Kitchen

[animary]

When you are crafting you can stand by a stack or pile of something and that acts as if it's in your inventory, you draw items from it as needed. This works when cooking also, but it's a pain to lug barrels and stacks to the fireplace and try to arrange them so you access all ...then move them away when done; or fill your inventory with enough items to cook three things, store those things, then get enough items to make three more. By the time I have restocked my tables I have inventoried my vast stock of unacceptable language from all this running around.

I propose a designated "kitchen" area, several tiles adjacent to your fireplace on which anything placed becomes your "inventory" for cooking. Stacks of peas, carrots, cucumbers, onions, beets, etc., a barrel of water, a barrel of honey, a barrel of whichever flour you need; you stand at the fireplace with an empty inventory ready to receive the food cooked as you draw the required ingredients from the "kitchen".

Perhaps a certain paving could delineate the area, or the texture would change once you've designated that area; maybe your cooking skill would factor in to how large the area could be