Now, on to your second task; sustaining yourself with food. It is a skill that may be easier for some to raise than others, and it requires a somewhat long amount of time to do. In cooking, you can create various types of foods such as stews, casseroles, and meals which you can only use below certain levels of hunger, depending on the quality of the food.
To improve your cooking skill (you can view this by pressing F2), you must make dishes with a difficulty of within 10 levels of your own skill. For example, if you have 1 cooking skill and you try to create a difficulty 42 casserole, you won't gain any skill from it. To view the difficulty of a dish you want to make, place all of the ingredients you want to use into a pottery bowl and examine it. The difficulty can change depending on the fire or oven you cook in, and the quality of the container. Examine the bowl again when it is cooking to double check the difficulty.
Many types of food can be created, and there are endless combinations of ingredients. However, there are certain restrictions that you must adhere to, such as you can't use just two berries or two herbs. You can create a stew out of 2 fish, so if you can manage to borrow or create a fishing pole, you can use that, but the stew will be of very poor quality.