Americana Meals - French Fries and Mac & Cheese

[TrailerParkThor]

Pretty basic concept, I just think it's weird that you are playing a rural Kentuckian living in the 90s, and the only classic american food you can make are Burgers. PC can eat Fries and Mac, but why can't they make them. Survivors can cook up a 5-star italian pasta dinner, and grow hundreds of hearty potatoes, but still eat stale fries out of the local Spiffo's and down a whole box of Kraft Dinner raw like some drunk frat boy. The cooking system has come a long way since these foods were added, we can do better!

 

Anyone who's eaten it before knows that Mac & Cheese comes with it's own cheese packet. Butter, Milk, and Boiling Water are all that are required. All of these are already implemented with easy access by the player. It would be fun to actually cook the Mac players can find. Crafting recipe could just be the box, milk, butter, and a cooking pot of hot water together. Then cook it for 2-4 bowls of steaming Mac & Cheese. Eating it raw could still be a possibility, but would cause some unhappiness and a lot of boredom.

 

If the devs really wanted to make Mac & Cheese a sought after food source, they could even expand on the cooking of it by allowing players to spice up their Macaroni meals, add meats, and vegetables. Maybe we can even unbox the Mac & Cheese and get Dry Macaroni Noodles as well as a Powdered Cheese Packet. Macaroni could just be an aesthetic flair used as a substitute for different pastas and noodles in recipes. Mixing Powdered Cheese and Water in a Saucepan and heating it should produce cheese. This would allow players to renew cheese after the power is out. Useful for trappers and cooks alike. It would also give a taste of the (hopefully) future cheesemaking we could get with B42 animals.

 

Fries are self-explanatory. Using any kind of knife, survivors could slice a potato into Uncooked Fries. Then put them in the oven, and voila some Fresh Cooked Fries. Obviously this would probably mean a change to the Fries icon, or we could all just accept the weirdness of it still being packaged lol. Maybe devs could even expand upon this by allowing PCs to add chili, cheese, and spices to make Chili Cheese Fries. Ideally, it would be fun to make Fries with lots of different meats and vegetables too. Maybe even a way to shred potatoes and make hash browns and hash scramble as those are classic american foods as well.

 

I think this is a pretty simple addition to already implemented systems that uses existing items to add a much more authentic american feel to that Knox Country cooking. Maybe devs can even add gross combinations of ingredients to these meals, the same way you can make a Cabbage and Egg Ratburger. Imagine eating Mushroom Soup Fish Fries, or Radish Squirrel Mac & Cheese. This would definitely fit the morbid survivalist atmosphere and the 90s americana of the PZ universe at the same time.

[BentNose]

We have an american meals mod as well that may serve as a partial template.

[TrailerParkThor]

@BentNosetried the mod and I love all of it. Fried chicken, milkshakes and chili cheese dogs in there too definitely some small victories during the apocalypse. If the devs really wanted an American Cooking Overhaul this is definitely a good mod to find some inspiration. Here's the link for anyone who hasn't tried it: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2026187681

[Faalagorn]

I have been suggesting some food imporvements here and there and we had some progress on that field (we now have beer bottles and cans that leave items behind and bottles can be filled with water as well as matching animations for a lot of food, including eating with a spoon, but food should get some major overhaul someday.

 

Maybe build 42 with trapping could give us more meat variety and options similar to bacon which we can cut into slices or chop into bits, but other issues still stays, including more packaged food and options to slice them further and then craft something out of it, preferrably using something better than the mix of evolved recipes and crafting we have here, though evolved recipes and later nutrition was a good start in previous builds, just never used fully outside the mods