Stardew Valley: Food Festival! - COMPLETE

Grandpa's ghost appeared to me in a dream... in his weird little diagonal bed... he told me I'm a Gourmet Chef now! 

Things I learned:

- So many ways to make a fish and seafood stew.

- DON'T use expired yeast!!

- Brown sugar is the secret to great fruit pies.

- Snails. They're edible I guess.

- Root vegetables, especially parsnips, are so versatile and underrated.

- Stardew Valley recipes lean very North American, and I wanna say... northern states?

- I still don't care for rice pudding.

Total Ratings:

*            x 3

**          x 11

***        x 18

****      x 23

*****    x 26

Average score: 3.72

Favourite Recipe: 

#20: Fish Taco, #46: Farmer's Lunch and #79: Tropical Curry

It's a three-way tie! I'm in charge so I'm allowed to do this. It was such a long challenge with so many good recipes, there were 3 distinctive chunks in the process where I was like "this is it, this is my favourite one of the challenge."

The fish taco was my first ever fish taco, my first time cooking with tuna steak and chimichurri as well. I wanna use them all for cooking more!! and have soft shell tacos again! That's a whole lot of horizons expanded.

Farmer's lunch was very representative of the wonderful simplicity of stardew's food: fresh vegetables, and a powerful combination of flavours. This reminds me of a pear & blue cheese omelet i had in a restaurant once, but using simple cheddar and sweet glazed parsnips makes it a cheap and easy dish to make at home!

I was anticipating Tropical Curry for the whole challenge... How easy would it be to make a pineapple bowl? Would it be sweet and sour and flavourful like I hoped? Finally when it came around it absolutely lived up to my hype!

Least Favourite Recipe:

#10: Strange Bun

Ugh, what was I thinking!? Every step in this process was frustrating. From the nasty smelling filling, to the unshapeable dough cones to the runny garnish, nothing was working how I hoped. I was convinced this would still be edible...

Guess what it made me sick. I actually thought it was the cockles, and tbh I still never want to eat those again, but after getting ill in a later recipe, I realised it might have been the expired yeast after all!!

This recipe really made me take a step back and reassess my approach, as I'm probably too brave and stubborn for my own good.

Special thanks:

Special thanks to the following resources:

stardewvalleywiki.com

Mo - the best at baking!

Twee - a star chef and plays stardew with me on weekends.
Tobi - my spreadsheet legend, morale booster and stardew witch wife.