am making a fried chicken sandwich and homemade fries. Got the chicken marinating now.

The only food that we've picked up has been pizza. Our favorite pizza place does a "half baked" pizza (which is very appropriate because much of their decor is Grateful Dead themed 😄). You drive into the parking lot, text them your order # and which parking spot your are in, then pop open the back of the car. They load the pizza and you drive away.

We also started getting meal kits delivered so that we have something different from our regular repertoire to cook. We've been using EveryPlate, which is a lower cost service from Hello Fresh. The meals aren't as "gourmet" as those that we have had in the past from other services that we've tried, but they break up our regular routine.

Even though there is "no known transmission from food or food packaging" with hundreds of thousands of cases where the source could not be traced (or no one is tracing because of lack of resources), how could they possibly know?

Our county Health Department publishes their inspection reports of local restaurants and I watched them closely (pre Covid19) to decide which restaurants were too risky, because of their lack of sanitation practices. SO many are found to be lacking with just normal, everyday, common sense food handling, that I have no faith in the industry as a whole to keep contamination levels low. I am continually shocked by what the health department finds happening in restaurants. I eat in them, but like I said am very aware of the safer ones. But with this virus and my vulnerabilities, I'm holding off for now, even from my faves.

We have been trying to support some of our favorite places and the process is exhausting.

We do some pick-up and have had pizza delivered a few times. Transfer the food to our own baking sheet, heat it up in the oven and then eat off our own plates. We haven't purchased anything cold that can't be heated.

Ordered pizza this evening from local place. We pay online and they do contactless delivery to the front step. We then take the box out right after dinner. When we bring bags in, we put them on the floor and unload them that way. I do pickup for groceries and for farmers market delivery. I show up, get out of my car, open the doors, and step away while they put the bags in. Then I close the door. Then use hand sanitizer. One farmer delivers to the house front steps. So, no, I'm not concerned about these at all.

We just haven't been doing take out. We don't eat out much anyway. If I was going to do take out, it would be sushi but I haven't done that because of concerns about exposure with raw fish and all the handling that goes into making sushi. I did make it one night at home but cutting fish and forming rice for sushi is one skill that I haven't worked on in the past so it came out pretty rough.

If I did get something, I'd probably go the route of removing the packaging and putting it in the oven to heat it unless it already arrived quite hot.

I don't do take-out but a local food group I belong to, all it's members order in. They ALL remove the food from the takeout containers and eat off their plates.

Thank you all. I grew up with a semi-germaphobe mom (Do NOT use my hair brush!); DH grew up with a more laissez-faire mom (Here’s my spoon, would you like a bite of this?). DH is the one with the health problems. I worry about him not being vigilant enough (we seem to have frequent arguments about how long 20 seconds is. Alexa is the tie-breaker).

I’m not worried about the food per se, but I do worry about contamination from the containers and other packaging getting on our hands, face, etc. I‘d heard Dr Birx say that ingesting the virus was not dangerous, but inhaling it is.

Our local doc has a blog. He posted a link to a website with a mortality predictor. DH has a 12% chance of surviving the disease. I have a 95% chance. Our local infection rate seems to be about 2%, but it is rising.

@amylou321, your chicken sandwich sounds delish. Did you put dill pickle juice in the batter (a la Chick-Fil-A)? I would love to have a Chick-Fil-A sandwich, extra pickles, right now. I have done more frying in the last 8 weeks than I’ve done since we moved into this house. I’m going to have to do a deep cleaning with special attention to the cabinets very soon. With it being just me and DH, I usually run the dishwasher every other day. I ran it twice yesterday!!

@plllog, I’ll try to keep my fingers out of my nose, especially while handling take out food. 🤣🤣 Seriously, I never realized how much I touch my face until all this started. I rub my eyes, brush my bangs back, scratch my cheek, push up my glasses, and on, and on. I’m working at breaking myself but its an uphill battle.

I HATE THE BEST ANSWER FOLDEROL!!! Hit the wrong place while scrolling and suddenly, you’ve anointed someone ”Best Answer.” Morz8, your answer was good (Mexican food sounds like such a treat these days and I’d totally eat all the guac), but so was everyone else’s. Houzz, we are having a conversation, not a competition!!!!

People in my area are really sketchy, when it comes to following all the safety guidelines, so even if a restaurant may be taking lots of precautions, there's no guarantee the staff is when they're not at work, so we haven't had any takeout or delivery at all, which is no problem for hubby & me, but my 89 year old mom loves takeout food and has been pining for it. (She also has memory issues, and has to be reminded why we're not doing this.)

I guess I'm saying there are a number of issues to take into consideration...

We got take out for lunch a few times. Fish tacos, fish & chips. Ate out on the patio, didn't bring anything in the house. We also got poke one night. These are all restaurants we order from often pre corona. Took the necessary precautions, washed hands before and after. It was a tiny bit of almost normalcy and I enjoyed it immensely.

We get curbside pickup from two places in our neighborhood. It was kind of a relief when we started doing this - to have a couple nights a week that I didn’t have to come up with something for dinner. Like groceries, the containers stop in the laundry room coming in from the garage. One of us handles the “contaminated” containers and the other pulls the food out with utensils and plates it. We don’t reheat anything in the oven but we do sometimes put pizza in our warming drawer.

I’m more concerned about the local meat market where masks appear to be optional. Since I only buy things that are going to be cooked I still shop there. I do not buy anything in a deli where masks also don’t appear to be required and hand washing is suspect.

3katz, good point about delis. On my last grocery order, I got pre-packaged ham and pastrami rather than meat that had been handled in the deli. I wiped down the packages with PGA before putting them in the fridge. The quality was much lower (especially the pastrami), but my anxiety level was also lower.

We’ve been getting take out from some of our normal restaurants since early March. While we are very cognizant of staying safe (helps that both of us are introverts), we have been comfortable with getting takeout from our local restaurants. There are about 5 of them in our rotation. A couple of these places seemed to be mostly takeout prior to all of this, so I hope they survive.

No take out/pick-up here. I don't have a lot of trust in restaurant food as it is and as a result we seldom go out.

We've gotten take-out from several restaurants and aren't worried. My teen son loves a local Poke bar restaurant that makes a poke bowls from ingredients that you pick. So kind of like sushi with vegetable in a bowl. We've had that a few times. I think I have a better chance of getting food poisoning from raw fish, than I do of getting cornavirus from them.

We've also been supporting a local bagel company and get a delivery every week.

We stopped wiping down all the food after a supermarket run after 2 weeks.

We even eat street food in third world countries!

Neither of us comes from germaphobe families and we don't have any underlying health conditions.

We did split a grilled ham and cheese sandwich from the local A&W, and I've ordered sandwiches from a local BBQ place. Packaging goes directly into the trash, food goes on plates, then I wash my hands. We seldom went out to eat before this, so I don't really miss it.

I do stop at the local coffee shop and get Mother a latte every week when I take her groceries and meals to her. The baristas always wear masks and so do I, and they wear disposable gloves, a fresh pair with each order. I still wipe the cup with a disinfectant wipe before I give it to Mother.

And, like Carol, Mother has memory issues. She's 84 and doesn't remember why no one is allowed to visit her or why she can't hug all the grandkids.

Dave's Grandmother is 95 and now has pneumonia. She says she WILL see her family, she's 95 and could die tomorrow, so everyone went there for Mother's Day. I think if I were faced with the possibility of living a couple more years but never seeing my family again or taking a chance on infection with my family around me, I'd take the risk too.

Annie

We wear gloves picking up food. After the food goes on our plate we microwave it for about a minute because that's what I read. :)

I’m not afraid of most restaurants. I’ve eaten in some pretty sketchy ones (the worst was probably a restaurant in Honolulu featured in Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives. It had no bathroom. Instead there was a huge jug of hand sanitizers by the cash register).

We didn't eat out before so aren't doing pickup now. I do grab a premade salad from my workplace inhouse cafe most days, but our catering staff is rigorously monitored and careful measures are in place for food prep, so it's not something I'm concerned about. I'm almost positive I've had the virus based upon breathing symptoms that are identical to a friend's who did test positive. I still err on the side of caution at all times though, as there just isn't enough known about immunity or reinfection.

I'd say we probably have done take out 4 or 5 times. The other day, Chinese food. Pizza twice. The three other times were family meals from a gourmet restaurant, since I miss that more than pizza.

We do curbside contactless payment and pickup, wash our hands, wash our hands and wash our hands. I am of the general opinion that surface transmission is not a huge risk. so we wash our hands. And then we wash our hands.

I have,on rare occasion, gotten take-out from one of the local restaurants. I too bring it home; take it out of all containers to my own plate or storage box; throw away all containes; then wash my hands before eating the food. I only heat it up if it's suppose to be hot. (Salads don't heat very good. ) So far it seems to be OK.

I'm on the Chispa/Mtn end of the scale. We've done takeout a few times and I don't take special precautions, nor do I sanitize groceries we buy. I have stopped using our own bags, although we keep the grocery plastics to use as trash can liners. In general we prefer to eat my home cooked meals at home so it hasn't been a big issue anyway.

Like Mtn my primary effort is on washing my hands extensively, and not touching my face, when I do go out. I keep a bottle of hand sanitizer next to our front door and give my hands a squirt, then open our door then go into our downstairs apartment and throughly wash my hands every time I return from leaving our property. Then I bring everything in and wash my hands again upstairs. Then I unload. Then I wash my hands again ;).

Restaurants are re-opening and although I'm not comfortable eating inside one at this time, I am planning a working lunch with some of my board members next week ata local outdoors seafood place. One of the images in the slide show is the dining area which is on a patio with a steady ocean breeze. They are enforcing a six-foot distance between customer tables and I will try to sit away from directly under the ceiling fans. You order, pick up and bus your own food so there's no contact with servers other than the cashier and cooks who all wear masks and are using appropriate mandated safety gear like masks etc.

No special precautions for takeout or groceries, although as others have said, plenty of hand washing. We have done takeout almost weekly since this started and stick with three local restaurants that we often visit. We know many of the staff, we know they run clean, sanitary restaurants. TBH, I think many of our restaurants are going above and beyond to stay open, to make their customers feel safe, etc. I do agree with the poster who mentioned knowing the health department scores of your local restaurants. Restaurants have re-opened here in the last 2 weeks, although several have decided to stick with take-out/curb-side rather than limiting customers in the dining room and other precautions they would have to follow. At this time we are not comfortable eating in a restaurant, although like running, I might go for an outside table.

No take-out or deli since the lock-down started. One of my kids (son-in-law) brought in cheese and lunch meat from the Kroger deli counter for the first time, this week. Everyone else has been eating it for lunch, but I have refrained, since I am at the highest risk in the household. I've been cooking a lot, and making pizza every couple of weeks, to try to keep them from feeling as if they're missing out on restaurant food. Last night was ribs, oven-fried sweet potatoes and cottage fries, with summer slaw. I told the kids to close their eyes and imagine they were in the local rib pub. They do seem to appreciate my cooking. :)

Despite my best efforts at grocery shopping for my father, and taking him healthy meals several times each week, he has decided to start doing fast-food drive-throughs again. He'll probably be OK, since he won't eat fresh vegetables anyway, but I worry about his cavalier attitude toward handwashing and sanitizing, even though I've made sure he has a supply of homemade alcohol wipes and spray. God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change ...

South Korea has basically tracked every case of COVID19. They estimate that "environmental" transmission, ie from surfaces is about 6%. There was no evidence that food that somebody coughed or sneezed at was a mode of transmission. Makes sense to me since the stomach acids would quickly kill the virus; even though ACE receptors where a virus might latch on are in the throat/mouth swallowing/chewing involves saliva, so presumably whatever virus there might be (having survived cooking or acidic salad dressings) would be washed down the esophagus.

I think it's much more likely to get infected during pick-up if there's some conversation involved.

I'm the extreme on these pages of concern. I have a table outside and everything get a hosing of peroxide. No pick-up without serious distancing. But that was in place in my NY area way ahead of any recommendation. Masks were being worn as well way ahead of the CDC. And 6 feet is 10-20 feet here. No contact at all without a mask. Not even close.

All deliveries go into quarantine in the garage. Unless they need refrigeration.

All our delivery drivers are masked and they leave packages 10-20 feet from our front or side garage door. We tip in an envelope placed on the back of the truck bed in the driveway. Or taped to the front door.

The weather is finally gorgeous and the birds are happy. Gardening. We will have a very fine summer secluded in the forest here and the Catskill mountain farm/home. (no heat, just 3 season wood stove)....a bit like camping.

Not sure what to do with 300 pounds of rhubarb but might put that by the roadside for free. We always took that into work for co-workers. Or might just have a donation box for CityHarvest. Or "just take it free...please. !!"

Might just grow extra of everything to give away. Seeds are so cheap.

Hopefully things and thinking might change. 20 years ago I took at least twenty bags of salad/mesculn mix triple washed to the senior center and they would not take it. (they serve processed cups of sugary fruit cocktail, etc)

-the amazing and lovely seniors went nuts and thanked me since I had to leave it in a box in the parking lot. So that's what I did every week as we passed by every weekend.

Then I had a local official stop by telling me with firm words that I cannot do that.

This needs to change. My garden is organic.

Antibacterial soap is/was never used in out house. I do basic common sense hand washing.

I am more worried of the long term effects of more people becoming germophones, using more antibacterial products, companies developing more antibaterial products to market to those germaphobes and all together causing more problems with antibiotic resistance. That fear and change in behavior will have much more deadly repercussion than this one virus.

Have only picked up food twice since this started. The only precautions I took was to serve the food on my own dishes, immediately dispose of the boxes the food came in and to then wash my hands. I don't sanitize groceries or relegate online orders received to quarantine before opening. I practice hand washing using a handmade bar soap.

tigereye, it's not thought that that the virus can be transmitted through food. But out of an abundance of caution, we reheat take-out to kill any potential contaminates. Not because we receive cold food.

I, too, do not use antibacterial soap, mainly for the reasons outlined by chispa . Pre-CV my germaphobia was satisfied with simply washing with soap, cleaning countertops with something like Mrs. Meyers and, occasionally, with isopropyl alcohol. Lately, I’ve been using Dr. Bronner’s Peppermint Soap. A week or two ago, I mixed up a new batch for the kitchen hand soap dispenser. I harp on DH all the time to rub his hands together vigorously enough to make suds. Whatever I did, I could not make suds. So, I poured another glug of soap into the dispenser thinking I had not eyeballed the proportions correctly. Still wouldn’t suds up. After a day or two, I noticed the smell wasn’t peppermint. It was lemony. I had been washing my hands for two weeks with Mrs. Meyers Lemon Verbena Countertop Cleaner! 🤦🏻‍♀️

bbstx, that's funny! Have you ever tried the fall scents from Mrs. Meyer's? Acorn Spice and Apple Cider are my favorites.

Burrata I’m a Lemon Verbena girl all the way!

Today I read an opinion piece from Bloomberg. It was a re-print on Yahoo. I loved this comment:

Cevik has been collecting and reviewing papers from around the world on disease transmission. “There are some trends emerging,” she says. “Spending time dining together, being in public transport,” might risk spreading the disease, but “going to a market briefly, for five minutes or a transient encounter while you walk or run past someone, those are low risks.” {emphasis added}

Who goes to the market and only spends five minutes??? Has this person every bought groceries?

Sleevedog, That's interesting. I volunteer with my town delivering fresh produce to seniors and others who are immuno-compromised or might need food. The produce is donated by someone local whose firm distributes to restaurants. It's a big box of great,fresh produce (eg heirloom tomatoes)! Maybe things have changed. : )

Same here Mountain. In doing the food boxes recently for those affected by Covid19, we had fresh produce donated by a company. Lots of nice items. Second go round we did not have fresh produce but a store had donated a ton of easter candy and small bags of chips. We had a bag of candy open as we assembled boxes and it was fresh. The candy and chips were nice additions for the kids. The boxes were filled with food staples.

Mtndredux, the fresh produce delivery system sounds wonderful! Those should truly be considered staples!

I have a roll of paper towels - should I need t use a hand rail or a door handle. Stored in my car.

There's a rapidly dwindling supply of alcohol based sanitary wipes. Stored in my car.

The small local grocery is now having people call orders in and they drop them out - this keeps us folk from handling the items IN the store. I was just there today - needed Liquid Plumbr for a stopped up sink, so figured I should order some other stuff at the same time. (Asparagus, chicken, ziplock bags, cheese).

I wipe down the touchables in my car after I return to it, and when I get home I quarantine all non-perishables (or wipe the outsides down as in the case of the Liquid Plumr). Until just about a week ago, I could keep perishables in my car for a night or two but we are now getting warmer. The asparagus would be fine even now. Oh, yes, I scrub down upon house re-entry, and hit the house door handle too.

For what I'm doing, since I'm raising chickens for egg production, is bringing a dozen eggs (last Friday, two dozen) over to the local community center. Donation basis. (I used to sell them, but even with selling them for the price that is usual up here, I never made a profit anyways...) Donate... I can't eat them all, and others can.

If you have good restaurants nearby that you trust to use good sanitation practices with their workers (for their safety as well as yours) then I wouldn't hesitate to order out. We have zilch as far as restaurants where I like the food, not even a decent take out pizza place, and I trust none of them on sanitation, even before this pandemic. So I wouldn't order out, but if there was a place that I trusted and liked before, I would order out just to help the business at the very least. I've had to develop home cooking techniques for just this reason, living in a restaurant desert. Too bad too, because under the right circumstances, I love eating out, particularly outside and for breakfast.

Sorry it took so long to answer....

No pickle juice in my marinade. SO absolutely detests all things "sour". Pickles,mustard, green apples,anything like that. So he says.

I marinade my chicken for a few hours in "bootleg buttermilk" (milk with a splash of vinegar) and a blend of spices that have been touted as the KFC secret spice blend. I got the recipe from that Chicago Tribune (or something) article in which some relative of Sanders claimed to have the secret blend and published it. I am not convinced but the blend is tasty. I make a big batch of it to keep on hand and use it in both the marinade and the dredge,a mix of flour and cornstarch,heavily seasoned with the spice blend and some seasoning salt. Toasted brioche bun,and a sauce made from mayo,hot sauce, paprika,garlic powder and onion powder. I do not make them often, but they are good for a treat once in a while.