Many recipes are unavailable off the grid
When you're living of the grid many recipes aren't available, even though they should be. Grand meals and birthday cakes in particular should be available to cook, but you should be able to cook pies...
Forum Discussion
@magdcza When you start gardening and grafting plants you might be able to fill your fridge with lots of produce you can use cooking of grid. Like @JonaO703 stated this is done by design and is part of one of the challenges you can play on the lot. Next to lot traits there are also lot challenges. When you go to the stalls in Finchwick you should be able to buy provisions. Together with the berries, milk and eggs the land provides your Sims with you should be able to cook cakes that can be used as birthday cakes. You could barter chickens for meat, but the stalls also have meat for your grand meals.
Have fun playing. 😉
@Trismagistos Just to clarify, you mean if we had Cottage Living we would be able to bake cakes? Otherwise, I don't believe baking is an option for OTG lots.
I do think these options are open for other lots, @JonaO703. Even when you don't have Cottage Living. The base game has the old crow stove which is functional off grid. And some of the Expansion Packs also have them; The Realm of Magic, City Living, and you can find them in the Country Kitchen Kit. So, you can always choose to live off grid. 😉
@Trismagistos I've tested this many times but to be sure I tested it again. Even with an OTG stove, I do not have the option to bake or cook a grand meal. I have 5 options, two of which require a fish or cricket flour. There is an older post by Sim Guru Nick about this here.
In @magdcza 's OP they state they should be able to bake and cook grand meals but as I said earlier, these options are not available for OTG lots. In my research, I saw a few folks suggesting to have the sims travel to a friend's house that isn't OTG. They can bake or cook a grand meal there, put it in their inventory and then go back home to enjoy it. That's really the only workaround I can see.
Edit: Don't get me wrong. I think it's ridiculous that there's no option to add wood or start a fire in the stove in order to bake. They gave us the option to add ice to the fridge, so it's weird they didn't add a fire option for the stoves.
@magdcza Apologies. I totally forgot that if you have Eco Lifestyle, you can upgrade stoves with a fuel cell. Doing that will allow your off-the-grid household to cook and bake normally. Your sims will need 4 Eco-Upgrade parts to do this. You can take them someplace with a computer to buy the parts.
Edit: With the EL pack, you can also buy solar panels. These are dependent on daytime sunny weather. I added three ground panels to the wreckage lot. It was nighttime though, and the electricity didn't kick in until about 9 am. Also, make sure you click on the mailbox and show bills information, then click to store your power and water.
