Nah, unfortunately you can't have it on bread (doesn't stop me from my sim eating a piece of bread and jam tho), BUT you can use some of them for other recipes. Like for example I can only make a chocolate pie if I have either a chocoberry OR chocolate syrup that you can make through canning. And blueberry or blueberry jam to make a blueberry pie. Usually put most of them on a shelf above my sims stove for keeping. Can usually get a few jars out of them when you make it.
I had my sim (once she was able to get ingredients) to bake some bread and also make cheese so she could make grilled cheese. I like that there's more steps in making more dishes now with this as it requires more planning. Running short on money definitely made it difficult.
I have a sim living off-the grid, so the little elderly couple grows everything. The only thing you can't make is things like sugar and flour, which I don't mind. Everything else you can either grow yourself, get from your cows/chickens OR you can get it from the grocer, but I found more challenge in my sim growing everything themselves and doing things from scratch. Starting off my sim was eating a fish diet for the longest time as well as whatever produce that foraged from around the neighborhood or bramblewood. It honestly makes the Welcome wagon coming bringing you fruit cake exciting because free food. :p
Simple living has been my most favorite feature added among all packs due to difficulty and my sim actually having to manage their money a lot better when locked out of cooking and such.
Not sure about the the restaurants, but I know a lot of new recipes can be added to the restaurants.
Made a small grocery store in town(having GTW), just so my sim can go into town and buy things opposed to the grocer less I needed to get a quest and it works really well. (Even though the grocer doesn't have unlimited amounts on most ingredients which adds difficulty ) With another sim, I mostly used the selling table to sell a lot of excess milk she had at about 25 to 50%. Helped in trying to fund money for her cross stitching, especially when she'd run out of llama wool.
The oversized crops can either grow into a big one if fertilized properly or can just make smaller crops. When I was fertilizing my sims watermelon everyday it grew into a big one, when I did only now and again (if i could afford it) I'd get smaller amounts like two or 4? Which was fine if I wasn't planning on entering a contest as the smaller ones I can use in recipes. Haven't gotten to winter just yet, but I noticed Oversized crops seem to stay in season since spring, summer and fall and might be the case for winter as well?
I've played plenty of games with crafting in it and I think this does a decent job. Doesn't go terribly deep like those games do obviously, but it's definitely provided a challenge and kept me busy up until my sim had some free time on their hands after about 6 to 8 hours of doing what they have to ensure they have the proper ingredients for survival. Don't think I've had sims fish as much until now. Things like cross-stitching doesn't lock you, but the cost will be reduced if you have wool on hand.
Wasn't sure if I'd enjoy the NPC tasks/quests myself, but I find them more than essential when my sims are hurting for ingredients, items and food that I'm doing like two or so a day to help them along. Having a sim wish much of nothing and struggling when you have under $100 and nothing but blueberries to eat or fish? Definitely worth doing them in getting ingredients when short on cash and you'll even get some uncommon items as well. There are some long term pay off once you do enough of a certain NPC's tasks (cept for the creature keeper) like with the Mayor you'll get a weekly subscription in getting a free jar of jam for example or discounted to free drinks from the pub owner if you've helped her out. Nice to stay around in town for a bit as chances are a NPC will give you a favor which is usually food or something else that's been thus far pretty useful.
