From the home chef who has it all, to your uncle who just learned what a kohlrabi is, we've scoured every corner of our fair town of Austin to bring you the ultimate shopping guide for your local-eatin’ loved ones. Keeping your dollars local this holiday season will not only support local businesses, but also will make for unique, quality, and thoughtful gifts to enjoy either on your plate or in the years to come.

So happy shopping, but most of all, happy holidays!

1. JBG Veggies... and More!

We couldn't make this list without putting some of our own farm gifts on it! This holiday we have more options than ever to bring some of the farm straight to your loved ones:

• CSA Gift Subscription: Choose from one week to a full year of organic JBG veggies, delivered! Our CSA gift subscriptions are flexible and easy to redeem, plus you'll get to reap the benefits as well when you get invited over for that delicious home cooked meal!
• Market Bucks: Not sure what they want? Market Bucks are a fail-safe way to make sure your recipient gets exactly what they need. These can be used to buy veggies at market, on JBG merchandise, or they can save them in preparation for our Spring Transplant Sale to get their own backyard garden rockin' this spring!
• Sponsored Shares: Giving a gift in someone's name might be the coolest way to support local businesses, local nonprofits, and the giving spirit this holiday. Donated produce shares go directly to The Settlement Home and SafePlace. These donations help feed Texan children and young adults with histories of trauma and abuse. Each donated share comes with a handwritten card from our farmer, notifying the recipient of their gift and thanking them.
• Holiday on the Farm: Give someone an experience, and snag them tickets to our December 10th Holiday on the Farm Event. Perfect for the kiddos and families on your list. We’re screening How the Grinch Stole Christmas right on the farm! There will be hot chocolate, hay rides, and a whole lot more.
• Have a family friend who loves citrus? Give the gift of some vitamin C! 

Photo by Scott David Gordon.

2. Cooking Classes Galore!

Have a friend who wants to delve deeper into a certain style of cooking? Gift someone the chance to expand their culinary arsenal.

• Kitchen Underground - A collective of all kinds of foodies, check out their menu of assorted classes here. You will find yourself not only acquiring new skills, but also new cooking comrades... all taking place in authentic and intimate spaces. We’ve had our eyes on the bread-making class for a long time.
• Dai Due’s New School of Traditional Cookery - This exquisite restaurant offers a range of classes that focus on wild game, whether you want to learn about hunting and processing or you just want to learn the finer points of cooking a gosh darn delicious flank of steak. Check out all the varied syllabi here.

 

One spot left for Bread Baking w @maggiecperkins tomorrow night!! Link in profile for class! #austineats #cookingclass #eatlocal #breadbaking

A photo posted by Kitchen Underground (@kitchen_underground) on Oct 17, 2016 at 10:07am PDT

3. Locally Purveyed Goodness

If you're anything like us, you LOVE to try new goodies from Austin's creative food artisans. Why not spread some love with some preserves from Stephanie at Confituras, spice up a conversation with some hot sauce from Yellowbird, or pack a probiotic punch with a bottle of Hat Creek Pickles? Once the overwhelmingly delectable tastes of locally artisanal treats wash over them, they'll thank you.

Photo from Hat Creek Provisions.

4. Dreamy Kitchen Tools for the Home Chef

Have a friend who loves design just as much as hosting a locally sourced dinner party? These two suggestions below are sure to please.

• Kettle & Brine - A locally owned kitchen boutique catered to the consumer whose love for good design is rivaled only by their deep-seated love of food. Visit their beautifully curated store, and you will definitely come home with something for your chef-friend. Peruse their gift gallery here.
• Work by Nonny - Amanda Rivera creates elegant and uncommon pieces from vases to tumblers. Perfect adornments for your kitchen table. Check her work out here.

Photo courtesy of Kettle & Brine.

5. Holiday Libations? Yes, Please.

Living in Austin has infinite perks, one of which is the diverse spread of local craft breweries and distilleries. Treat a friend to bottle of Waterloo Gin, or better yet, a day trip to Treaty Oak Distilling’s picturesque ranch, where you can explore their wide-ranging menu of high-quality spirits. They usually have live music and delectable bites to boot. While you’re out on Fitzhugh Road, you might as well extend the visit to include the inimitable Jester King Brewery as well! You won't regret it!

Rather stay in town? Grab a gift card from ABGB. They sling some of the most delicious pizza in town with GABF award-winning beers to wash it down… not to mention, they are some of the nicest people we know.

Photo from Treaty Oak Distilling.

6. The Finer Things in Life: Plants

A leafy friend is always the best friend, or at least that’s what our crazy plant lady buddy always tells us. Lose yourself in the verdant nurseries below, browsing the oasis of perennials, tropicals, succulents, herbs, vegetables and fruit trees! On top of the plethora of plants, they have an abundance of soils, all sizes of pots, watering cans, and smiles all around.

• Tillery Street Plant Co.
• Shoal Creek Nursery
• The Great Outdoors

New houseplants waiting for you! Including Fiddle Leaf Figs- and these things sell fast!!

A photo posted by Tillery Street Plant Company (@tillerystplantco) on Sep 30, 2016 at 3:55pm PDT

7. All Things Callahan’s

We can't help ourselves, we live and breathe the family-owned and Austin legend, Callahan’s General Store. It’s got quite literally everything. We know because they are our down-the-street neighbors! Check 'em out after you volunteer with us!

• Canning Supplies - they've got everything you or a friend need to get start preserving at home! While you’re at it, check out their houseware section for all kinds of holiday gift ideas!
• Cookbooks Galore - Don’t know how to make preserves? Don’t fret, grab a book on preserving from their extensive selection of cookbooks!
• Western Wear - Have an uncle who loves cowboy hats and boots? An aunt who has an affinity for pearl snaps and bedazzled belts? Look no further, Callahan’s clothing section has you covered.
• Baby Chicks? Goats? Pigs? Bunnies? - Got an animal lover in the family? Head on over and check out all the different breeds of animals, they have quite the selection.

Photo courtesy of Callahan's.

8. Giving Back to the Community!

Feeling the need to give back to the community this holiday season? We salute you, and have a couple of suggestions if you are more inclined to donate to local farms.

• Urban Roots
• Farmshare Austin
• JBG’s Sponsored Share Program
• Green Corn Project
• On the eve of Giving Tuesday, the Chronicle made an awesome guide to giving in our community, check it out in it’s entirety here and get involved!

Photo by Scott David Gordon.

9. All About the Hats!

If you are looking for the perfect cap for your hat-crazed friend, look no further!

• The newest hat from our favorite graphic designers, Land. Man, are they talented! Check out their other work, too, while you’re at it.
• Avid sports fan? Country music aficionado? You want your headgear to reflect your awesome tastes? Check out some vintage caps from Hats What She Said or Waterboy Vintage! Peruse their many varied, blast-from-the-past head wear…
• Make a farm-fresh statement and grab one of our JBG caps! It's a great addition to anyone's wardrobe.

Photo by Scott David Gordon.

10. Pig Out and Work Out!

If you or your loved ones are already feeling the holiday libations and savory provisions weighing you down, relish in the festivities now and give the gift of post-holiday fitness in the New Year.

• Rogue Running Training Programs - Whether you’ve never run before or you've finished a handful of marathons, Rogue offers many different training programs curated for every type of runner. Dust off your running shoes and check out all the different options here. If you’re running with friends, you have someone to keep you accountable on your fitness goals, too!
• Yoga with Adriene - Have a friend who prefers a more low impact workout? Give the gift of a home yoga practice with stellar Austinite yogi, Adriene Mishler. She has hundreds of videos catered to every mood and body ailment you can imagine. Some of our farm folks swear by this gal and her healing routines. While you can find most of her videos online for free, if you join the YWA community there are perks like a library of exclusive members-only classes, and an online forum where you can connect with other yogis!

Hills for breakfast! #austinrunning #instarunners #roguerunning #TeamRogue #runcrew #runculture ? @beingcate

A photo posted by Rogue Running (@roguerunning) on Jul 22, 2016 at 7:32am PDT

We hope this guide helps you navigate this holiday season with ease! 'Til next time!

by Megan Winfrey

When I think about comfort food, I think of this dish. Because what is more comforting that melted cheddar cheese? I actually recommend doubling this recipe rather than end up like me, wanting a third helping for the final 20 minutes of Love Actually, just to realize my husband had scraped the pot clean. Don't be like me. Be smart, and double it.

Broccoli Cheese Soup

• 1 tbs. olive oil
• 1 small onion, diced
• 3 garlic cloves, diced
• 4 tbs. butter
• 1/4 cup flour
• 2 cups vegetable or chicken stock
• 2 cups half and half
• 3 heaping cups of broccoli florets + optional stems
• 2 large or 4 small carrots, sliced into half moons
• salt and pepper, to taste
• 1/2 tsp. paprika or smoked paprika
• 1/2 tsp. dry mustard powder
• 8 oz. medium cheddar cheese, grated

In a large dutch oven, add the olive oil and diced onion. Cook over medium heat until translucent and starting to brown, about 5 minutes. Add the garlic and cook for another minute. Remove into a bowl and set aside.

Add the butter to the pan and allow to melt. Add the flour and cook over medium, whisking constantly, until the flour has thickened. This could take 4-6 minutes, and the roux will be medium brown in color. When roux has thickened but still fluid, slowly add the stock and the half and half, whisking constantly.

Bring to a boil, then reduce to a low simmer. Allow to simmer for 15-20 minutes until the soup has thickened a bit. Whisk intermittently to combine and break up the 'skin' that forms on top. While the soup simmers, prepare the broccoli and carrots. After the 15-20 minutes, add the broccoli, carrots, and the onion and garlic you set aside to the soup. Add the salt, pepper, paprika, and mustard powder and stir to combine.

Allow the soup to simmer over low heat for 20-25 minutes, thickening up.

While the soup simmers, grate the cheese. Use a medium to high quality cheddar, as the flavor of the soup depends on it. Don't use pre-grated cheese, it will not melt properly. After the 20-25 minutes, add most of the cheese, reserving some for garnish. Stir until smooth.

Transfer the soup to bowls with a ladle, garnish with cheese and optional kale chips (recipe below), and serve immediately.

Kale Chips

Preheat oven to 200ºF

Thoroughly wash a bunch of dinosaur kale and chop into 2-3" pieces. Let dry. Put them in a large bowl, add 1 tbs. olive oil and fresh cracked sea salt to taste (you don't need much). Lay the kale out end to end onto large baking sheets. They can be touching, but not overlapping. Bake for 60 minutes.

by Hector Gonzalez

Radish Burger Patties

• 2 cups of shredded radishes
• Chopped greens from radishes
• 1 cup of shredded potato (sweet potatoes work too!)
• ½ cornmeal
• ½ coconut flour (or any other non-wheat flour you prefer)
• 1 tsp black pepper
• 1 tsp salt
• 1 tsp onion powder
• 1 tsp garlic powder
• 1 cup of tahini or more

A video posted by Johnson's Backyard Garden (@jbgorganic) on Dec 12, 2016 at 10:10am PST

Mix all dry ingredients in a bowl

Add tahini until the mix is malleable enough to form thin patties. Add as much tahini as needed. Place in a tray and put in the fridge for 10 minutes

Heat a skillet to medium high heat with your favorite vegetable oil. Fry patties for 4 minutes each side of until browned

Serve with hot sauce or in burger buns

CSA Box Contents Week of Dec 12th

Brenton, 20 years ago today...

We’ve really shifted gears this week at the farm. For the past two months, we’ve toiled tirelessly getting all the crops in the ground… and just in the nick of time, as we finished fall planting right before the influx of chilly temps and rain. With a major and welcomed change of pace, we are desk-bound inside, working on crop planning for the upcoming planting season, and also, for the first time, on a long-term crop rotation plan. This task becomes easier to fixate on when we aren’t directing all of our energy to farm expansion efforts as we have done in the past. We are embracing this deviation from our usual outside-all-day lifestyle with newfound fervor, and enjoying the excuse to huddle up inside in this awesome wintry weather. We have all of our favorite books scattered all over our desks and are gettin’ after it! And this year, we’re opening up our planning to your input! We’ll be sending out a survey soon so we can make sure we’re growing all your favorite crops.

Books on books on books.

Currently, we are in the peak of our harvest season, so the barn is a madhouse. JBG folks are working until 4 AM and another shift has been arriving at 5 AM. It’s almost a 24-hour operation. Can you believe it? The volume of produce arriving by the truckload is immensely overwhelming. Every Wednesday, our sales folks come out and take inventory with me and our harvest manager, Vicente. We feel like we are at a standstill sometimes... Where do we start? What should we sell? There’s so much of everything. To help answer these questions, Charlotte, our Assistant Farm Manager, started working on a decision-making matrix. She went home last Friday night and stayed up until 11 pm sucked into the intricacies of the spreadsheet, figuring out how to work it most effectively. At the beginning of this week, she came in with her final product and shared it with me. I was SO thrilled about it. It was even better than I had imagined.

Charlotte, crop planning.

This new tool helps our wholesale team decide what is most profitable to sell with the least amount of effort, with many important factors integrated like labor and packing costs and how urgently the crop needs to be sold (whether it’s hanging out in the field for a long time, or if it’s ripe and ready now). Depending on how these components interact, the crop will either go up or down on Travis and Mike Mo’s list. It will also increase the overall quality of the product since we have a closer eye on what’s pressing and needs to be sold right away.

Sales staff out at the farm - meeting of the minds.

We are also making a ton of changes on how we manage the harvest, too. Previously, Vicente, our Harvest Manager, kept track of everything in his head along with a little notebook. With this system we would run into a couple of snafus since we weren’t basing our decisions on concrete information in front of us. We would harvest more than we could sell and vice versa. This year, Krishna, our Operations Manager, came up with an Excel-based harvest management tool, and we are rockin’ it to say the least. It’s a spreadsheet on steroids with tons of muscle beneath the hood, and we can’t imagine doing our work without it now.

Speaking of harvests, we have a whole deluge of fresh, new crops that are headin’ market-way and CSA customers will start to see trickling into their shares. New radishes: green meat, green neck, purple daikon, and black spanish. We've been harvesting Napa cabbage all week, too, and it's never looked better. We loved this post by a farm in NY that listed not 1, but 6 ways to use Napa. Several employees here have found this kimchi recipe to be their go-to... no better way to preserve this delectable (and short-lived) crop! A look ahead: In the impending planting season, we are going to offer an even more varied assortment of tomatoes, plus, carrots bunched by color in the new year! Stay posted… more to come!

Photo by Scott David Gordon.

 

Fall carrots coming in and looking pretty good! White and orange available this week and purple, red and yellow coming soon ?? • • • • #mxmorningstarfarm #rainbow #carrots #fallcolors #farmlife #farming #organic

A photo posted by MX Morningstar Farm (@mxmorningstarfarm) on Sep 27, 2016 at 4:37pm PDT

Don’t forget: Holiday at the Farm is this weekend! We’re excited to announce that we’ve decided to move the Grinch screening to inside our greenhouses. t will be the coziest movie you ever did see. You won’t want to miss this awesome and festive event: Cindy Lou-Who look-alike contest, okra ornament decorations, dance party, food truck treats, face-paintings... goodness me, what else could you want? Once the kids have exhausted themselves from all the activity, we will all cozy up with blankets and hot chocolate to revel in the delight of the big screen.

It's December, and of course that means holidays galore. If you're doing any holiday shopping, we encourage you to consider a gift from the farm, like market bucks or even a CSA subscription (remind me, what is CSA?). Even though our harvests our at their peak, sometimes the CSA can slow a bit in the holiday season, because members are traveling, or are just extraordinarily busy with the holiday shuffle. So, when you buy holiday gifts from us, you're not only purchasing a truly unique and thoughtful gift, but you’re also helping us at a time when things are a bit slower. On top of that, when you give someone the promise of fresh and local vegetables, you're setting your loved ones up for a healthier and happier new year. CSA Members: Don't forget you can donate your CSA share instead of postponing it this season... it's easy! Just shoot us an e-mail.

Travis veggin' out. Photo by Scott David Gordon.

Brr! Winter has finally graced Central Texas and we are packin’ on the layers for these frosty early mornings. We are huddled up in the office working on crop plans for the impending planting season as well as a long-term crop rotation plan. We are in the peak of harvest season and overflowing with tons and tons of crops. Come see the cornucopia of fall vegetables for yourself at our markets!

Don’t forget: Holiday at the Farm is this weekend, and we've got a very exciting update regarding the event! The screening will take place in our Greenhouses! Ever watched a movie, snuggled up in a greenhouse? Neither have we! It's going to be quite magical, and we hope you'll join us. Tickets on sale now.

If you are reeling in the holiday rush with no time for shopping, check out our gift ideas here. We hope it helps!

CSA box hypnosis. Photo by Scott David Gordon.

Fennel fun. Photo by Scott David Gordon.

Photo by Scott David Gordon.

Photo by Scott David Gordon.

Photo by Scott David Gordon.

Photo by Scott David Gordon.

Photo by Scott David Gordon.

Photo by Scott David Gordon.

Photo by Scott David Gordon.

Photo by Scott David Gordon.

Photo by Scott David Gordon.

Photo by Scott David Gordon.

Photo by Scott David Gordon.

Photo by Scott David Gordon.

Brenton and Charlotte. Photo by Scott David Gordon.

Photo by Scott David Gordon.

by Megan Winfrey

The herbs have arrived! Want to liven up the standard chicken and rice, soup, or salad? Look no further then your friends dill, parsley, cilantro, and mint. A spattering of fresh, chopped herbs is like magic fairy dust for your meal - taking it from boring to bangin' with a simple flick of the wrist. I, myself, am guilty of herb murder, as I'm sure many of you are. I carefully take out my herbs, trim the stems, place them in a glass of water, let them shrivel up in the fridge, then brokenheartedly toss them out. In an effort to break this cycle, I vowed to use all of the herbs that came in my CSA box this week, and I did! Each meal was a bit more delicious than usual, and herb lives were saved. Win, win.

Cheesy Herb Rice Stuffed Poblanos

• 4 poblano peppers, tops trimmed and de-seeded
• 2 cups rice, cooked
• 1 1/2 cups mozzarella cheese, shredded
• 2 tbs. dill, chopped
• 2 tbs. parsley, chopped
• 1 tbs. cumin
• Salt and pepper to taste
• Avocado, for serving

Preheat the oven to 400.

Cook the rice according to the package instructions. While the rice is cooking, prepare the peppers for stuffing and line them on a baking sheet. Once the rice is done, mix in the herbs, cumin, and 1 cup of cheese. Add salt and pepper to taste.

Stuff the peppers, packing the rice down with a spoon as you go. Bake the peppers until tender, about 30-35 minutes. Sprinkle the rest of the cheese over the peppers, and broil on high until the cheese is bubbly.

If desired, serve with avocado on the side to help cut the heat of the peppers.