More Awesome Than You!

A lot of my sims want to enter one. I put the cooking contest table on a community lots and had my sims cook some food and stuff it in their inventory. I visited the lot, but the table had no options at all. The judge was there, pacing back and forth, but she also had no options.

 ???

The only way I've ever been able to do it is to go to the cuisine hobby lot. On the fridges in the kitchens there it gives the option "cook for contest." Cook your whatever, and the contest automatically starts.

Maybe either a) only the hobby lot can have contests, and/or b) you have to cook the food for the contest on the lot, so there's nothing for you because there's no kitchen where you've placed the contest table? If there is a kitchen on-lot, try checking the kitchen's options.

All I know to suggest I'm afraid. :(

D'oh, I figured it out.

EAxis was just purposely unhelpful in the want tooltip.

You have to cook a GROUP MEAL using the Make Many option, which puts food in your inventory without having to grab it off a counter. Then when you go to a lot with the contest table you can enter your food.

Would it really have been that hard to put this little bit of info into the damn tooltip? There isn't a word in there about the size of the meal or how to make it! It just says cook food and go to a lot with a contest table.

You don't need the 'make many' option, I think that's intended for when you want your sims to make multiple meals to sell.
As moonDragoness says, at the cuisine hobbylot you get the extra option to 'cook for contest', which I think adds no more functionality than a normal 'make' option.
They both put the food into your inventory.

First time I tried this my sim burnt the lobster, so I got her to try again and made ribs on the bbq.
When you click the contest table it gives you the choice to pick a meal from whatever is in the inventory.
Then magically another 3 sims, including the hobby maven, pull food from their butts to go against you in the contest.
I thought the ribs had no chance of winning against 2 other perfect lobsters and a salad, but they did!

Not sure if you can have contests on an community lot, as the food-judge NPC is needed too

Any community lot works. My sim won with a salad against pancakes, toaster pastries, and something unidentifiable.

I like how you can eat any of the food after the contest, like it's a buffet.

If you place kitchen equipment on a community lot you have the option 'make food for contest' that goes straight to inventory without risk of being eaten.

I'm pretty sure you can also "serve" a group meal so long as you cancel the action before they actually take a plate from the platter.  Then you can stick the platter in your inventory.  When you click on the contest table, all possible entry meals in the sim's inventory will be displayed for you to choose from.

For some reason, Cuisine hobby snack platters don't qualify.  Not sure if Gelatin does?  lol

And yeah, the tooltip isn't very helpful.

That is utter crap... 'make' does NOT put the food in the inventory.
I think I must have dreamed it did.
It leaves the dish on the counter 'unserved', which is a way to torture the hungry kids as they only get the option to 'clear up' or 'call to meal', and the latter seems to do nothing.

The option to 'make many' puts the food into inventory.

Well, if you want it in the inventory, it's pretty easy to pick it up and stick it in your inventory...

I also noticed that eating the food doesn't fulfill wants to eat that type of food.  Which is rather annoying.

I haven't noticed this - my sim had the desire to eat Santa Cookies, and eating them got me the want points. (Ahahah, Santa cookies in the contest... I've also had someone enter TOASTER PASTRIES.)

Perhaps you served custom food, cloned pre-FT? No clue as to why that would have an effect, but I dunno why it wouldn't grant the want in the first place.

One of my sims won the cooking contest with Santa cookies. Don't knock em!  ;D

One of my sims lost against toaster pastries.

I'm liking the cooking contest. Since all my sims want to win one, I must have done three or four dozen of them already. However, I think for NPCs winning and losing is somewhat arbitrary, since some of them win despite not having cooking skill and/or not cooking a better food. Possibly broken code. What else is new?

No, not a custom food.  The first time I noticed this was with a sim who cooked up ribs for the first time and entered them in the contest.  Uppon winning and fulfilling the want to win, he wanted to "eat ribs".  So I had him grab a plate of his winning entry and eat it, but no want points and want stayed there.  I thought this was just how the stupid contest normally worked, but since you've said it fulfilled wants for your sims, I guess something else was borked there.  Will have to test this further.

Ctrl+click on the want. It will reroll and be fulfilled. I always do it for wants that should be triggered but aren't for some reason.

You also need to be in Debug mode when you do this, just in case there's someone out there who isn't always playing in it (aside from BBS Sheeple.)