Excited to report that I've managed to get custom foods that, after much poking and general frustration in SimPE, suit my needs very much. Between my husband and myself, we managed to edit these doughnuts so that they're properly classified as deserts with no weird extra wonky menus on the fridge and these muffins to be properly classified as not deserts and to appear properly in fridge menus. Both required some editing of BHAVs, because apparently that's necessary when turning anything from a meal to a desert or vise versa.

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After spending at least an hour fighting with Google, I figure it's time to ask for some help from real people. :p
In case it wasn't obvious from where I'm posting this ( ), I'm looking for a few things, most of which are custom foods:

Cornbread
Corn muffins
Basically any food containing corn? (I did find and download Grits just now, but I want more.)
Stews/soups (I have a few, but I'm looking for more)
Doughnuts (especially jelly-/cream-filled ones)

I don't have OFB installed, so I can't use anything requiring OFB.
In addition to that...I'm looking for custom foods sims can get from the fridge from some standard fridge menu ("serve meal..." etc) and that is available as a group meal. I'm not interested in anything that requires custom dishes. And also, I'd very much prefer foods to have a preparation stage (foods cloned from gelatin have the unfortunate side effect of producing unfulfillable "learn how to make" wants, which are kinda annoying).

Also looking for deco corn cobs, squash, fruit, etc that can be placed on tables, etc.

Edit: Also, I won't put English writing in my game. This is much more of a hard and fast rule than the custom plates thing; I might be persuaded to consider extremely impressive custom foods that require custom plates, but nothing's impressive enough to put the English writing in.

Can't give you any doughnuts without custom plates, but here's one for cornbread. http://www.theninthwavesims.com/201...b-required.html

Correct me if I'm wrong but I think I saw some of those at PBK. It might not match your game's time period though.

Edit: added link

http://www.medievalsims.com/forums/...92a0b4db444c21c

http://www.medievalsims.com/forums/...hp?f=240&t=9144 - not exactly donuts but fruit tarts

Edit 2: Ugh, I just noticed that you don't want custom plates. Sorry.

Unfortunately, that says it requires OFB.


I might have to give in and start considering custom plates...but maybe not those ones; they're so shiny.

I'm sure you probably know about these, but just in case...
Vanilla
Raspberry/Chocolate/Lemon
Rainbow
No custom plate, because there is no plate file. (That is just a default plate in the pictures, I believe.)
Nice thing is you have to "prep" them since they're cloned from lunchmeat sandwiches. (I pretend it's adding the toppings. )

Those doughnuts were the ones I would have linked to. I considered them custom plates because of the serving box.

This is also cornbread, but wouldn't work for me. You might have more luck. https://www.thesimsresource.com/art...read/id/736220/

@Charity Maybe it's lacking textures to work? It seems to have 2 more required files.

Though there's a comment that says it causes the game to freeze so that might not be it.

I can get cornbread under "Cajun Food." Check AriesFlare's foods in the downloads section here at MTS for that suite of recipes - most of my custom foods are AriesFlare's.

I'm not sure if I had seen them before, but....those first ones have English writing all over! I don't want to bother with custom plates, but I can technically if I have to. I'm flat out not putting English writing in my game. I might have to consider the Simlish ones, though...they look pretty cool.


It says, "Customs plates from this set required!"


I've considered some of this creator's foods before (I really like the look of their taco casserole!), but they seem to use non-standard fridge menus for nearly everything, and I just...can't.

I know I'm really picky, but custom foods are one of those things that can mess things up if you put it in and then decide you don't like it.

I can see that, actually. I have way too many menus and have even considered learning to edit them to be more convenient, though I'm not there yet.

Yeah, I've been thinking I need to learn to edit things like that too...of course, I'm nowhere near that point myself.

It's pretty simple, actually. Open up the food item in SimPE, go to the left panel and click Text Lists. There's a couple in the right panel, click through them until you see one--usually Prim MakeActionString or [Text Lists]. You see something like this (it's lientebollemeis's Belladonna Sub Sandwich except I edited the menus)



Then you edit it. It's always like this:
05: Have Dinner...
06: Have Lunch...
07: Have Breakfast...
08: Serve Dinner...
09: Serve Lunch...
0A: Serve Breakfast...

I've never really seen lines 0B - 11 in-game, so I usually leave them.

Anyways you can also put them under sub-menus too, I put all the sub sandwiches under a submenu, and a bunch of pies and cakes I downloaded from elsewhere under another submenu. It makes it look pretty nice and tidy.

If the name appears messed up in the Make... and Make Many... pie menus (that's OFB though) you can fix it in the Catalog Description.

While that certainly is helpful, I still have no idea what I'm doing. I think I can edit the missing capitalization on some of these foods I've got downloaded, but how do I change something from showing up as "lunch" to only showing up as "desert"? I've been poking around these files for a while now, and I haven't actually done anything. I think I finally figured out what you meant by sub menus by looking at a soup I have that's already in a "soup" submenu...

You just change "Make Dinner..." to "Make Dessert..." or "Serve Lunch..." to "Serve Dessert..." pretty much.

I know the second cornbread has custom plates, but you said you might have to accept custom plates.

I've remenued a lot of AriesFlare's stuff, as I hate the extra menus too.

Sorry, yes, I did say that. I didn't mean to be rude in my response to you. I suppose I should have said that cornbread doesn't look impressive enough for me to bother with custom plates.

Bit of an update:
Thank you all so much for your help so far!
I've manage to find some muffins I can pretend are corn muffins (they're even about the right colour!). The problem is, though, that they're only showing up as desert for some reason?? Even after I tried to change them to normal food menus like breakfast???
This whole re-menuing thing is weird. Some work great, no issues whatsoever, and then there are the ones that just...don't. We managed to figure out that sometimes we need to change the language to UK English, and maybe that's the problem for all of the stubborn ones; it's just late now and we need to sleep.
But those doughnuts....we managed to move them successfully into the "desert" menu, and we even managed to sub-menu them! But they're putting the weirdest extra menu option on the fridge at lunchtime only (doesn't appear at either breakfast or supper): "Assign Job...[doughnut name]...make game development"???? It seems like something very broken from OFB, but we just want to remove it, because everything else is working so well.
But while we're on the subject of the doughnuts, how difficult is it to change what times of day a food item shows up on the fridge? The doughnuts won't show up at breakfast, which is the time they seem the most fitting!

If you're just altering the text strings as in the instructions above, all you are doing is changing what shows in the pie menu. If you want the muffins to be available at another time of day, you have to do that in the BHAVs.

What do you want these muffins to do exactly?

I have never been able to make stuff set for dessert show up correctly for Breakfast/Lunch/Dinner. It's why I still have fried octopus for dessert lol.

Pfft. I'm so lazy that I just enable all of my food for any meal. Hey, if I can eat ice cream for dinner, then so can my sims!

(I don't eat really eat ice cream for dinner. Also, donuts are a breakfast food? This is news to me.)

I managed to edit AF's foods to be in the normal menus. It took me FOREVER but it was so worth it. I just downloaded a bunch of foods I wanted, loaded up the tutorial and did them all at the same time. And there is a tutorial somewhere on how to change the time of day something is available which I used but a while ago now.

Pay attention on another custom item to the proper order of these things... I accidentally did many of them the wrong way around at first and so I'd have "Serve Lunch" and "Serve Dinner" showing up at the same time, and had to redo them.

But yes, it is an extremely strange decision on the behalf of the creator and rather irritating to have to undo. It must have taken them ages to go in and do that for every custom food too, and why?

Edit: Here is the right bit to modify with time of day. I'm scared pf BHAVs but I managed this.

http://www.modthesims.info/showthread.php?t=222202

This may also help:

http://www.modthesims.info/showthread.php?t=512383

When do you eat them? Doughnuts can be eaten as snacks, but by far the majority of them, in America, are eaten at breakfast, with coffee. The Dunkin' Donuts chain used to have a commercial starring a sleepy Dunkin' Donuts manager getting up at oh-dark-thirty, sighing "time to make the donuts," and going in to work while the rest of the world slept, in order to have the donuts fresh and warm and perfect when the early shift stopped in for breakfast.

My husband, who's from Georgia, took a long time to adjust to the fact that when his San Antonio co-workers brought in breakfast for everyone, it was always breakfast tacos, not donuts. And yes, I know, tacos for breakfast aren't a thing anywhere else but that's only because you've never had them!

They're usually desserts, less commonly snacks where I'm from. Most of the time, we only buy them by the box on special occasions.

So there is some truth to those movies that there are people who eat donuts in diners or bring them to work. (Why always policemen though? Because it's fast and can be eaten on the go?)

Tacos for breakfast sounds good though. I might have to try that some time.

Since they are muffins and not "cupcakes," we want them out of the "desert" menus and in "serve breakfast..." "serve lunch..." They can be at dinner too, though a muffin for dinner seems a bit strange. Mostly we just want them to be not "desert," but we need them (like the doughnuts, but even more so than the doughnuts) to show up at breakfast time, which they're not doing at present.


I mean, fair enough; but apparently to do that, we need to learn to edit BHAVs.


Awesome. Thanks so much! We'll have to read through that and see if we can figure it out. Is BHAVs where we can remove the weird and broken "assign job..." bit from the doughnuts? Because at present that's probably the most obnoxious menu-related thing we're getting on fridges. And there's nothing about "assign job..." in the text strings we were editing.

Cops and doughnuts are a cliche, but there's a reason for it. Doughnut shops tend to be open round the clock, so patrolling policemen can get their caffeine-and-sugar fix at any time, day or night. (I believe some donut shops actually have discounts for law enforcement; they benefit from being thought of as "the cop hangout," and I don't remember ever hearing of a donut shop being robbed.) The donuts can be eaten in the car without too much mess, the coffee comes in disposable cups, and if your job consists of long periods of boredom punctuated by moments of high stress, a sugar high is very welcome.

The best breakfast tacos are in fresh, warm, soft tortillas, so unless you have a tortilleria in your town you won't be able to fully recreate the breakfast taco experience, but all you really need are soft tortillas (corn or flour, either one) and your favorite savory breakfast food. Common fillings are scrambled eggs, chorizo, bacon, fried potatoes, and country sausage. However, my husband has learned to like carne guisada with cheese in his breakfast tacos, and refried beans are another common ingredient. It all depends on what you're used to.

Around here (west coast of Canada), those would 100% of the time be called "breakfast burritos." McDonald's sells them. I think they started as a trend in the 90s and never stopped.