There can't be a Harvest Moon in the RimWorld.

"Current cooking skill level is insufficient to work."

.........

Simple food is fine.

Choose a task: Cook a simple meal.

The moment this decision was made, my body started moving involuntarily!

With one hand, I skillfully turned on the stove and placed a pot of not-too-large amount of water on it to boil.

Then he took a step and stood right in the middle of the stove, picked up a potato with his left hand and a kitchen knife with his right, and started swinging the knife at the potato in mid-air.

Every inch the knife flashed, the potato skin slid off, and my fingers could just back up before the knife came, grabbing another spot. In the blink of an eye, the potato had been rotated all over with one hand, and a thin layer of skin had been peeled off.

Because the potato itself had some bumps and dents, I made a few more sharp cuts to carefully remove the roots and damaged areas.

At this moment, the potato, propelled by inertia, was placed on the cutting board and was still spinning around.

Before I finished cutting, my hands started moving on their own again, thumping and slicing the potatoes into small pieces, which I then tossed into the boiling water.

The pot of water was boiling rapidly, and the presence of a bunch of uninvited potatoes didn't affect its state. After a burst of steam, it continued to boil, and the rising bubbles instantly covered the potato chunks, making the pot look chaotic.

At that moment, I automatically turned off the stove and poured the boiling potatoes, which were now unrecognizable, into a plate that had been prepared beforehand.

The potatoes absorbed all the water in the pot perfectly, leaving not a single drop of excess broth.

The potato was in a semi-solid, semi-liquid state, looking like a mashed potato that had been mashed with great effort.

I estimate that the entire operation took less than three minutes.

Mr. Dart walked in from outside the kitchen, probably just realizing that I was actually going to use the stove.

This was a huge provocation for someone as confident in his culinary skills as him.

But when he entered the kitchen, he saw a completely bewildered me, staring blankly at a plate of food neatly arranged on it.

"...Did you make this?"

After a long while, Mr. Dart finally asked the question.

I turned my head, bewildered, nodded twice, and asked.

"Want to try some?"

Boss Dart seemed to have encountered some prehistoric creature. He walked over and examined it for a long time before taking a spoon, taking a bite of a boiled potato—or rather, what is officially called simple food—and savoring it.

"It has absolutely no texture, and the taste is so bland it's practically nonexistent. It's good for nothing but filling your stomach."

He finally made this assessment and put down his spoon.

But when he put it down, he added something rather strange.

"But you completed the peeling, boiling, and baking process in just a few minutes. Are you a chef from the dazzling city?"

I also took a bite, and it felt like the food melted directly in my mouth like ice and snow, flowing down my tongue and into my stomach.

Then a wonderful sense of satisfaction welled up inside me.

It's not about the wonderful taste of delicious food, but rather the sense of security that arises after a person has eaten their fill. This feeling may accompany people from birth to death, but it never skips the process of eating; it bursts forth so purely and directly in the body with just one bite.

I couldn't resist taking a couple more bites. Mr. Dart seemed to suddenly realize something, so he took a spoon, ate most of it, and began to slowly savor it.

With each bite, his expression was incredibly rich, a series of emotions ranging from annoyance to satisfaction to regret, finally revealing a strange longing, like a hungry baby following its instincts and doing what it wants.

Then repeat this process.

Just after we finished our simple meal, he finally spoke.

"As a chef, I am completely unwilling to give this dish a positive review. From the cooking method to the ingredients, from the care put into it to the preparation process, it is utterly worthless."

"But undeniably, this is something that comes closest to human definition of food."

"This kind of thing is a desecration of food."

"But it is also a soul-searching question for every chef."

I nodded, agreeing with that statement.

This stuff is a bit like the thick, tasteless nutritional paste I used to use to survive, but it achieves a magical effect by deceiving the senses.

It's unlikely that anyone can resist the instinct to eat or develop a psychological aversion to this food.

And so, a strange dish that had nothing to do with cuisine, flavor, preference, or taboo was created.

Chapter 7 Assembly Line Process

After finishing his sentence, Mr. Dart gave me a complicated look, but still couldn't help asking a question out of curiosity.

"Could you make it for me again? I never imagined that after all these years in Mineral Town, the culinary world outside would have become so unfamiliar to me."

"Boss, I'm not a chef... Never mind, I'll make it again and you can take a look."

I took a potato and stood by the stove.

"Choose a task: Cook a simple meal."

The next second, my body started moving involuntarily again, and I even started cooking naturally before my eyes left the work interface.

In the eyes of Boss Dart, the young man in front of him, who appeared somewhat immature, suddenly exuded a stern and ruthless aura.

Like a skilled factory worker standing in front of a more advanced, fully automated production line, a strange force transformed the process he knew best into something utterly unfamiliar.

Despite his incredibly stiff and uncoordinated movements, distorted knife grip, and incorrect potato handling, every step was exquisitely precise, leaving no room for respite. In the blink of an eye, he completed the steps that would normally take three to four people to accomplish.

With one hand, I quickly turned on the fire, added water, and filled a pot with the amount of water that was easiest to boil but also obviously easy to boil dry.

With his other hand, he picked up a knife and meticulously peeled off every inch of the skin. Without washing away the dirt from the potatoes, he cleaned away all the inedible parts.

Then, in the blink of an eye, another strange cutting technique appeared, stubbornly resembling that of an unqualified apprentice, yet incredibly steady, slicing the potato into crisscrossing pieces...

Dart guarantees that, based on his years of cooking experience, every intersection of these knife cuts will be a perfect right angle!

On the other hand, I have discovered another amazing function of this system.

That is, even if my attention is immersed in the system interface, or flies to some other damn place, it will not affect my work efficiency.

After all, this kind of miraculous cooking method is definitely not something that I or anyone else could master under normal circumstances.

I checked my personal attributes and saw this line of small text as a note in the character attribute panel.

Character Job Attribute: Cooking Speed

This person's speed when cooking food

Base value: 100% (the limit for standard humans)

Other attributes: Global working speed * 110%

Skill: Cooking 8 * 88%

health:

Operational capability: *100% (weight 100%)

Visual ability: *100% (weight 30%, maximum 100%)

Final value: 97%

This might mean that my cooking speed, like my carrying ability, is based on the limits of human capabilities. Taking into account my culinary skills, trait bonuses, operational abilities, visual reaction speed, and other factors, it can ultimately be approximately equal to 97% of the human limit.

In other words, my cooking speed is basically at the fastest human speed.

Moreover, humans are subject to various uncontrollable factors. Their mindset, habits, and cooking methods all have an impact on their cooking. No chef would set a career goal on such an unreliable achievement as cooking at the fastest speed.

So, with the system eliminating all distractions and allowing me to focus solely on cooking, I might be the fastest chef in the world!

"This assessment is quite subtle..."

As they spoke, another expert action was taken: turning off the heat and taking the pot off the stove. A dish exactly the same as the one we had just eaten appeared in front of us.

"Mr. Dart, would you like to try some more?"

I tentatively asked the middle-aged man in front of me.

But the middle-aged man in front of her seemed to have all the oxygen drained from his lungs, waving his hand weakly.

"No need, this is the first time I've discovered that chefs can have such strange methods."

"Tell me the truth, where exactly are you a chef from?"

"I'm really not a chef..."

I observed the food and responded instinctively.

Because at that moment I discovered something interesting.

This simple food, in my view, actually contains that magical writing that the system always has.

Simple food

Ingredients: Potatoes

Condition: Fresh

Shelf life: Will rot in three days (if not refrigerated).

Item Description: This is a simple dish prepared quickly with a small amount of ingredients. Special processing techniques make it suitable for the tastes of the colonists. Rumor has it that this dish arose as a retaliation by a food company within the United Merchants' Guild against the spice factory's malicious price gouging.

Ingredients: 0.5 units of vegetarian food

Nutritional value: 0.85 (the nutritional intake of a standard human meal)

So this food is just for filling people's stomachs, no wonder the taste and flavor are so weak that they are almost nonexistent. The only thing that can be guaranteed is that people won't feel nauseous after eating it.

Boss Dart finally snapped out of his daze and asked again.

What other dishes can you make?

I checked the system menu, and there are only these three options, which will be displayed near the stove.

I walked among the kitchen utensils, looking for any other tools that could trigger new recipes, but nothing changed, and in the end, I came up empty-handed.

It wasn't until my hand touched a piece of raw beef hanging there that the system suddenly added a line of small text.

"Available workbench detected."