Sourcing
Sourced like it matters. Because it does.
Everything we cook begins long before it reaches our kitchen — on pasture, in cold clean water, in soil tended by people we know by name. We believe the food meant to carry you through your most tender seasons should be the realest food there is. So we don't cut corners on where it comes from, and we don't keep it a secret. This is exactly who grows, raises, and makes what we feed your family.
Our Standards
What's always true
A few promises hold across every dish we make — every meal, every box, every line.
Pasture-raised meats and poultry
Wild-caught seafood
Organic produce, chosen with the season
Scratch-made broths, simmered slow and never from a powder
Certified gluten-free, top to bottom
Whole, ancestral ingredients — including the nutrient-dense organ meats our grandmothers never threw away
We cook the way nourishing food has always been made: slowly, from whole ingredients, in real traditional fats.
Our Exclusions
What you'll never find
What we leave out matters as much as what we put in. You will never find:
Seed oils. Not a drop. We cook in traditional fats the way it's always been done.
Refined sugar.
Gluten
Fillers, gums, or anything we couldn't name out loud and pronounce.
If it wouldn't belong in a home kitchen built on real food, it doesn't belong in ours.
How we choose
Local first. Whenever we can, we source from farms and makers close to home, so the food travels a short distance and the relationship is a real one. We drive out, we pick up, we ask questions.
The whole animal. We honor nose-to-tail cooking — bones become broth, marrow becomes nourishment, organ meats become some of the most mineral-rich food on the table. Nothing precious is wasted.
With the season. Produce is chosen for what's at its best right now, not for what a year-round menu would demand. That's better for flavor, better for nutrition, and better for the land.
For the body, by tradition. Our sourcing is guided by ancestral nutrition and the warming, restorative principles of Traditional Chinese Medicine — food chosen not just to feed you, but to help you heal.
Our Partners
The hands that feed you
We're proud of who we work with. These are the farms and makers behind your meals.
Belle Vie Farms — poultry, duck eggs & yogurt
Our chicken and our eggs both come from Belle Vie. We use rich, golden duck eggs in place of chicken eggs across nearly everything we make — they're more nourishing, more traditional, and a quiet signature of our kitchen. Their cultured yogurt rounds out the table.
Shirttail Creek — regenerative, ancestral proteins
Our ground meats come from Shirttail Creek’s regeneratively raised, ancestral blends — beef, chicken, and venison with nutrient-dense organ meats blended right in. It's how we get the deep nourishment of liver and heart into food that simply tastes like a really good meal.
Quality Seafood — wild-caught from the water
An Austin institution, and our source for wild-caught seafood. We pick it up fresh, never farmed, never frozen-and-forgotten.
Allen Brothers & Shirttail Creek— pork & bacon
Our pork and bacon, chosen for quality and raised with care — for the dishes where a little good fat and deep flavor make all the difference.
Hardie's — organic produce
Our seasonal organic produce, the vegetables and fruit at the heart of every plate and every purée.
Mountain Rose Herbs — herbs for healing
Organic herbs sourced for our broths, our teas, and our postpartum and lactation traditions — the botanical heart of our TCM-informed cooking.
Frontier Co-op — organic spices
Organic, ethically traded spices and seasonings, because the small things matter too.
About our broths
Broth is the foundation of everything we do — the first thing we simmer and the thread that runs through our whole table. Ours are made from scratch, from real bones, over long unhurried hours, the way restorative broth has always been made. For the most tender eaters — new mamas in their first forty days, and babies taking their very first tastes — there is no shortcut and no substitute. They get broth made by hand, every time.
The most care, for the smallest among us
The newer you are to the world — or the more your body is mending — the more carefully we cook. Our postpartum nourishment and our First Thyme baby foods hold to the very highest end of every standard on this page: scratch broths only, the gentlest sourcing, warm and whole and made the same morning it reaches you.
Food as care, from the first forty days to the first bites.
Have a question about an ingredient?
We love talking about where our food comes from. If you're ever curious about a single ingredient, a farm, or why we made a choice — just ask.