Chef Ard

The beginning of this year... I’d gotten my Paladin to level 80, I’d collected some mounts, done a bunch of Heroics and was generally looking for something to do. I thought obtaining the Chef title might be a fun thing to do. So I set about leveling my Fishing and Cooking (these two work well together) and started working on some of the Achievements.

One of the tougher Achievements is one to obtain and cook a big variety of Outland cooking recipes. Some of these are quite easy to come by, they can be bought from a vendor. I found a list of all the recipes and sources. I realized there were two very hard to obtain recipes: The Delicious Chocolate Cake and Stormchops. I was sure I hadn’t ever done the Daily Shattrath cooking quest before and so hadn’t obtained either of these. As the list of Outland recipes neared completion (by this time I’d already gotten all the other cooking achievements) I found it was the Cake and the Stormchops that were missing.

Occasionally I would look at my Cooking Achievements and the Outland recipe meta Achievement and the grayed out Cake and Chops. Then, a week or two later of repeatedly doing the daily Cooking quest I struck gold in the Dalaran spice bundle! I found the recipe for the Delicious Chocolate Cake! I quickly gathered the materials and baked the cake. Now all that stood between ‘Ard’ and ‘Chef Ard’ was the missing recipe for Stormchops.

Months went by, the statistics for number of daily Cooking quests done grew steadily. Doubt set in – did I get the recipe and sell it? Would it possible to get it again? How would I know? Finally yesterday, as the counter for number of Cooking dailies done increased to 177 I had to be sure. I opened a Tciket to a GM.

Late last night, after our ToC 25 raid I was invited to a conversation with a GM. Hi Ard, do you have a moment to talk about your ticket concerning the recipe. Sure I do. You appear to already know the recipe...

At this, my heart sank. I quickly opened my Cooking window, and searched for the Stormchops – and there it was. The GM couldn’t tell me when I had learned it, but I assume it was very near the beginning of my Cooking career I probably picked it up and learned it without giving any thought to the Achievement. And then later on assumed I did not have it because it can only come from a daily Cooking quest.

I built a fire and cooked 1 Stormchop. (Yes, I’d been carrying around the ingredients for a month or two). At last they flashed on my screen:

“Outland Gourmet”
“Chef”

I think the hat suits me quite well, thank you.