Ulla Bisgaard

Here we relay a lot of homemade convenience foods. Because of my neuropathy, I never know if I will be able to cook or not, so I do a lot of prep-work on good days.
Here is a list of what I do.
- leftovers are always portioned out and frozen
- dehydrated or freeze dried soup cubes or powders makes for a fast snack that feels like a hug from home, and they are so easy to make.
- during the season I can, dehydrate and freeze dry fruits and berries
- freeze dried mixes for dips and homemade chips is something we all love
- gluten free baking mixes, makes fast and easy cookies, muffins, brownies, rolls and so much more
- homemade pudding mixes makes for a fast and easy snack
- homemade hot cocoa mix and homemade  instant lemonade are always a hit with the kids
- canned, frozen, dehydrated meals or meal ingredients helps too
- fermented vegetables also makes for a nice snack.

There are more, but these are what I remember as of now. We are also privileged in that our climate enables us to grow food year round, so often a snack is just a short walk away.
I did do one important thing, when I planned the food forest. We didn’t just pick fruit trees based on our preferences, but also on when they are ready for harvest. There are several reasons for that. I wanted us to have access to fresh fruit and or berries all year round. Right now only November and December isn’t covered, and those will be once my sapote trees starts to produce. I grow 4 types of raspberries,  8 different kinds of strawberries, 2 types of blueberries, Boisen berries and mulberries, which gives us access to berries most of the year. By doing this, more than half of what we produce gets eaten fresh, so I have a lot less food preservation work to do. It also prevent seasonal bottlenecks in food preservation, where you rush and work against the clock to get everything preserved before it goes bad.
Canned desserts like lemon curd, pie fillings and homemade candy are also stables in my pantries. Homemade granola bars and hot cereal mixes are also a stable.
In a way, our food production is centered around eating fresh and what’s in season, while minimizing the amount of work needed. I keep my root vegetables fresh by leaving them in the ground until I need them, and just adding more seeds so we don’t run out.
We did do a lot more preservation while the kids lived at home, but we don’t need that as much anymore.
I am running low on broth right now, so this weekend I am starting a large batch of that. We are also in the main egg production season, so I have pickled eggs in the fridge and egg muffins in the freezer. I freeze dry whole eggs, yolks and whites, and I salt cure egg yolks to use as a cheese substitute. Egg heavy breakfast dishes freezes very well, so those I am also making a lot of.

Erika Gruber wrote:Hello Ulla Bisgaard,
Thank you for your hard work and for sharing your recipes. I know that developing gluten-free recipes from scratch takes a great deal of effort; I have been doing this myself for about 20 years.
As a European, I seem to have quite different dietary habits and recipes compared to you. Your recipes rely heavily on starches—such as cassava, sweet potatoes, and the like.
These ingredients are relatively expensive where I live, so I do a lot of baking using legumes, millet, buckwheat, corn, and similar ingredients instead.
I try to incorporate as much fiber as possible into my meals so that they keep me feeling full for longer.

I am actually from Denmark in Europe, so I have a little of the same background.
There are several reasons I don’t use legumes, buckwheat and corn, but the biggest one, is that my digestion system, can’t handle them. For me they create inflammation in my gut. I do grow them, but only as chicken feed. Another reason, is that I prefer to grow my own baking ingredients.
Where we live, cassava grows extremely well, and with temperatures up to 50C,  I have plants, that need  a little shade from the sun. While I do use shade cloths and grow native plants, cassava plants/trees works great for shading hot spots. Cassava loves heat, so I use it to create  shade for more delicate plants, like strawberries, and since strawberries grow on the top of the soil and cassava deep in the soil, I can stack plants, so I get more out of the space.
The sweet potatoes are because I can’t eat plants from the nightshade family, so no potatoes or tomatoes for me. Most commercial gluten free companies rely on potato starch for texture, so I substitute that for sweet potatoes. Sweet potatoes are also a perennial here (using my method that is), so I always have them ready available. Since they are fresh, it’s pretty easy to separate the starch from the rest of the sweet potatoes, and what remains after making starch can be used for hash browns and things like that. I can buy sweet potato starch, but it’s very expensive, from China and not organic so I prefer to grow my own. I do grow sorghum, and they have turned out to be a great substitute for rye, and they make a good porridge too. After the kids and I was diagnosed with celiac in 2005, I thought that I just had to switch to using gluten free flour. It turned out, that I still got sick from that. We went paleo for over 10 years, with me using the AIP protocol. That helped a lot, but the real healing, didn’t come until I started growing my own flours. On top of the ones I have already mentioned, I grow and make pumpkin flour, banana flour and starch, arrowroot flour and tapioca starch.
Right now, I am testing out different methods to get more stretch in my dough, so I can make things like puff pastry. So far using sweet rice flour, cooked and cooled before kneaded into the dough seems to work, but the method still needs tweaking.
So, the flour choices I make, are pretty much the same as yours. Like you, I use what I can grow or buy inexpensive here where we live. I will say though, that going from growing food in Denmark to growing food in Southern California has been a big change.

Hi Everyone,
I have written a small book with recipes for gluten and dairy free baking/cooking mixes. They are recipes, I have developed over the last 4 years. Eventually it might be part of a larger project.
Right now, I will give it away for free, but hope that those who try it out, can give me some feedback. It’s always hard to know if it will work in someone’s kitchen, not just my own.
Note that this is the first draft of the book, so there will be things I have missed during editing.

Joao Winckler wrote:One thing I'd find useful is a chapter on managing the transition period, the first 2-3 years before the system starts producing reliably. Most beginners give up during that gap because they don't know what to expect. Knowing roughly when things start to pay off, and what to do in the meantime, would help a lot.

Thank you. I will add that to the list.

Anne Miller wrote:How to compost, make compost tea, use organic or better, ...

The benefits of using wood chips, leaf mold, and how to grow mushrooms, ...

How to incorporate animals into the system, ...

Thank you for helping with the topics.
I am already planning on adding a chapter on animals,  how they fit into the eco system and what we use them for.
As for compost, it’s the one things I am extremely bad at. Partly because I don’t have the physical strength to turn it. We also don’t produce enough. I will talk with my husband thought since he does the composting.
I will also add the other things to the list.

Cristobal Cristo wrote:Master Ula,

I would include a separate chapter dedicated to shade.
Not all warm climates are extremely sunny (especially in eastern Asia). The south western regions will be usually too sunny and even there there exists a lot variation. In California - the lowlands have less intense sun than higher elevations like mine where sun is simply brighter than agricultural lands that are located low and west of me (they are also enshrouded in agri dust). Sun intensity at lower temperature will be more destructive than higher temperatures with clouded skies. This extremely bright radiation will overheat the plant even if the temps feel fresh and pleasant.

I just built an experimental garden (6x9 m) in my eucalyptus grove. It gets some direct afternoon sun. Everything grows just better. I'm having strawberries and will have blackberries that were getting completely scorched before in full sun - no matter how much mulched or watered. The herbs grow better and lush and out of my 40 grape cuttings only 5 died so far (last year at this time 90% were dead). For the first time thyme and also lovage have germinated.
Morning shade garden with figs and grapes is also much better for them as compared to growing in the open frying pan. My theory is that in extremely sunny locations the evaporation rate is so high than watering can not account for it at the given species level of plant physiology.

All of it may seem obvious to some who lived with higher elevation sun for a while, but in my case creating a shaded growing area did way more than soil improvement, irrigation and mulching.
If the garden proves itself throughout the year I will built more and will try raspberries and my beloved currants.

Good idea. We are located in SoCal close to the Mexican boarder, but inland. Our Growzone is 10b and we will get temperatures at 118+ from July through October. I use shade cloths a lot, and I have microclimate zones in our food forest garden, where I grow my berries.

We get a lot of temperature fluctuations here, so the main goal is to keep the soil temperature and moisture levels stable. To do this, we have installed drip irrigation and I use a lot of straw mulch, and mulch I get from chop and drop.
The way we have planned it though, are so that eventually I won’t have to use shade cloths in the food forest garden, but I will probably always need them in our raised bed garden. We have planted a lot of trees with different highs, and once they all have matured, they will provide more stable temperatures and higher humidity levels. This will also improve once I get the swales for the aquatic layer added. Right now the main canopy is a large pecan tree, but I have planted a cashew tree just outside the reach of the pecan tree. I have also added another avocado tree and two sapote trees, to supplement the trees we already have. I love using trees to provide shade, but most take a long time to mature. To compensate I grow cassava in the middle of all of my strawberry beds, I use a 50% shade cloth for my blueberries, tea and long pepper, and for my coffee and shampoo ginger. I am also slowly expanding my banana clusters, that provide shade and moisture for arrowroot’s and grains of paradise.
I will definitely add a chapter on shade and temperature control. Thank you for asking.

I am writing a book. The book is about how normal families, living in warm climates, can feed their families using permaculture principles. It will include a timeline about how our own has matured and changed over the 10 years, that has passed since we started it.
Right now some of the topics are:
What are permaculture and poly culture and how are they connected?
How to build a food forest garden
How to decide what to plant and when to plant
Working with nature creating ecosystems
Working with wildlife
Creating climate zones
Plants that are perennials in warm climates, that are annuals in cold climates
How to change dirt to soil
Tips and hacks for less work
Food preservation tips
Logistics and planning
Livestocks to think about.

What am I missing? I would love some feedback from people here, on topics that would be good to add.

The two beds we cleared of Bermuda grass, already have them again. It’s really frustrating. I am trying to see if specific plants will suppress them.

G Freden wrote:Looks good.  Will you be able to add the pockets, maybe at the side seams?  

I am not sure, but I am going to try. The skirt has insets to make it spread out more, and they start in the location where I would normally add a pocket. I am going to try though.

M Ljin wrote:Ulla, I haven’t noticed that about sorghum. I’ve grown one tight-hulled kind and also have some loose-hulled sorts that separate easily. Maybe it would help to try a different variety? Are you growing one that’s specifically noted as grain sorghum?

Yes, I grow the right type, that’s supposed to only have a thin hull. Also, the sorghum you buy in stores, has been steamed before drying. I grow red sorghum/mononite/texacona. I use them for hot cereal and for baking gluten free “rye” bread.
I started researching sorghum, after I saw that the sorghum I bought in the stores, easily became flakes when I used my flaker, while my homegrown didn’t. I found a few videos from India, where they explained this method.