Hey all! I will get my legal copy in the Saturday(The game will be on the stores on Friday here in Brazil). Then i want to know:

How is the cooking system of TS3? You choose the ingredients or it is like Sims2?

It's mostly like the Sims 2. Although you can buy ingredients from The food store. I think actually purchasing the ingredients yourself lowers the price of the foods you make at home. When ever you make food from home, it will cost you money.

I haven't quite figured it out yet, as you can tell,lol.

It takes longer....I always speed them up when they cook. Don't make anything before you have to go to work either!!

You have recipes that you can collect in many ways. It see saws between recipes and learning levels of the skill itself. You can learn cooking by watching the cajun food network (haha), you can drive to the bistro and take a cooking class for about $300+, or you can read books on the subject itself. At the bookstore, you will also have RECIPE books that can add to your collection or 'recipe book'.

Stocking your fridge will be a bit different this time around. You go to the supermarket and buy the ingredients you need for the specific recipe you want to cook. If you are a vegetarian, eating a fruit or vegetable pretty much takes care of your needs. However, if you are a vegetarian and you do eat meat, you get sick. My Sim girl-Karra was coughing and sneezing within just a couple days.

Edited to say: She was vomiting too. Sometimes right in the middle of the night.

Better in some ways, worse in others...

The new recipe system is kind of cool. You can already 'Put away leftovers', which is nice, and Sims will just get one plate of leftovers back out (rather than entire platter). However, 'serve' no longer makes you set out plates, and hunger fills up much faster. These two things combined mean family meals no longer really happen naturally and are very hard to make happen even if you try.

There are also no sparklies when using fresh ingredients. :\

Thank all! :D

Thank god that there's no sparklies, lol

Oh ya I LOVE this feature. Order pizza delivery and you can eat on that big ol' thing for several days!!

My Sim wants to grow the ingredients for goopy carbonara. I promised her the wish, but I am none the wiser what actually is needed for that meal. Anyone?

At the grocery store, you can "shop my recipe." You can buy the ingredients for just goopy carbonara.

coltraz, sometimes I get wishes for things I'm not quite qualified for yet. Maybe it will open up for you soon? I know the above poster is right but from a gardening point of view, I dont see anything except tomatoes going into a carbonara that you could grow in a garden. lol!

coltraz, I think the only ingredient for goopy carbonara (what an appetizing name btw, barf) is an onion. Finding an onion seed will be the real challenge

I like that they can learn recipes from one another if they are natural cooks. That's definitely more realistic. All the recipes I know I got from my friends.

OK thanks... Can she not buy an onion from the grocery, then, and plant it?

Oh yeah, I bet she could. I hadn't thought of that. I've been having my sim scouring the park and countryside picking up unknown seeds to plant. Buying them is considerably less time consuming

I get several seeds for several veggies after reading the 1st gardening book, but I dont know if it's because I choose Green Thumb as one of her traits.

Does this help?? They will be in the inventory.

I don't know - maybe. I'll give it a whirl.

She's got a pretty large garden as it is, lots of tomatoes, grapes, apple trees, lime trees, and a few "unknown" plants which just went in the last time I was playing.

I actually rather like the gardening in TS3. I just wish there was a "fertilize all" option so I didn't have to click every single plant individually. The garden is pretty wild and it's usually hard to tell where one plant ends and the other begins. I should have rowed it better.

Yes, that's how I get all my veggies and fruits. I buy them from the grocery store and plant them in the ground. In the inventory panel, you'll click on them and see the options: "Plant, Plant Many, Eat."