First and foremost thank you for the vanilla mods. I appreciate the effort to make vanilla like content and the one delivered so far is amazing. I have been doing a fairly modded playthrough from the medieval start and I have some suggestions to provide of content that may be of interest.

I take in mind how current mechanics works in the mod content to suggest something that is similar to what is already implemented. I also apologise for my english in advance.

- Food preservation
While the medieval and settlers factions transition between tribal and industrial are nice, the food mechanics provide some nuisance in terms of spoiling. My suggestion would be to provide ways to partially preserve food (elongate time) to enable a "cellar" approach for food storage rather than requiring a fridge. My suggestions:

Dried food (medieval): By means of a drying rack using light and temperature as driving elements for the process (e.g. +1 month of shelf life)..

Spices (medieval): Using pepper, salt and spices, to enable the elaboration of seasoned meat (e.g. +1 month of shelf life).

Spices+ (settler): By adding Cuccumber to the list of spices and using them to elaborate brine. This could be use to brine vegetables, eggs, etc (+6 months of shelf life).

Smoker (settler): To smoke meat by using wood ((+6 months of shelf life)).

Sealed bag (spacer). As an advanced method and as better than canned. The process could only use energy by putting the elements in a sealed bag.

- Cheese maturation:
Considering the spoiling mechanics added to some elements such as cider and prunes, maybe the process of aging the cheese could be done by letting it dry on a "fresh environment". This could make a twist in mechanics without relying on the cheese press but of the player to prepare a proper storage (achievable even without A/C).

- Fishing:

You could add fish traps for medieval and settler stages to enable passive fishing, using kibble or meat as bait. Leaving the trap for some time until something is captured.

You could provide an aquarium as an storage unit that would preserve the fish when captured (as the fish is "kept alive").

Fort the spacer tier, you could add a fish farm similar to how hydroponics work with a small batch of fish to start the process (turning power into more fish).