My Big, Simmy Fresh Food Index

Everybody on Sim Earth loves sparkly food. It looks great, it apparently tastes great and it fills Simmy bellies — and Simmy hunger gauges — in half the time that regular food takes. Sure, it comes with the caveat that your Sims will get pudgy in a hurry if you don't cancel their Eat actions in a timely manner, but every rose has its thorn.

But web pages which offer indices on which foods lead to sparkly food — and how much Fresh Food they provide when stocked in a refrigerator — seem to be precious few, far between and woefully incomplete. So when I was haunting That Sims Site That Shall Not Be Named about two years ago, I decided to start researching and cooking up my own index. Research was as simple as this process:

1) Have Sims cook enough meals until the stored food points in that refrigerator are less than maximum. This way, if anything stocked in that fridge adds to the normal Food Points, I'll know. (And Fresh Food Points have no maximum; the fridge at my Castle Von Carstein dorm has over 4,000 Fresh Food Points from so many generations of Simmy college students stashing fruits and veggies in it. So burning down Fresh Food Points is unnecessary. And as it turns out, none of these nummies adds to normal Food Points. It's all either Fresh Food Points or nothing.)

2) Check Food Supplies.

3) Stock exactly one foodstuff.

4) Check Food Supplies again. Subtract the first result from the second result.

Then That Other Sims Site and its toxic community angered and vexed me a hair too far, so I stormed off and never saw reason to complete the project. But now I'm here, so recently I decided to dig up my old scratch sheets and resume the project. And here's what I've come up with thus far: A list of all the nummies that, in some way or another, can help your Sims cook meals with those delicious and fattening sparkles! Each foodstuff comes listed with how many Fresh Food Points it adds to the refrigerator's reserves when a Sim uses the fridge and Stocks it.

So let me get this one out of the way right off the bat:


FISHING

Largemouth Bass: 0
Jumbo Largemouth Bass: 0

Blue Catfish: 0
Jumbo Blue Catfish: 0

Rainbow Trout: 0
Jumbo Rainbow Trout: 0

Golden Trout: 0

That's not an error. Contrary to the misguided opinions of more than one Simmer out there, Stocking fish does not add to a refrigerator's Fresh Food Points! From the measly Largemouth Bass to the fabled Golden Trout, the Fresh Food Points from every stocked fish is precisely zero. Fish doesn't even add to the refrigerator's regular Food Points! How did people get the idea that fish adds Fresh Food Points? I tested that on four of my Simmy households — Benne Evolence, the Covenhearts, the De Chefs and the second Lupina household with Jolene and her ten dogs — and three or four different refrigerator models, two of them being vanilla Maxis fridges. Not a single Fresh Food Point came from it all.

But can fishies give you sparkly meals nonetheless? Yes, they can! Instead of using a refrigerator's Stock option, your Sims can either use a refrigerator, an oven/stove/range or a grill and cook the fish directly out of his or her Inventory, via the Make, Make Many, Have Lunch, Serve Lunch, Have Dinner or Serve Dinner options. (No, the Breakfast menus don't let you cook freshly caught fish. Believe me, I looked.) From there, look for either Bass with Squash, Blackened Catfish, Stuffed Rainbow Trout or Stuffed Golden Trout, pick one that's available and your Sim will remove the corresponding fish from his or her Inventory and cook it. If the fish doesn't burn in the process, you'll end up with sparkly food!

As far as I can tell, the only differences between regular-sized fishes and Jumbo fishes are regards to how much you can sell the fish for, either sold back to the world (via the Delete key) or sold in a Sim-owned business (as I found out with my Rubinia household and Portia's fresh fish and deli market); Jumbo bass, catfish and trout tend to fetch a few more Simoleons than regular bass, catfish and trout. Otherwise, all seven fishes result in different-looking meals that behave pretty much the same, feeding the same six Sims and filling Hunger gauges just as quickly. I tested this with Jolene Lupina and Gaston De Chef; Jolene had a mix of both types of bass, and Gaston had a mix of both types of catfish, so I set them to Make Many Bass with Squash/Blackened Catfish. When they were done, they had nary a single bass/catfish left — regular nor jumbo — and a Serving Platter for each fish cooked. And the platters all stacked, so I could see no difference among them. But to be fair, each chef burned one platter of fish (despite their Cooking skills of 10), and the burned meals stacked with the sparkly meals. So further testing may be needed, and that means feeding lots of fish to lots of hungry Sims.

For that reason, it's also wasteful to cook a fish via Have Lunch or Have Dinner; use Serve Lunch or Serve Dinner instead, and you can get six meals from the same fish — instead of just one meal — for the same amount of time and effort. If your Sim's eating alone, just stash the extra fishy plates in the fridge as leftovers and your Sim can eat them later.

(So it goes without saying that, as always, the best use for a Golden Trout is hanging it on a wall — or letting it sit in a frozen food shelf — for a day or three, then selling it when its value tops 700 Simoleons; sell it through a Sim-owned business and you can fetch even more, the exact amount depending on the business owner's Sales Badge and Business Perks. Don't bother cooking a Golden Trout unless your Sims are starving, and even then, consider selling the Golden Trout, then taking the profits down to a grocery store and filling the fridge. It costs 600 Simoleons to pack a fridge with Food Points. A single Golden Trout can easily cover that.)

(So why did I stock and cook several Golden Trouts in the course of this research? For science. I did it for science. )

Moving on...


GARDEN FRUITS AND VEGETABLES

Tomato, Bland: 1
Tomato, Tasty: 2
Tomato, Mouthwatering: 3

Cucumber, Bland: 2
Cucumber, Tasty: 4
Cucumber, Mouthwatering: 6

Strawberries, Bland: 2
Strawberries, Tasty: 4
Strawberries, Mouthwatering: 6

Pole Beans, Bland: 2
Pole Beans, Tasty: 4
Pole Beans, Mouthwatering: 6

Pepper, Bland: 1
Pepper, Tasty: 2
Pepper, Mouthwatering: 3

Eggplant, Bland: 3
Eggplant, Tasty: 6
Eggplant, Mouthwatering: 9

Bland produce comes from harvesting Sickly plants, Tasty produce comes from harvesting Healthy plants and Mouthwatering produce comes from harvesting Thriving plants. I gathered these numbers from a variety of Simmy households, pretty much any household with a garden at hand. Sacrifices had to be made, of course. "No, no! I can't harvest that cucumber plant yet! I need to let the weeds do their thing until the plant's Sickly so I can see what harvesting Bland cucumbers does! Here, weeds! Let me help you out by overwatering this cucumber plant! Science demands it!"

I may have to do a bit more research and experimentation with my Sims, because the season in which a plant is planted, the season in which a plant is harvested and perhaps even the exact day when a plant is planted or harvested may or may not be factors in what you harvest. I'd also like to jot down the numbers of fruits or veggies that your Sims get with each Harvest, as well as the number of days it takes each kind of plant to reach fruition; for what your Sims pay to plant a single pepper plant, 1 to 3 Fresh Food Points may seem like a paltry return on the investment until you consider that Sims get about 17 peppers from each Harvest. Still, even the mighty pepper plant can't compare to the eggplant; each Harvest can net your Sims as much as 72 Fresh Food Points, compared to the pepper plant's maximal ballpark figure of 51.

Fruits and veggies run through the juicer don't seem to be counted as Fresh Food, but they do fill Hunger gauges pretty nicely, and the fruits' quality may be a factor in this; Eggplant juice squeezed from Mouthwatering eggplants seem to add noticeably more to the Sim's Hunger level than juice squeezed from Bland or Tasty eggplants does. The quality may affect other things as well; Sims who drink eggplant juice from Mouthwatering eggplants almost always get a Skill Point (unless the Sim's skills have all reached maximum), while drinking eggplant juice from Bland eggplants rarely if ever results in a Skill Point...at least from what I've seen so far.

Whoa, these forums have a limit of 10,000 characters per post? Excuse me while I skirt around that limit right quick....