Painting her lunch

Christie is a collector.  She wants to collect everything, but knows that she has to create the paintings before she collects them.  But she's mixing the cooking skill with the painting skill when she eats...

The paint brush got stuck to her hand when she went to make lunch.  Maybe she wants to slather some barbecue sauce on her meat...

Glued salmon

It seems that sims will often carry things completely wrong.  Here, one of the sims I created, Piper Wilkins, has a plate of grilled salmon she's just prepared.

She's supposed to have it in her left hand, but it got stuck to her right hand instead.  Good thing she used the extra-sticky oil to grill her meal today.

Light a fire under it

When The Sims 4 was released, like many other simmers, I spent a lot of time playing different families and learning the ins and outs of the new version.  As a bit of a foodie IRL, I made a foodie sim and leveled her up through the basic and advanced cooking skills.  One of her dishes turned out to be hot enough that the stove burner followed it around the kitchen.

It's a little hard to see, but that bright blue circle under the counter is the stove burner animation.  I was half expecting the kitchen to erupt in flames from this.

Misc tips – gardening like a boss

One of the lifetime aspirations is for sims to grow eight different types of plants to perfect quality.  There are the obvious steps to this, including leveling up the gardening skill, fertilizing the plants and starting plants from the higher-quality output of previously grown plants.  But there are a couple other steps that I have my sims take when they are building the perfect garden.

The first and most obvious tip is to leave some room between the plants as you place them in your garden.  Sims won’t walk through plants that are spaced directly next to each other, so plants that are in the middle of clumps like that might wilt and die from neglect.  It doesn’t seem to matter which plants are near each other, there just needs to be enough space for a sim to get in to tend the plants.

I always install sprinklers in my sims’ gardens, and I have the sim with the highest handiness skill upgrade them to auto-water sprinklers.  With the now automatic sprinklers, my gardening sim won’t have to water the plants when she goes out to tend the garden.  Place the sprinklers so that their 5x5 coverage area (which is shown when you’re placing it in buy mode) covers as much of the garden as possible.  The garden shown here is 10x10, so there are four sprinklers.  Besides watering the plants, the sprinklers can also provide some fun as sims play in the spaying water; don’t worry, though, they play carefully enough that they don’t stomp on any of the plants in the garden.

I also always build a fence around my garden and lock the gate to everyone but the sim’s family members.  This will keep the zombies out when they spawn next to the garden on the full moon.  Zombies like to eat harvestable plants whenever they can get to them, and the fence will block them.

Whichever sim is going on adventures should also take some time to harvest the plants that are specific to those locations and then give the produce to the gardener.  With a wider array of plant types, it’s easier to find eight different species to use for your sim’s target perfection count.  Also don’t forget to go to the Fall festival to get some pumpkin to add to your garden.

As your sim’s garden grows higher quality plants, put the surplus produce in the fridge so the chef in your family can use them to make higher quality meals that will keep your sims satisfied longer.

Finally, when your gardener isn’t actively tending the garden, have her learn the fishing skill.  Fish make excellent fertilizer.

Oh, and yes, the seed for the money tree also counts toward the eight different species of plants, so if you find that seed, use it.

Misc tip – get started with cooking

When sims are just starting out, one of the first skills that I usually have them work on is cooking.  Sims with no cooking skill are more likely to start a fire when they use the stove (unless they’re using a stove that has been upgraded to fireproof or someone in the family has the fireproof household lifetime reward), so it’s best to start sims either reading the beginning cooking skill book, or by practicing making foods that don’t require the stove.

Sims can usually prepare autumn salads or peanut butter and jelly sandwiches at lunch or dinner,  Since the sim won’t use the stove to prepare it, there is no chance of starting a fire while making these meals.  If you’ve got World Adventures installed, you might see the option to prepare sushi, another dish that doesn’t require use of the stove (the cooked rice they use must be leftover from previous meals).