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[Bluehotdog5]

I have 12 so far.Also, I got a message saying I ran out of plump helmet spawns. Even though I have some when I go to z then Kitchen. I'm guessing I should prepare meals or something, that's the only solution I can think of anyway

[Rude]

If your fort is fairly new (you don't have many seeds) and your farm plots are large, you may have planted all your seeds already. wait until they come up or eat some plump helmets.
When you prepare plant foods, they don't leave seeds, so you may have prepared all your plump helmets and "used" all your seed supply. go to the cavern and gather plants or trade for some if there's a caravan handy. Cooking is the about only way that you'll run out of seeds so be careful. you can use the 'z' menu to tell your chef not to cook seed containing plants...
prepared meals are only useful for raising the value of food -- dwarfs will eat almost anything raw. So you don't ever NEED to cook anything, but its a great way to increase the happiness of your fort. some plants and plant materials need to be cooked or brewed before they are consumed, but unless your basing your entire food supply on those, you shouldn't run into any problems. consult the wiki for details.

[Urist McBeard]

Your dwarves will eat most everything raw, you don't have to prepare meals. That said, prepared meals do give happy thoughts if you have a decent cook.

I usually turn cooking off on plants and have my stills running on repeat so I have plenty of booze, when food starts getting scarce I just butcher all my animals (or hunt with my military) and cook 'em up.

[malroth]

4 Turkey hens and 1 turkey gobbler will supply your fort with enough eggs to feed your fortress by themselves, add in booze and flour for "roasts" and you'll have an indefinately sustainable cooking industry that will never use up a single seed.  once you've got a cook with decent skills this will also allow you to buy up every caravan effortlessly trading weapons armour and metals for pancakes.

[doublestrafe]

I start cooking as soon as I can. I haven't stopped cooking in my current fortress, but I did turn off my farms when I reached 12,000 prepared meals, any 4 of which can buy out the entire dwarven caravan.

[coolio678]

I usually let the fisherdwarves supply food for cooking, and save all the seed bearing plants for brewing.

[Rude]

4 Turkey hens and 1 turkey gobbler will supply your fort with enough eggs to feed your fortress by themselves, add in booze and flour for "roasts" and you'll have an indefinately sustainable cooking industry that will never use up a single seed.  once you've got a cook with decent skills this will also allow you to buy up every caravan effortlessly trading weapons armour and metals for pancakes.

I can personally verify that is is true. It is ridiculously easy and maintenance free. Flour and quarrel bushes and eggs, i think, produce teh most expensive stacks. When the caravan comes, I just sort by value and type "roast" and sell all but the top 10 or so stacks. This ensure that if something eats in my fort, it eats very well.

[proxn_punkd]

I'd disallow cooking for brewable plants as soon as possible, since cooking kills the seeds and brewing preserves them.

[Jacob/Lee]

In the early game, I'll sometimes order some lavish meals to be made, when I'm not swimming under thousands of plump helmets.

Later, I start a full-time cooking regime and use other things to brew, usually sweet pods.

Cooks are great. They give happy thoughts if they make good food and they break down many small piles of foods into single piles allowing for more efficient storage it seems.

[Loud Whispers]

The only downside to eggs is that they have to be cooked first. But generally, a single dedicated cook makes this a VERY profitable business :d

[King DZA]

After the fortress' first year, you could probably just put "Prepare lavish meal" on repeat and never have to worry about it again.

[Wannazzaki]

After the fortress' first year, you could probably just put "Prepare lavish meal" on repeat and never have to worry about it again.

Tried and true method, that.

[Loud Whispers]

As long as you have rock pots set to repeat.

[peskyninja]

Non-stop production of masterwork snake eggs roast usually works for me.

[Garath]

As long as you have rock pots set to repeat.

I never store prepared meals in pots or barrels. If the stack is higher than 10 it doesn't get stored in a pot anyway, and with egg-booze-some meat and a good cook, the stacks quickly go up to 20, 30, 40... the highest I saw was 63 (lots of elephant meat and eggs in there)