Besides the amazing +1 health, is there any way i can make use of these? There seems to be no cooking or alchemy recipe to use these in.

yeah because they in cluded only a handfull of the cooked versions of things, why you cant grill your own leaks or cook all the meat im unsure, how hard would it have been to wright a few more soup/stew recipes. lack luster, stupid animations taking up game content. hay beth the animations are generic background music, they add no substance to your lack lustre crafting exsperiences.

alchemy i believe a resist frost potion.

Cooking. Only Elsweyr Fondue is worth cooking, but only if your a mage.

Shield users get a lot of mileage out of Vegetable Soup. And Beef Stew's great for warriors.

Not to mention it can do almost all the things alchemy can with a mod. I use it on my warrior, she was good in the kitchen before picking up a Nordic Blade, so yeah, she plays to her strengths lmao.

IMO food would be a lot more interesting in general if it was necessary to survive ala Fallout.

What you use gourds for?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qblg7NQbb6Q

I just want to make a baked potato. When I saw their benefits I started collecting all the potatoes I could find (they are everywhere). Image my shock when I realized I could not bake them! You either find a baked potato on a plate, or a raw potato in a barrel, but you can not bake a potato yourself.

I hope some modders come out with the real nice recipes.

Yeap, you actully have to take gear and plan if you need to drink/eat and repair your gear, may not be challenging but it makes use all the game offers and other wise all that stuff is just pointless waste of weight, as its not like its worth any money.
A lack of cause and effect detracts from the immersive believability of the world, i found my self alot more focused on rp and my character(ala NV) when there were more causes and effects to create a more believable sence of time passing, things happening, how ever small.

I haven't seen any alchemy or cooking recipes that use a gourd yet, is there any way i can use these besides the +1 health? I know for a fact they aren't in the mage fondue.

Another thing: sleeping. I'm pleased to see that sleeping actually has a purpose this time around (unlike Oblivion where it was just a complete waste of time), but I would like to see it taken to the point of Fallout, where sleep is necessary if you want to stay healthy.

I'm probably going to start looking for a mod that introduces these gameplay elements now...

can someone answer this thread?!

You'll be pleased then, there is a mod for all those things. Well, different mods, but all bases are covered.

Gourds are... for selling.

so are they pretty much uesless then asides from their RP value?

Like someone said above you need gourds for Elsweyr Fondue, which is great for mages. Otherwise just sell it to the farmers I am yet to see a gourd needed for an alchemy recipe.

Edit: Checked, gourds aren't needed for Elsweyr Fondue.

and as i've said above, its not used in elsweyr fondue, i swear i've checked and its not used in any recipes. as for farmers, do you get more gold than selling it to any other vendor?

Actually you're right, i don't know why i said that because i thought gourds weren't used for any cooking recipe! I don't know about the other part, when i gather gourds i only sell them to the farmers, it's a 1:1 ratio to the farmers i don't know about vendors

Swords not gourds!

Talk to a few farmers. They might give you a better price than city folk.

Gourds are there to protect you from bandits or dragons that might try to attack the town.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qAUqBh8fHS0.

I think it was supposed to be an alchemical ingredient and not a food originally, because I bought an alchemy recipe for something and it listed a gourd, but of course you can't actually use them for alchemy.

OP, you can make some easy money early on harvesting gourds, et. al. from certain farms. Apart from that, they're not really used for anything. As far as Alchemy versus Cooking goes... If you're the type of player who wants to make/get "the best" of everything, you won't ever see the value of cooking or food ingredients. Cooking is "underpowered" compared to Alchemy because you're expecting a ROLEPLAYING gamer to have a character who DOESN'T go near Alchemy. From a RP POV, this would mostly be magic-phobic PCs (i.e. Warrior types) who would be buffing Health and Stamina anyway. I am currently playing a nord viking/barbarian type. He's at ~L20 and has not used or crafted a single potion, cast a single spell, etc. He does carry plenty of food (and mead), though.