Stews

[Labtop 215]

Yea, I avoid milk because I feel that it breaks the game.  Hence why I began experimenting with stews and soups.  I feel dried and smoked meat breaks the game too, to an extent, but at least you have to work for smoked and dried meat.  But it seems like there is little point to making stews and soups once you have a supply of dried and smoked meat, precisely because you can keep eating preserved meat, while waiting for the currently preserving meat to finish. 

As long as you can hunt animals and get the meat to your place reasonably fast (before the meat expires), and you have a series of cords, you can keep preserving meat.  You get the benefit of the long shelf life of the meat without having any meat wasted.  Keeping extra raw meat for use in stews and soups in vanilla seems like more of a waste than eating your dried and smoked meat, since that meat can go bad before you eat all of it.  Sure you can feed your dogs spoiled meat, but they eat smoked and dried meat too, and they only eat spoiled meat when they are starving, so that meat is still pretty badly wasted.

The small amount of nutrition lost from bears that you smoke or dry seems to be a consideration, but a very marginal one I think considering that you lose even more nutrition if you let it spoil.

You can even build up a major excess of dried and smoked meat, and trade the excess everything else if you are inclined.  Which is kind of bad, because it makes stews and soups a waste in most cases.  You sort of need soups and stews to get good usage out of vegetables and herbs, but they're practically optional, and more of a hassle to acquire than just more meat.

[PALU]

Dogs readily eat spoiled raw meat. My characters feed their dogs a piece of spoiled meat every morning (and extra when they're hungry, unless they help themselves to the spoiled meat pile before my character finishes the current task). Dogs need to be starving to eat human carcasses, but that's a different issue.

From a pure game play perspective, smoked and dried meat is the easiest way to get fed. However, I like the minor role playing aspect of feeding my character proper meals, and it also makes agriculture useful, so it provides some additional things to do.

[Saiko Kila]

Yea, basically, I've found it easier to jump between nourished and well-fed with dried and smoked meat.  If I go with soups and stews, should I wait until my hunger meter is full or close to full then or is there a "better" way to eat so to speak.

Essentially, am I eating wrong?

With soups, it is probably better to wait till you are dehydrated (a bit), to conserve water. With stews you can eat like with roasted fats of big animals (except a stew is usually less nourishing), i.e. when nutrition is relatively low. I wouldn't care about hunger meter, only nutrition. Also well-fed, nourished or abundant is the same for most purposes, it only gives you a vague idea how much longer till your next meal. There is only one often performed task where it is kind of important to have better nutrition (preferably abundant) before attempting it - the final step of tanning, i.e. beating. You cannot safely pause it, it always takes hours, even with max skill, and it uses much energy (nutrition).

In your case, if you don't feel good about stews, I think it would be better to just abandon them. The stews are made faster than smoked/dried items, they keep longer than roasted meat, and if made properly they are better than the plain meats, but their real purpose is to use low-nutrition, crappy food (like carnivore meat, mushroom, berries, plants and what not) and make something better out of this for immediate consumption. Well, that and a bit of realism. Who would be happy eating dried  meat for weeks?