Project Lore

The WoW cooking grind has always been something I've avoided like the plague. Sure, the initial basic cooking of Spice Bread is enough to buy your way to level 50 or so cooking, but beyond that I have not ventured far. All that gathering of bear and raptor meat, clams and crab claws, eggs of all types and countless other ingredients wasn't exactly appealing to me. So I've been putting it off. Needless to say, I wasn't too pleased -- at all -- when I set off to start my Pilgrim's Bounty achievements and discovered that cooking is a staple aspect of the new holiday ( who would have thought!) I cringed at the realization that my cooking only hovered at about level 70. But I decided to not be discouraged, and soon found the shiny silver lining for myself and all of my fellow cooking procrastinators. Upon opening up your Bountiful Cookbook, you'll find five recipes that can be used in succession to bypass the other alternative grind to at least level 300+ cooking. First up: the Spice Bread Stuffing, which requires the absolute minimum cooking experience to be learned at level 1. Buy enough Simple Flour and Mild Spices to cook up a ton of Spice Bread, and level up that cooking to 100, when you can learn to make Pumpkin Pie. Rinse and repeat to cooking 160 for Cranberry Chutney, 220 for Candied Sweet Potato and 280 for Slow-Roasted Turkey. All of the ingredients, except for the turkey in that final recipe, can be purchased from the Pilgrim's Bounty Vendors found outside each capital city, greatly reducing the amount of time you'll need to hunt for the right kind of meat. Just keep a stack of each of the ingredients on hand, since some of them are unique to certain cities. And if you have my luck, it'll probably take you a few times to complete that Turkinator achievement, during which you can pick up a few dozen turkeys to cook up the final recipe until it no longer yields levels. It's as easy as pie. Now if I can just garner up the motivation to grind those final 100 cooking levels... Who else has been able to use this fun and festive event as a means to level up your cooking skills? I've also seen quite a few guildies obtain other cooking achievements after learning these new recipes, from Lunch Lady all the way up to Chef de Cuisine.