Ever looked at a cooking stove in-game and wondered "what do I do with all these options?" This setup will not only make good use of meat and the ever-present plentiful plant nutrition, but allow you to make a profit off of it, gain the mood buffs from both fine & lavish meals, not excessively waste nutrition on said fine & lavish meals, and is easily customizable!

Here's what it looks like, and we'll get into the details for how to set it up below.

(Cut off at the bottom: Cook vegetarian fine meal x1)

Looks a bit busy doesn't it? Lets break it down one part at a time. Starting with the x4 bills prioritized over the x1, this is simply to cook food in bulk and also for using any smaller amounts of ingredients that are left in storage. The ingredients choices between a x4 and x1 are set to be the same.

From the top, the ingredients for the survival package meal bills should be mainly untouched. Set these to be forever billed because if you don't have meat, this bill will be skipped automatically. If you're running Ideology, you can change the meal type to be only meat or plants, obviously, but this setup is base game friendly! This is where all your meat/protein is going to be going because, unless you're ranching animals, meat is typically more uncommon to come by.

Packaged survival meals are good for emergency food and travelling, but can also be universally sold to caravans and trade spaceships for profit. So if you've got a manhunting pack at your door, there's profit to be made from it!

Second, are simple meals created entirely from plants. Plant nutrition is incredibly easy to farm and reliably available in RimWorld, and definitely your main food source. The reason for not going straight into Fine or Lavish is that simple meals get a net nutrition increase when cooked from raw ingredients. This means if you're running lower on food than normal and have to start eating into your supply of simple meals, the extra nutrition gained will act as a decent buffer and potentially prevent you from eating into your packaged survival meals!

I recommend scaling the max amount of simple meals to be cooked with your colony's size to be sure you don't only have a few simple meals left and then your colonists start tearing into packaged survival meals! The image's max simple meals was loosely chosen for a colony of 8.

Below the simple meal bills, we come to the vegetarian lavish meals. These are at the bottom, but above vegetarian fine meals, because they have the worst nutrition loss from raw ingredients cooked. What does this mean for you, the player? It means that your colony can enjoy the mood benefits of eating luxury food, which can be counted as your colony's "excess production."

If you're producing too much plant nutrition, which you should, it'll be cut down at the lavish bills where a lot of the nutrition from the raw plant ingredients are wasted in favor of mood buffs. No more excessively large freezers full of hundreds of meals! This utilizes your excess production to make your colonists happier!

And all the way at the bottom, we have vegetarian fine meals. These are not necessary for this setup, but are mainly here to assist training cooks. Vegetarian fine meals do the same thing as lavish; they waste nutrition in favor of mood buffs when eaten. The only reason they are at the bottom, below lavish as strange as it may seem, is because fine meals only require a level 6 cooking skill to create.

Lavish meals and packaged survival meals require a level 8 cooking skill, so this bill is primarily used to train cooks who have not gotten to cooking skill level 8 yet. Once they reach level 8, they'll automatically cook lavish instead because its bill is a higher priority!

So, what does this whole setup do for you?

1. It provides useful and valuable packaged survival meals whenever meat is available, which can be used for travelling or selling.

2. The simple meals set to "Do until you have X" are a buffer for your colonists running out of food by cooking meals that have net nutrition increases. This both helps keep your colony feed in times of shortages, and also provides time before your colonists start eating packaged survival meals which you may want to sell.

3. Any excessive planting you do will be turned into lavish meals, which make your colony happier and prevent clogging up a freezer due to the loss of overall nutrition in cooking said lavish meals.

4. The entire setup is structured the way it is, that once you get all the bills setup, it's very automatic and you don't have to worry about anything aside from being sure you're growing plants.

Thank you for reading! I put together this whole "bill build" by myself and wanted to share it because it's really good. I hope it makes your colony a happier place!