Valencia County cookbook preserves recipes and strengthens community ties

A new community cookbook curated by Los Lunas Public Library technician Tommy Madrid III has given Valencia County residents a tangible archive of family recipes, personal histories and photographs that together map the county’s culinary identity. Copies of Valencia County Cooking are available at the Los Lunas Public Library and the Los Lunas Museum of Arts, and the book is already being used as an outreach and community-building tool.

The project compiled generational recipes submitted by county residents and paired each entry with the cook’s personal history and accompanying photos. Organizers designed the collection to document how food traditions are passed down, to give elders a platform to share memories, and to make those stories available to younger residents through school and library programming. The cookbook also serves as a fundraising vehicle, with sales helping support local cultural programs and museum exhibits.

For Valencia County, the initiative reinforces the library’s expanding role as a civic and cultural hub. Libraries and museums in small communities increasingly host programs that extend beyond lending books, functioning as centers for cultural preservation, informal education and local economic activity. By converting household recipes into a community artifact, the project creates social capital: shared narratives that strengthen neighborhood networks, volunteer involvement and participation in local institutions.

The practical impact reaches classrooms and community rooms. Educators can use the book to anchor curriculum on local history, literature and family heritage, while librarians and museum staff can draw on the cookbook for events that attract visitors and donors. Fundraising from book sales provides a modest but flexible revenue stream for programming costs at a time when many local cultural organizations face tight municipal and grant budgets.

Valencia County Cooking also contributes to longer-term cultural and economic trends. Community-led preservation projects like this tend to raise public awareness of local heritage and can modestly boost visitation to cultural sites. They incidentally support small-scale local economies when events tied to the book bring people to downtown Los Lunas or museum openings.

For residents, the cookbook offers more than recipes: it is a record of who we are and how we gather. Copies at the Los Lunas Public Library and the Los Lunas Museum of Arts make those stories accessible now, and the project points to a practical path forward—using local culture to strengthen schools, nonprofits and civic life across Valencia County as similar initiatives gain traction.