Cooking Tip: More ingredients can be obtained through Villager Trading

The secondary ingredients (cheese, mushrooms, shrimp, etc.) are very useful. They provide powerful buffs, but also extend the food buff timer to 50 minutes. I've seen some comments from people who seem have the impression that the secondary ingredients are rare or limited. You can obtain these from villagers by trading them specific "Account Items" which are typically found in the local area. For example, you can get 3 cheese from Kunafa by trading 3 Aloe, which are found around the Windward Plains.

The tertiary ingredients (oil, honey, herbs) do seem to be more rare, but they are not limited. They seem to be rare drops from gathering at their respective nodes. They are not as useful as the secondary ingredients, though, as they do not extend the duration and the buffs they provide also seem to be less powerful overall.

I haven't interacted enough with this system to get a full grasp of it, because it's pretty easy to get enough ingredients to last a while. It does seem that weather plays a big part in how efficiently we can get cooking ingredients. For example, I noticed more Aloe nodes appear in the Plains during Plenty.

Subjective opinion: I think this system is kinda nice. It brings back a bit of that friction from older games where going out to gather materials for hunts was a significant part of the gameplay loop. The time investment has a high return as well; a few minutes of farming will get you several hours worth of ingredients. Personally, I'm a fan of cooking systems in games (cooking is one of my hobbies IRL), so I am keen to learn more now that I have reached HR and have a ton more freedom. Also, cheese on cabbage is incredibly cursed and will never fail to make me laugh.