Foods & Plants (Cooking with Mindthemoods)

The Cooking Table can be crafted using four of any planks, and two leather. It has the appearance of jungle wood, and can be used to turn basic ingredients into meals. 

• Place main ingredients in the three slots to the left, and a base ingredient into the middle slot. (Such as a bowl, milk bucket, bread, stick, or bottle.) 
• The Cooking table can hold ingredients, and can be filled using hoppers. It cannot, however, automatically prepare food. (Partly for coding reasons, and partly because I want players interaction to be a necessity for making this stuff.)
• If you have the base ingredient for a recipe, but not the main ingredients, an empty slot will appear around the menu. If you have most of the ingredients you need to make something, images of available recipes appear around the menu.
• Some existing recipes have been changed to exclusively go with the cooking table. 

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Chocolate can be prepared using cocoa beans, sugar, and milk. It doesn’t refill any hunger, but refills saturation, and can be eaten at any time. (Though eating a bunch of it might eventually make you sick.)

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Apple Blossoms are a new way to more reliably obtain apples. Apple trees can generate naturally in regular forest biomes, and have some of their leaves replaced with a blossom variant. 

• When fully mature, apple blossoms can be harvested with a shear, dropping 1-3 apples without destroying the block. With fortune, they drop 2-6.
• When mined with Silk Touch, any variety of apple blossom drops the basic apple blossom block, allowing you to move them around for easier farming. Just make sure they’re near wood!
• Apple bushes can be found in flower forests and sparse jungles; Apple trees can occasionally be found in regular forests. Both consist of regular oak trees with rooted dirt and apple blossom blocks.
• You can harvest apple blossoms automatically using a dispenser with shears.
• Apple trees can only be found naturally generating, so be careful with the blossoms you find. (However, you’ll only ever get a single apple through this method.)
• Bees can pollinate Apple Blossoms, but this does not increase their growth rate.
• This is compatible with Motschen’s Better leaves, if your resource pack involves bushy leaves.

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Rice is a new variety of crop. You can find young rice plants in rivers, and mature rice plants in swamps. (And eventually mangrove swamps, when 1.19 rolls out.)

• Small rice plants will only grow to maturity if bonemeal is applied by a player.
• Once mature, rice plants can no longer be bonemealed. They go through three growth stages, (over the course of at least 10 minutes), at the end of which they can be harvested using a hoe, dropping 4-8 rice. (4-12 with any level of fortune.)
• Rice isn’t edible on its own, but eight rice and one honey bottle can be used to make Sticky Rice. Sticky rice can be eaten as is, or used to make sushi.
• Rice must be planted in at least one block of water. Once fully grown it can survive out of water, but will only grow if at least the bottom half is waterlogged.
• As if swamps weren’t annoying enough to travel through, rice plants slow down anything that moves through them horizontally.

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Cheeses are special food items that can be placed in the world like cake- use a furnace or a smoker to turn a bucket of milk into a bucket of cheese, which you can then place as a cheese wheel, and break to get 3 cheese slices, (4, if you’ve got fortune), or use silk touch to pick the cheese wheel back up.

• Cheese removes negative status effects when eaten.
• Cheese Wheels age over time- cheese can become Aged Cheese, which is more filling, and increases the duration of positive status effects in addition to removing negative ones. Aged Cheese can even become Ancient Cheese, which is even more filling, and increases both the duration and potency of positive status effects, as well removing negative ones.
• …However, don’t let cheese age too long, or it’ll become moldy. Moldy cheese has, shall we say, far less helpful properties, if you choose to eat it. Also try to avoid letting anything stomp on your cheeses…
• Cheese does not age if exposed to the sky, or if waxed with honeycomb. (Wax is removed whenever a cheese wheel is broken or picked up.)
• Four cheese slices can be reassembled into a cheese wheel of their corresponding type. (If, say, you don’t want to waste Silk Touch on cheese wheels.)

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Meals are special food items that fill more hunger and saturation than most regular foods, and have the added bonus of occasionally bestowing positive status effects based on their ingredients (After you’ve had a bit of time to digest them, of course.) Some meals have multiple levels based on the quality and quantity of ingredients used, which are visually different from their lower level counterparts; most require different ingredients from a certain food group.

• Sweet Bread is made using sweet berries and bread- it isn’t that filling, but has a chance of granting absorption.
• Whole-Grain Bread can be made by combining rice with bread. It’s more filling than regular bread, but can’t be used in other recipes.
• Sticky Bread is made using honey and bread. It’s fairly filling, and incredibly sweet- it also removes poison.
• Chocolate Bread is made using chocolate or cocoa beans and bread. It’s not the healthiest thing ever, but has a chance of granting speed.
• Carrot Bread is made using carrots and bread. It has a chance of granting Night Vision.
• Meat Sandwiches are made using bread and meat. Has  a chance of granting Strength.
• Veggie Sandwiches are made using bread and vegetables. Has a chance of granting Resistance.
• Fish Sandwiches are made using bread and fish. Higher levels have a chance of granting Dolphin’s Grace.
• Rotten Sandwiches are made using bread and… less than advisable ingredients. Probably best not to eat this.
• Grilled Cheese can be made using bread and cheese. It doesn’t belong to any one food group, and doesn’t affect nutrition.
• Tasty Sandwiches can be made using a combination of vegetables, meat, and cheese on bread. They automatically increase nutrition without belonging to any one food group.

• Beef Stew is made exclusively with beef. It is extremely filling, and has a chance of granting strength.
• Syrup is made using honey and sugar. It removes poison, and is quite filling, but far from a healthy choice.
• Simmered Fruit is made using various fruits. It has a decent chance of granting absorption.
• Mushroom Stew now requires three mushrooms, but can be made using three of any overworld mushroom.
• Beetroot Soup now only requires three beetroot to make, and is thus a bit more of a plausible source of food. …Still not great though. 
• Potato Soup is made using cheese and potatoes. It removes negative status effects, and can also grant fortitude.
• Suspicious Stew retains the same recipes, but is now made with the cooking table. Suspicious stews now have visual differences based on which flower is used to make them. 
• Rabbit Stew is now made using a normal potato, a carrot, and a cooked rabbit.
• Strange Soup is made using chorus fruit, and teleports the player directly upwards.

• Meat Skewers are made with meat- they’re faster to eat than other meat- type meals, and moderately filling, with a small chance of granting strength.
• Veggie Skewers are made with vegetables- they’re faster to eat than other veggie type meals, and have a small chance of granting fortitude.
• Fish Skewers are made with, (you guessed it), Fish. They’re fast to eat, and have a small chance of granting Dolphin’s Grace.
• Fruit Skewers are fast to eat, and have a small chance of granting absorption.
• Suspicious Skewers are made using fungi. They’re fairly fast to eat, and grant a randomly selected status effect for a short duration when eaten.
• Strange Skewers are made using chorus fruit. They teleport the player directly downwards if space is available.
• Rotten Skewers are made using more dubious ingredients. They inflict nausea when eaten.

• Pumpkin Pie is now made using a pumpkin, eggs, sugar, and wheat in the main slot. It can be placed into the world as a cake-like object. Up to five pumpkin pies can be placed on one block.
• Melon Tarts are a pumpkin pie alternative made using melons in place of pumpkins. They too can be placed up to five per block.
• Apple Crisps are a pumpkin pie alternative made using apples. They’re slightly more filling, and can be placed up to five per block. 

• A Chicken Dinner can be made using three vegetables, and a chicken. It’s extremely filling.
• A Loaded Potato can be made by combining cheese with a baked potato. They remove negative status effects and increase positive status effects.
• A Fiery Filet can be made using netherworld fungi, and ham. It’s quite filling, and can grant fire resistance.
• Stuffed Mushrooms can be made using cheese and fungi. They remove negative status effects, and increase the duration of positive status effects.
• Hard Candy can be made using berries, honey, and sugar. What they lack in nutrition, they make up for with serious saturation. 
• A Seafood Dinner can be made using kelp, sea pickles, and any fish. It can grant water breathing.

• Sushi can be made using sticky rice and dried kelp- doing so makes a three-sushi item. Sushi can be eaten three times, (which visually changes the item), is fairly filling, and most importantly, can be eaten very quickly.
• Veggie Sushi is a less filling sushi variant that has a chance of granting Resistance.
• Fish Sushi is a less filling sushi variant that has a chance of granting Dolphin’s Grace.

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Condiments are special, bottled food items that are fairly useless on their own, but can be held in the offhand while eating to provide special status effects to foods that wouldn’t normally have them.

• Sweet Berry Jam is made using sweet berries and sugar. It can grant absorption to foods that go well with jam.
• Savory Sauce is made using nether fungus and honey. It can grant regen to foods that go well with sauce. (Meats, primarily.)
• Spicy Hummus is made using normal fungus and an egg. It can grant strength to foods that go well with hummus. (Veggies, mostly.)
• Chocolate Sauce is made using chocolate. It can grant speed to foods that go well with chocolate sauce. (Which does not include steak, you weirdo.)
• Dill Relish is made using sea pickles. It can grant Dolphin’s grace to seafoods.

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Finally, Nutrition is a system through which the player can gain special benefits, or penalties, depending on the foods they eat.

• Most foods are grouped into five categories- fruits, vegetables, meats, sweets, and fish. Some foods don’t go with any food group, and thus don’t affect nutrition. (Specifically, bread and cheese.) They still, however, will count for the last few foods you’ve eaten.
• Nutrition goes up when the last three foods you’ve eaten are all from different food groups. Similarly, it goes down if the last three foods you’ve eaten are all from the same food group. 
• When nutrition is low, and continues to drop, the player may be inflicted with Pallor, a status effect that increases the amount of damage the player is dealt, and decreases saturation whenever the player is hurt. The strength of the effect depends on how low nutrition is, while the duration depends on the potency of the food you just ate. Worse still, you won’t be able to get positive status effects from other foods if your nutrition is low.
• When nutrition is high, and continues to go up, you can get a special status effect, (Vigor), which does the exact opposite of Pallor- restoring a certain amount of hearts whenever the player takes damage while below 14 health. Once again, its strength depends on how high nutrition is, and its potency depends on the food you’ve just eaten.

When you eat food that increases nutrition, listen for a chiming sound- conversely, if you hear a slimy sound, odds are whatever you just ate decreased nutrition.

• Sleeping causes nutrition to go a bit closer to neutral, and death resets it entirely.

There are a couple of different strategies players can use to deal with nutrition, (or at least a couple I and my playtesters  playtester found myself gravitating towards), with varying levels of success:

• Ignorance ~ If you flat out ignore the nutrition system, and make a constant effort to, say, eat exclusively golden carrots, you’ll quickly feel the effects of Pallor- however, if you use cheese to remove Pallor whenever it sets in, you’ll still be relatively unaffected. (However, you won’t ever be able to get any positive status effects from other foods.) Nonetheless, this is a viable option. 

• Neutral ~ …Though if you’re going to eat only one food, you might be better off using something less potent. Neither bread nor cheese affects nutrition- however, both of them are a bit of a pain to make. On a strict diet of bread and cheeses, you won’t ever get Vigor or Pallor, and you’ll still be able to get positive status effects from food. (Keep in mind that while cheese is exempt from nutrition, bread counts as a food you’ve eaten, but not as any particular food group.

• Half Decent ~ If you do make a habit of paying attention to nutrition, (or at the very least, cycling through three different food sources, and making sure to end on a food of high potency to grant you the maximum duration of vigor), you’ll be able to get a variety of positive effects, even if it can be a bit of a hassle to get enough different foods at any given time. (Especially since you can’t just farm crops or meat.) Personally, I found melons, carrots, and steak to be the easiest to farm in large quantities; and fishing proved to be a welcome source of relief whenever I was worried about eating too much of any one thing.

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…However, if you really wanted to play the system, and guarantee Vigor III and decent status effects whenever you eat food, my recommendation is the following:

• Set up a cow farm, chicken farm (for the eggs, not the chickens), carrot farm, wheat farm, gold farm (optional), and berry farm.

• When you’re done with that, (if you’re really determined), use a hopper system to load and unload your cooking table with the ingredients you need. (It can be really annoying to move smallish stacks of food around if you’re in a hurry.)
• Eat a rotating diet of Meat Sandwiches, Veggie Sandwiches, and Sweetbread/Chocolate Bread/Fish Sandwich depending on whether you want absorption, speed, or dolphin’s grace.
• Use the higher, non-stackable versions of foods when you have the time or space; otherwise, use the lower-level varieties. (If you’re up for it, put a hopper under the cooking table and use it to fill shulkers for lunch-boxes.)

• Always wait until your hunger is at least four shanks down to eat, as all of the foods you’ll be eating restore at least eight hunger.

• Use chocolate after eating to increase saturation, and ancient cheese whenever you get a status effect to boost its duration and potency.
• If you’re going to sleep, wait to eat until you wake up. Sleeping always brings nutrition closer to zero, especially if it’s fairly high; waiting until the morning will guarantee you can keep it at the desired level.

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And some additional notes:

• Tasty Sandwiches can be made using any vegetable, a meat or fish, and cheese or a fried egg. The ingredients used do not affect the outcome, (a 4.5 shank, non-stackable meal that always increases nutrition), and the most efficient way is to use beetroot, basic cheese, and raw fish. …Not the most appetizing, admittedly.
• Getting a reliable supply of bread is important if you want to be able to make the various sandwiches the mod has to offer- which is a bit annoying now that bread requires eggs and milk. 
• Don’t eat raw bread! It’s not worth it for the number of ingredients you need to make it- especially when it can be used for sandwiches, and other renewable food sources do just as well. Whole-grain bread is a little better, but still a bit of a waste when you could be making sandwiches.
• Skewers are great if you have a lot of any given food, and access to sticks. (That is, basically anywhere.) However, for all their convenience, they do use up a lot of ingredients for low returns. Good in a pinch though.
• If you really don’t want to pay any heed to nutrition, a steady diet of plain sushi is the way to go. (Also, why did you download this mod?) It’s easy to carry around, moderately filling, and can be eaten very quickly in a pinch.

• Cooking ~ Craft a cooking table using wooden planks and leather. (Husbandry)

• Cheesy ~ Age cheese in order to increase its potency (Husbandry)

• Condiments ~ Use a condiment in your offhand slot to improve your food. (Husbandry)

• Cheese the Dragon ~ Defeat the Ender Dragon exclusively using a hunk of cheese. (End)

Food items have varying chances of actually granting status effects, ranging from usually around 30% for small food items, and 60% for large food items, which also grant higher levels.

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Suspicious Stews now randomly grant either a specific positive status effect, or a random negative status effect based on the current phase of the moon. Levitation is granted as a negative status effect if the moon is full. They only grant their positive effect if nutrition is above a certain, randomly selected level.

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The Rice shoots, Young Rice plant, and various stages of the bottom and top segment of the rice plant are all separate, waterloggable blocks. Mature rice plants can technically survive out of water, but do not grow this way naturally, and cannot be planted like this in survival. 

• Rice growth is based on random ticks, and each stage has a forced two minute delay once ticked.
• All varieties of naturally occurring rice plant are technically structures rather than biome features, in order to ensure a waterlogged state. They exclusively generate between y60-63, must be waterlogged, and must grow on dirt, rooted dirt, either type of sand, soul sand, or clay- if the selected block is dirt, the dirt is replaced with rooted dirt. Tall rice plants only generate if their top block is in air, and their bottom block is a water source.

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Apple blossom trees are modified variants of existing oak trees, and can generate, (in order of frequency), in small, medium, and large variants. They exclusively occur in regular forests, check that flat ground is available, and replace an area of ground below them with rooted dirt. Like rice plants, they are saved as structures in-game, with an area of air below to replace existing trees that they generate near.

• Apple Blossoms take at least fifteen minutes to fully mature.
• Mature Apple Blossoms prevent block placement when targeting them unless the player is shift clicking. (This is a side effect of checking if the player is using a hoe to harvest the block.) 
• Apple Blossoms can be harvested by a dispenser with shears on any side, causing an apple to drop off on the opposite side of the dispenser doing the harvesting.

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Cheese aging occurs based on random ticks with roughly the same likelihood as copper. Once a regular cheese wheel decides to age, it waits an additional 20 minutes before doing so. This duration is increased to 40 minutes for aged cheese to become ancient, and 10 minutes for ancient cheese to become moldy. 

• Cheese aging can be observed- however, cheese does not drop when broken by anything other than the player. It could still be automated to some extent. (You could design a system, for example, which exposes cheese to the sky once it becomes ancient.) 

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Nutrition ranges from -24 to positive 24, and cannot go higher or lower- it resets on death, and goes two levels closer to zero whenever the player sleeps. (Four levels if nutrition is below -16 or above 16.) The game saves the food groups of the last two foods the player has eaten, and when the player eats, decreases nutrition by one if all three of the foods are from the same food group, and increases nutrition by one if none of them are from the same food group.

• Food groups, (neutral, fruit, veggie, meat, sweet, and fish), are saved as 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5 respectively.
• Some foods have special behaviors- decreasing/increasing nutrition by set amounts. Others, (such as Gapples), have extra-high potencies that decrease nutrition by more than usual if the player has eaten a lot of them. 
• On death, the last two foods the player has eaten are both set to neutral.

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The ‘Cheese the Dragon’ achievement is, ironically, fairly difficult to cheese! The procedure for the achievement checks how many times the player has attacked the dragon with a cheese item before the dragon is killed, and resets if the player uses anything other than a cheese item. The dragon has to have been attacked with cheese at least thirty times without any other items being used afterwards for the achievement to trigger.

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Cooking with Mindthemoods isn’t compatible with other food mods, as far as I know. (Largely because it adds several unique systems.) However, if you want to add your own foods to it and have them compatible with existing mechanics, you can use the following:

• To make foods compatible with different condiments, use the ‘forge’ tags ‘sauce_flavor,’ ‘dill_flavor,’ ‘humus_flavor,’ ‘jam_flavor’ and ‘chocolate_flavor’ respectively.
• To add your own food items that affect nutrition, use the ‘forge’ tags ‘is_meat,’ ‘is_fruit,’ ‘is_veggie,’ ‘is_sweet,’ or ‘is_fish.’ Bear in mind these tags are also used for meals where any food from a certain food group can be used as an ingredient!
• To add your own meal items that affect nutrition, use the ‘forge’ tags ‘meat_meal,’ ‘fruit_meal,’ ‘veggie_meal,’ ‘sweet_meal,’ and ‘fish_meal.’

• The hardest part by far was making the Recipe GUI functional- and coming up with a new concept for the system when it quickly became clear it would take well over a week to make anything vaguely resembling Minecraft’s usual recipe books, at the least. The idea for recipes was suggested by my playtester, bless his heart. …I’ll grudgingly admit it is less than intuitive to randomly plug ingredients in and hope for the best…
• The most time consuming part was getting rice to work, especially given that I went into it with no idea how to make a plant that grows, animated textures, or structures that naturally generate in the world. It wasn’t too difficult- however, making several half-decent animated textures for different growth stages took far longer than I expected…
• My favorite part is (and continues) to be the cheeses, which were the first thing I created, and indeed, the very first modded thing of my making. (The Dragon Achievement is, unfortunately, a close second.) I love the idea of food that by its very nature requires some amount of dedication and interaction, for a reward I hope is actually worthwhile. Getting custom models to work was tricky, but ultimately because I was an idiot who didn’t understand the difference between file types…