Erika Gruber

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.

Dried dandelion roots can be roasted, then ground, and finally brewed like coffee.
It is a coffee substitute.

To this day, I still dry apple rings on strings. This isn't some technique from the Middle Ages.
I dry everything without electricity. You can spread the items out on cloths or a baking sheet—or simply hang them up.
Right now, I have nettles, mugwort, ground elder, and chamomile lying out to dry.

Cornelian cherries are easy to grow from seed. They grow into bushes, not trees.
I do have seeds, but sending them from Europe would be sheer madness. Besides, there is no guarantee that my varieties would be climatically suited to your region.

Sauerkraut, pickles, yogurt, sourdough, vinegar, chutney

I wash with horse chestnuts or ivy. I harvest chestnuts in the fall and peel, chop, and dry them.
To wash, pour 3 teaspoons of granules into a little boiling water and add it (slightly cooled) to the washing machine.
To wash with ivy, put 10 leaves in an old sock and throw it into the washing machine drum. Horse chestnuts and ivy contain saponins.

I use my "cooking box" very often. My cooking box is my oven, in which I place the pot, wrapped in blankets. Here's an example

It's spring in Central Europe. The time for the first harvests is beginning. This week I collected dandelion blossoms and made jelly for breakfast bread and syrup to dilute with water (instead of using expensive juice). I also picked daisies as medicinal plants. The blossoms are currently drying in the winter garden. Wild garlic is also in season. I made a pesto from them and froze a year's supply.

These are all plants that grow wild here. I just need to collect them and process them.

Next week I'll pick and dry ground elder. It tastes like parsley and goes into my herbal salt.
We've been having nettles on our plates more often these days. They're very healthy and inexpensive. I use them in herbal salt and as a spinach substitute.

Nancy Reading wrote that she had lamb shank. Did you use the bones to make a hearty soup?
I boil every bone. Only then do they go in the trash.

This ancient herbal knowledge is also available online—at least in German-speaking countries.
Here's an example.

Daisy - Medicinal Plant of the Year 2023

I also use medicinal plants and have a shelf for them in the basement.