dont worry about preserving food. you can pickup rocks and throw at rabbits. rabbits spawns are very high. so there is always food.
cooking doesn’t preserve food or help with rotten food in .6. it rots just as fast. There are some cooking crafting that can get you vacuum sealed stuff or beef jerky. requires a little higher cooking. really dont worry about this. its so easy to kill rabbits.
To cook…
go outside and get a rock and wield. go back to evac shelter and hit 's’mash. Then pick up splintered wood (the 2x4 is good for crafting so dont use this).
go outside and drop 1 splitnered wood.
stand next to it. press ‘activate’ and when your inventory comes up select your starter matchbook, press the arrow key for the direction to start your fire.
press ‘&’ to cook.
To cook field you need a pot/frying pan or stone pot (requires level 2 survival and level 1 cooking, plus a hammer/stone hammer) or a pointy sticky (craftiable under weapons and you use the 2x4s you get for smashing your bench. you go to crafting and food. to purify water going to crafting and drink.
when you run out of benches, you will hopefully have a wood axe (or stone axe you crafted). wield it .go to a tree. press ‘*’ for construciton and chop down tree. then chop up logs. Logs are heavy to carry so just carry a weapon and stuff with pocks. grab as many as you can and pile them near your house.
your goal is to eventually construction a stove (see bottom of construction). the material is tougher to come by.can be crafted but you have to find stuff. it rains outside and fires dont last long in the rain. you can make a campfire outside with rocks, but that oesn’t see to do much.(its under construction).
finding lighers/matchbooks are very common in town. I dont think I have seen a way to start a fire with just crafted items.
