Cooking menu: how to choose the least freshest ingredients first?

[DoktorFar]

When I cook from the cooking menu the game lists all of the ingredients in one long list, sorted by item name. Unfortunately each item in the list lacks two crucial pieces of information:

- Freshness
- Nutrition

And quite often the game sadly chooses the item that is not the least fresh and also the item that contains the least calories/nutrients. I always teach my kids to use the oldest items first, right? I bet this is normal common sense in most households. The other issue with using items with the least calories/nutrients can for example result in using a piece of mushroom that has 7 calories left, while the other mushroom, that I actually would like to use, has 60 calories left. 7 calories from one of the ingredients obviously will result in a meal that contains much less calories.

This could all be fixes and work well if only we could see in the list of ingredients these values for freshness and nutrition and choose what we want?

If I am missing something that already can fix it I hope you can help me, thank you!

[Another Mother's Son]

Originally posted by Cat Supremacist SM:

add it to the meal from the specific ingredient instead of through the container it's being mixed into

Like the first episode of The Cooking Show says, "doesn't matter if it's stale." If you are bunkered down and have Fresh vs. Stale ingredients to choose from, get rid of the Stale items first. They will give you less nutrition, but still skill up your Cooking XP. My motto for any resources in Project Zomboid is "It's not nothing"

[Armagenesis]

Pretty sure if you pick the ingredients through context menu (right click), it will display if the material is fresh, stale, or rotten. And even show whether it's poison or not.

[Shenji]

Yes, the way OP using to cook is not very convenient, as you already figured out. Just right click the pot when standing in front of the fridge.

[DoktorFar]

Originally posted by Shenji:

Yes, the way OP using to cook is not very convenient, as you already figured out. Just right click the pot when standing in front of the fridge.

I see, so this would require me to find the pot/pan/grill/bowl etc first from the cupboards and crates next by me and then right click it. Somewhat annoying still, the cook book is a lot more convenient. But I suppose it is more realistic that I have to actually get the item first, like I would in real life, and I do like realism. And with a bit of sorting and reordering of the cupboards/crates I think it will work fine, thanks!

[DoktorFar]

Originally posted by Armagenesis:

Pretty sure if you pick the ingredients through context menu (right click), it will display if the material is fresh, stale, or rotten. And even show whether it's poison or not.

In inventory it will show it by hovering mouse over it (not right clicking), but in craft cook menu right click or mouse hover does nothing.

[Armagenesis]

Originally posted by DoktorFar:

Originally posted by Shenji:

Yes, the way OP using to cook is not very convenient, as you already figured out. Just right click the pot when standing in front of the fridge.

I see, so this would require me to find the pot/pan/grill/bowl etc first from the cupboards and crates next by me and then right click it. Somewhat annoying still, the cook book is a lot more convenient. But I suppose it is more realistic that I have to actually get the item first, like I would in real life, and I do like realism. And with a bit of sorting and reordering of the cupboards/crates I think it will work fine, thanks!

You can bring all the materials you want to use to your inventory if you want. Then step away from your storage.

[Jethro]

While on this topic, is there any way to sort food items from “most” to “least”? Not sure how to describe what I mean really except:

Say you have 20 fish stored. Some are larger than others, containing more “hunger”. I like to use the smaller ones first and save larger ones for last. I’d like a way to sort these without having to hover over each and every one to get the details.