Produce useful?

If you have the baking skill, it helps in unlocking some recipes to cook, otherwise they are greyed out with no way of cooking them. Unlike Cooking and Gourmet where you don't need any fresh produce, baking actually requires it for some of the things there.

i often find levelling out baking as a tedious task, because you can bake everything on offer all the way to level 6 and it stops after this because the majority of the stuff around that level requires produce. Thankfully i can travel to skill classes to pick up the remaining levels with the appropriate happiness moodlet.

outside of Baking, certain produce is required for the grill, like walleye and salmon or a random fish to grill certain fish dishes. produce also reduces the costs on cooking certain dishes as well, however because the costs aren't that high i can just ignore the need for produce.

Aren't things stored in the fridge also used for cooking and not only those in a sim's inventory?

If you click on cook when clicking on the stove or fridge, there are items in there to make that will use the fruit or veggies grown or the fish caught. You will even see how much of each item is needed to make the dish.

Items stored in the fridge do count for using fruits/veggies/fish for cooking. There might be one or two weird exceptions

Produce, fish, and other ingredients are actually required for some dishes, such as Fried Fish (requires Any Fish), Fruit Pie (requires Pear, Cherry, Strawberry, or Blueberry), and Honey Cake (requires Honey). Some drinks also require produce, especially the ones learned from Vampire Lore.

"Oldeseadogge;d-985029" wrote:
This has probably already been asked, as in ages ago so bringing up would be necroposting (if I could find it). Is there a practical use for the fruit & veggies we can grow and the fish we can catch other than collection purposes and selling? I know sims can eat some of it if it's in inventory. Was thinking mainly of are these things ingredients in recipes for food sims can cook. In TS2 if my sim catches a trout, trout dinner is coming up as a cooking choice. How does this work in 4?

Yes they are in recipes. Sometimes you have to go to restaurants and festivals and eat foods in order to have the recipe populate for you in your "recipe book." Fruits and veggies can also be used to make soda in the soda maker from Eco Lifestyle. You can also use some items for bait and fertilizer.

I do believe the stuff from eco living like meat cubes soy etc. have to be in the Sims inventory and not in the fridge. I play with that pack disabled now but I do recall having issues. Also, some things like UFO fruit can not go in the fridge but if in inventory it may be used for fruit salad if nothing else is available. Anyway it was in my Sims inventory and then it was gone. I just assumed it went into the fruit salad I had my Sim make.

I don't have the eco pack, so no worries there. UFO fruit? Unidentified fruity objects?

Lots of great info & tips here, folks! Am beginning to think of printing the page. Thanks, everyone!