Mioasis: Mio's Garden

The Stardew Valley Cookbook: Seed checklist 2025

January 10, 2025

In 2024 I asked for the Stardew Valley Cookbook for Christmas. I thought it would be a fun, simple gift, as it was actually available locally unlike other types of merch in my area. I was however surprised to open the pages of this cookbook. Here I was presented with lots of surprising and strange vegetables. PURPLE carrots? Chervil leaves, Tuscan kale, swiss chard, chicory, amaranth… Where do you get these in the grocery store!?

I had a revelation. Perhaps not surprisingly, this book was written with the farmer in mind. It’s the Stardew Valley Cookbook—of course it is! But this wasn’t obvious to me, because you expect a regular ‘ol cookbook from a video game of all things to have a broader appeal than this. But I’m not said “broad appeal” person, clearly. I’m a gardener. So I started drafting this crazy thing in my head, and suddenly I found myself hunched over this book, writing down every single vegetable within it. Next I started browsing my go-to seed shop. Turns out, they had next to every single thing in the book! (+ I had plenty of my own in my arsenal.)

Thus, I put together a spreadsheet, and created the following graphic. The seed selections themselves aren't going to be especially useful for the non-Swedes out there, but this is at least a complete enough vegetables list directly from the cookbook, Stardew Valley approved by Mr. ConcernedApe himself. Enjoy, and share it around however much you like, take on the challenge!

So this was my grand unexpected plan—2025 is going to become the year of living out my real life SV fantasy, by both farming and cooking dishes from the game, after a whole 9 years of playing it!!

…If I am really willing to buy $100 worth of seeds.

Sigh. I can at least complete a few recipes if I choose to not be so ambitious (challenge level: impossible). Whatever it is that I end up doing, It’s exciting to have gardening “challenges” or new stupid ideas that make the season really stand out from the rest. This list contains a lot of newcomers that I never before considered growing, such as artichoke, fennel, celery root and celery. Not that I find these vegetables particularly distasteful, but it’s rather that nothing about how these crops grow ever stood out to me as very interesting. I think out of these four, I look forward to growing celery the most.

In general, I am always very excited to grow a huge pumpkin/squash, and this list contains THREE new varieties (because I cannot help myself). The book itself recommends two particular edible pumpkins, ‘Long Island cheese’ and ‘Cinderella’ which I could not find. For these picks, I’m potentially settling on ‘Sweet Dumpling’ cause, come on, isn’t that just so sweet? This pick is also absolutely gorgeous and also functions as a decorative pumpkin. They are small and creamy white with green stripes—like a watermelon. For the last picks, I did find a variety of kabocha and butternut to stay accurate to the cookbook!

-And isn’t it exciting to get such direct chili pepper recommendations?! The book contained three very particular picks, ‘Scotch bonnet’, ‘Bird’s-eye’, and of course the one and only ‘Jalapeño’! (I think about growing chilies and my hands just start shaking.)

Whew. I keep myself motivated to write these blogs by just endlessly rambling about vegetables. On that note, I think the most exciting of all is going to be the fact that I have now created this platform to share my progress! Stay tuned for how well this project ends up working out. It’s January! The first seeds are going in the dirt very very soon, and I’m planning to write a little something to outline the steps I take at this time of year.