With the cooking expansion, I think it might be beneficial to be able to give Tiny and Bigs combinations of items? Rather than them asking for one kind of food, it should just be any three of the blue meals? Perhaps even a set stamina cost of cooked food?
This would make it easier for people who can't babysit all day, and would mean farming is a little less difficult while we all settle into the new food being introduced.

I have a related suggestion;

I would love the ability to feed them for say, 6 hours of farming, rather than a full twelve.

I'd personally even be happy if the required amount of food for 6 hours was "more expnesive" than 12 hours; eg

12 hours = 3 fish platter
6 hours could be 2 fish platter.

Technically more expensive, but I'd rather pay a little more, and know I'm going to use *all* that time, than pay the full amount and miss out on the extra six hours. I'd be happier if it was equal/not more expensive, but I'd be willing to pay cheaper tax XD

That would also be a nice change! Even just feeding them before the time ending to add more time would be nice. I will say it might be easier to drop it to 8 hours instead of 6 hours? Then it's like 3 hours per food item. I personally usually feed them right before I work and it lasts all the time I'm awake, so that's been awfully convenient.

Support. I think it's good to have options, but it's very limiting when they're not accepting the recipe you can make. To me the point of making Farming more hands-off is so that I can fit the idle mechanic into my daily life easier. The more recipes in the rotation, the longer someone might have to wait for the food they have to pop up. I'd rather see them have a menu they want food from and the player can pick what they give them. I always have the ingredients for the Pumpkin Pies so that's the one I use. It's an easy recipe so I wouldn't mind if it only lasted a few hours. I don't really need a 12 hour effect anyway. Heck, even make it give less exp while we're at it. Recipes that cost more items to make could last longer and give more exp, incentivizing their use for people with different play styles.

It's likely that the entire point of making each food item only accepted for a certain amount of time is so that players have a use for different food and more reasons to engage with Cooking. That's definitely a good thing. But for the type of player who doesn't engage with complex recipes often otherwise, it can mean they don't use Farming at all (this is me lol). I'd like to see all these options available at once so you can engage with it in a more versatile way.

Yess, this would be a more consistent drain on food resources too! If you have to wait like five days before giving them food, it's not effective at removing the food from the system. With a menu, or being able to give them options, you remove more food from the system, more consistently, outside of using them for campaigning, and hunting.

No support, I think we should give the current system a while before monkeying around with it more. Cross-posting my response to the other thread about this:

The new recipes provide incentive to trade with other players, and having certain things only available in low-level areas levels the playing field for new players. It also allows more experienced to diversify their game play--not everyone cares about WWs or likes grinding bosses; now they have seriously lucrative alternatives.

It seems really brutal right now because it was just introduced yesterday. But soon players who enjoy grinding for those items will emerge and start selling/trading them. Players who stick with the higher level areas can sell/trade the higher level rewards to them. This will make a more robust economy and provide the game a lot more interest.

You also only need a stack of six of each at any given time if you're being really careful--two of each would also be reasonable, and there are only nine relevant recipes to begin, 2-3 of which are older ones that everyone should already have a stack of (I'm not sure if they take the cookies). Once you've gotten this put together, it's just a matter of replacing your stacks as you slowly use them, which isn't that big of a deal, especially if you've comfortable using the FM or trading with others. This will be much less of a stress point in like 2-3 weeks.