Food Specialties and Favorite Foods
I was looking at thumbnails on youtube about the cooking update for basegame coming with Cottage Living, and I had a Eureka moment. Kids can now cook with adults, this boosts their skills, who knows they might even get a boost on the cooking skill when they get it as teens. And it occurred to me SIMS COULD HAVE SPECIALTIES. Foods that they cook better than anyone else. Foods that they're known for. That one dish that the kids will ask mom, dad, or uncle barry, for time and time again. Maybe it's spaghetti bolognese, maybe it's cowplant milk-milkshake. Who knows?
But it should be a thing. Maybe if you cook a dish enough times it becomes your specialty. Or maybe you cook things randomly and find it. And it is ranked differently than other foods. Rather than Poor to Impeccable, there'd be like "Extraordinary", "Out of Body Experience". You could get special moodlets that only come from specialties.
Every sim could have one, irrespective of their cooking level. You could be the level equivalent of only being able to make Hamburger Helper, and burning the edges, but somehow makes the best tofu tacos (it's a sims meal I saw it). Once your specialty reaches a certain level, you could enter fairs like the ones in Henford on Badgely but like a cookoff. And it be for basegame. Like a mix between those and the spice festival. And having the various expansion packs just increases the recipes you could choose from, and ingredients you could use, in the search of your specialty.
Furthermore, (yes this only came to me some 10 minutes ago now but it was very fleshed out) once your specialty reached a certain level you could pass it down to other sims! Like Grandma Clara's recipe for chocolate chip cookies. This way the recipe could be passed down, and the sim could learn it with all it's buffs included. It could become that sim's specialty or they could have one of their own and still have that passed in the family. So it would be like an inheritance. So people who play with generations could explore having a bit of a sim that they lost still in the game.
If the sim reached a certain level, they could even write the specialty down in a game item called a recipe book. That way, it could be shared without having to have the sims interact. Say the sim died before they could pass it down. But they wrote the recipe book. There could be like a mini-quest to find the family recipe book. Maybe every sim in the family could add their specialty to it. Maybe family members could make copies of it.
Another thought is that you could sell your specialty to increase traffic to your owned retail bakeries and restaurants, or when using the sell to bakery option from that desert machine. Chefs could get the option to have more than one specialty. So restaurants could have a specialty, to increase gameplay with that pack, and make it a more active career. And then the chef could keep one specialty for family, and one they show at work.
For favorite foods, I'm not sure if this is in game yet. I know you can be addicted to grilled cheese. But with specialities, maybe your mom's famous mac and cheese is your favorite food. So you end up enjoying all mac and cheese, but that one is the ultimate. A potential partner could learn to make it for you. It could be a whole thing. Maybe you just enoy a food and decide to learn to make it. Or you get a positive moodlet anytime someone makes it for you. That would be cool.
So that's the idea. I hope you like it.
But it should be a thing. Maybe if you cook a dish enough times it becomes your specialty. Or maybe you cook things randomly and find it. And it is ranked differently than other foods. Rather than Poor to Impeccable, there'd be like "Extraordinary", "Out of Body Experience". You could get special moodlets that only come from specialties.
Every sim could have one, irrespective of their cooking level. You could be the level equivalent of only being able to make Hamburger Helper, and burning the edges, but somehow makes the best tofu tacos (it's a sims meal I saw it). Once your specialty reaches a certain level, you could enter fairs like the ones in Henford on Badgely but like a cookoff. And it be for basegame. Like a mix between those and the spice festival. And having the various expansion packs just increases the recipes you could choose from, and ingredients you could use, in the search of your specialty.
Furthermore, (yes this only came to me some 10 minutes ago now but it was very fleshed out) once your specialty reached a certain level you could pass it down to other sims! Like Grandma Clara's recipe for chocolate chip cookies. This way the recipe could be passed down, and the sim could learn it with all it's buffs included. It could become that sim's specialty or they could have one of their own and still have that passed in the family. So it would be like an inheritance. So people who play with generations could explore having a bit of a sim that they lost still in the game.
If the sim reached a certain level, they could even write the specialty down in a game item called a recipe book. That way, it could be shared without having to have the sims interact. Say the sim died before they could pass it down. But they wrote the recipe book. There could be like a mini-quest to find the family recipe book. Maybe every sim in the family could add their specialty to it. Maybe family members could make copies of it.
Another thought is that you could sell your specialty to increase traffic to your owned retail bakeries and restaurants, or when using the sell to bakery option from that desert machine. Chefs could get the option to have more than one specialty. So restaurants could have a specialty, to increase gameplay with that pack, and make it a more active career. And then the chef could keep one specialty for family, and one they show at work.
For favorite foods, I'm not sure if this is in game yet. I know you can be addicted to grilled cheese. But with specialities, maybe your mom's famous mac and cheese is your favorite food. So you end up enjoying all mac and cheese, but that one is the ultimate. A potential partner could learn to make it for you. It could be a whole thing. Maybe you just enoy a food and decide to learn to make it. Or you get a positive moodlet anytime someone makes it for you. That would be cool.
So that's the idea. I hope you like it.
