An easy way to learn the City Living recipes...

I made a park and just had my sim hire the vendors to get it over with. I just kept a handful of benches for the sim and vendors to nap on while I got it done.

Then I had to move my sim to a new save, and all of the recipes she had learned were lost. The prospect of having to learn the recipes all over again makes me not care about them anymore. But it was doable.