Last Thanksgiving, Austinites got to test a local recipe platform that directs users to local farms to find the ingredients. This year, after feedback from holiday cooks and folks at South by Southwest, the official public launch is ready. Valentiful is now live for year-round cooking that is fully tapped into local, seasonal foodways.
The second annual Central Texas Holiday Recipe Guide shares more than 100 recipes from local chefs and recipe creators, a press release says. Valentiful and the guide were built by Austin chef Leanne Valenti of Bento Picnic and her partner, Charlie Rice.
The 2026 guide organizes food-finding information from 75 farms and 19 markets. It will be updated weekly from now through December 31 to keep up with availability.
The guide is the first editorial push, Valenti says, and the platform will still be updated year-round after the increased communications for the holidays end.
Inside the guide
When users enter the holiday guide, the first thing they'll see is recipes. The platform makes them easy to read, with interactive checklists in both the ingredients and recipe steps for an easier shopping list and mise en place. Tags help sort recipes by taste, color, and techniques, with additional at-a-glance information for dietary restrictions, equipment needed, and other standard sections like yield and time.
The really unique part comes after the recipe: a section for sourcing tips. After a recipe for beer-braised lamb shanks by Albina Fowler at Hackamore Ranch, the sheep and cattle pro recommends different local beers with links to each of their websites. In a recipe for carrot cake with ermine frosting by baker Pamela Thibodeaux, she uses the section to discuss which Barton Springs Mill flours she used to test the recipe.
Not every creator utilizes the sourcing section, but every recipe does link ingredients to landing pages that shows where to find them on an interactive map and what to do with them. For example, the chicken page links to chicken recipes (although the tag isn't perfect, presumably because it is so broad), more specific tags for different parts of the bird, tags for products made with chicken, short how-to blurbs for preparation and storage, pairing notes, and even fun facts.
A simpler, less common ingredient like rutabaga also has the same sections, with varieties instead of cuts. The beets page is fun to look at because it's organized largely by color.
In case all those tags are not enough for organic discovery, users can also filter the recipe database by creator, cuisine, and course. Creators all have their own bios that are sometimes linked with farm pages as a collaborator.
Featured contributors as listed in the release include:
- Michael Fojtasek of Olamaie
- Jesse Griffiths of Dai Due
- Alexa Mejia of Emmer & Rye
- Rhoda Boone
- Fermín Nuñez of Suerte
- Jam Sanitchat of Thai Fresh
- Peter Klein of Holiday
- Jay Huang of Nómade Cocina
- Sonya Cote of Storehouse Bastrop
- Matti Bills of Astra (Buda)
- Gabe Erales of Ometeo Restaurant
Shoppers at the Texas Farmers Market at Mueller on November 15 and December 13 can see Bills and Erales, respectively, in two free public cooking demonstrations where they'll also give the audience a taste of recipes featured in the guide. RSVPs (linked) are encouraged.
Who's on the site?
Since the site is more than the recipe guide, it's worth taking a look at different farm listings and contributors. The farms page is divided into tabs for farms, markets, and CSAs (community-supported agriculture, or farm shares). Users can browse by map or by list, and can filter by days open, certain products, agricultural practices, and how to buy.
When a user clicks through — let's say, to Austin's popular Boggy Creek Farm — they'll see a farm bio, some tags for farming practices, links to partners at other farms, ranches, or artisan makers, and a big seasonal outlook calendar that shows the predicted availability of ingredients by month. Boggy Creek has information on 95 ingredients.
Market profiles look similar, but with more partner producers. Profiles are free, and farmers can also print and display Valentiful recipe signs to help sell in-season produce. Valentiful plugs into farms' websites, so producers only have to update their information in one place.
The complex world of seasonal eating in cities
In a tangible sense, Austinites and folks around Central Texas have great access to seasonal ingredients fresh from local and regional farms. But organizing that access can be challenging, even for home cooks with good basic knowledge of what's in season. Farmers markets are great places to start, but it can be hard to predict what produce will be available, especially at markets that spread their focus across produce, prepared foods, artisan goods, and apparel.
In addition to helping Central Texans eat local beyond the holidays, the new version of the site is also designed to eventually extend its reach beyond the region. For now, its listings are displayed on a map that has Travis and its bordering counties well covered, plus at least one listing each in Lubbock, Johnson, Gregg, and other counties.
Valentiful claims to be the first crossover between a recipe platform and a farm directory. It calls itself a "four-sided platform," because it caters to farmers, chefs, food creators, and home cooks over their shared interests in locally grown food.
"Food culture is more than recipes and traditions," said Valenti. "It's the knowledge that lets a community thrive where it lives: how we farm, how we cook, how we save seed and care for the land. When those practices disappear, we lose more than food sources. We lose knowledge, connection, and a sense of place. Against all odds, small farmers still plant, harvest, and show up at markets every week. Valentiful exists to help them thrive because they are foundational to our local food system."
People outside of Valentiful's current reach can inquire about launching the guide locally by emailing hello@valentiful.com. Interested parties must be in the United States and are asked to spend some time on the site.
