About Valentiful
Valentiful is a seasonal cooking platform built to support traditional foodways and the people who carry them forward.
Instead of starting with endless recipes, Valentiful begins with a simple question:
What's growing here, right now?
By centering seasonal ingredients, local farmers, and cultural context, Valentiful helps home cooks decide what to make based on what's actually available, while honoring the land, communities, and traditions behind those foods.
Why Valentiful Exists
Across cultures, enduring food traditions are shaped by what grows well in a place and season.
Much of modern cooking has lost that relationship. Ingredients travel long distances. Recipes lose context. Farmers and culture keepers are rarely visible.
Valentiful grew out of a desire to cook in closer relationship with land, seasonality, and community—and to help traditional food knowledge remain living, local, and shared.
How Valentiful Works
Valentiful is built around a growing seasonal ingredient database informed by the unique varietals that nearby farmers are harvesting.
From there, cooks can explore recipes, techniques, and food traditions that align with the moment—making it easier to cook seasonally, reduce food waste, and eat in rhythm with the land.
The platform is designed to:
- Start with seasonal ingredients
- Share regional and traditional foodways with cultural context
- Credit and support contributors
- Encourage curiosity and participation
By placing farmers at the center, Valentiful becomes more than a recipe site. It functions as a practical tool for strengthening local food economies through everyday cooking.
About Leanne
I'm Leanne Valenti, the founder of Valentiful.
I'm of Sicilian heritage and grew up in Texas. In my twenties, cooking alongside a Japanese housemate—and later spending time with her family in rural Japan—introduced me to a different relationship with food, shaped by seasonality, resourcefulness, and craft.
That experience changed how I cooked and how I lived. It led me to pursue culinary training, open a restaurant, source directly from farmers, and deepen my understanding of traditional foodways across cultures.
With Valentiful, I'm sharing what I've learned while creating space for others to pass along their wisdom—so seasonal cooking traditions remain alive, and small farmers growing diverse varietals are seen and supported.
I do what I do so future generations can inherit Earth's abundant edible biodiversity and the knowledge to cook it well.
A Living Project
In November 2024, I launched the first iteration of Valentiful, A Central Texas Thanksgiving, a community-driven proof of concept that brought together 33 chefs, 75 seasonal recipes, and 36 local farms.
The project demonstrated how a seasonal, farmer-centered approach can create real value for growers, cooks, and communities—and helped shape the foundation of Valentiful.
Today, my partner Charlie and I are building the software to support an expanding, shared knowledge base for seasonal cooking. Our intention is to collaborate with farmers, home cooks, chefs, and culture keepers who want to share their food traditions in ways that feel respectful, reciprocal, and sustainable.
If you're a home cook, farmer, chef, or culture keeper interested in participating, I'd love to hear from you: