Sims2: Cooking

The new house has a nice big eat-in kitchen.  Cassidy is making chili, since the kids are hungry when they get home from school.  Roberto is helpfully disposing of the baby bottles that seem to end up everywhere.  Rita has put the toddlers down for their naps and is having a rest herself.

Cooking is one of seven skills that Sims can have, which they can start learning as children.  There are a variety of appliances and counters you can use to build your kitchen, which can be pretty fun.  Oddly, wall cabinets don't exist - just base cabinets, which are called counters.  At least one counter is necessary if you want Sims to eat anything other than "Instant Meal", which doesn't keep them full very long.

As Sims gain more Cooking skill, there are more recipes they can make.  The recipes available depend on the time of day and the appliances available to the Sim.  For example, I didn't realize for a long time that "cup 'o ramen" was an option, because I had never bothered to buy a microwave for any of my families!  Just because they can make a recipe, doesn't mean they can make it well, though.  The first one or two times they make a new recipe involving the stove, they might burn in.  In extreme cases the stove catches fire!  This will also happen if Sims leave things in the oven too long.  They might do this themselves if they are not a good cook yet, or I've accidentally caused it by instructing them to do other things when they should be going to the stove.  My poor Sims eat a lot of burned toaster pastries and pancakes for breakfast.

Sims can either "Make" or "Serve" a meal.  Making a meal involves one portion, which they eat, and washing the dishes is part of the action.  So, if they are eating cereal and the carpool comes, they will wash the bowl or put it in the dishwasher before leaving the house.  To "Serve" a meal means that they make a serving platter with six servings on it, and serve out single plates on the nearest table, one for each person at home, and leave the rest on the counter.  Both single plates and serving platters can be put in the fridge using the "Put leftovers away" interaction on them, so that's what I normally do.  Having single servings in the fridge is handy when Sims don't all get hungry at the same time. Food in the fridge stays good, but food left out goes bad.  It gets green, has green stink coming off it, and if you leave it long enough, flies start to congregate and buzz around it.  It actually seems to be the total time it was out that determines how long it takes to go green, which is kind of cool and realistic.  Dirty dishes get the same green stink and have to be tidied up.  Helpfully, if you instruct a Sim to clean up one dirty plate or bowl, they'll generally collect up all the plates or bowls sitting around.  Sometimes they do it with ones with food still on them, however, so I always have them put away the leftovers first.

Roberto is using a trash can in the kitchen here.  I generally use these, because otherwise they go out to the garbage cans in the back for every single thing they throw out, which takes up a lot of time I'd rather have them spending on more fun ways.  The kitchen garbage has to get taken out eventually, which Sims with high neatness will autonomously do whenever they're not busy.  Dishwashers are the same - installing them means less time dealing with dirty dishes.

Fires in the stove are serious business.  Most of the pre-built homes have fire alarms over everything that can catch fire - stoves, grills, and fireplaces.  The fire department comes and puts out the fire and tells you to be more careful next time, and there's no other penalty other than burned food and your Sim needing a bath.  The challenge I'm working on doesn't allow fire alarms for the first long time, though, and I have lost a LOT of Sims to fires.  Sims will jump around the fire in a panic, waving their arms and screaming.  I can direct them to "Extinguish" the fire, but it doesn't always work.  Sims who have used a bookshelf to "Study... Fire Safety" are much more likely to be able to put out the fire.  In the meantime, the fire spreads to whatever is next to the stove and burns that, and it will eventually engulf your Sim, who is too dumb to run away.  The Grim Reaper comes and your Sim is now an urn on the floor.  I let one fire burn for as long as it wanted once, and it did eventually go out on its own.  It seemed to be able to spread as long as things were in the square right next to the fire, but it didn't use walls to spread.  Once everything in the kitchen was burned, the fire went out and there were just neat piles of ash in each square.