I'm currently working on a RPG project with this battle system (which is amazing) and this thread has helped me many times, so here is something in return. I don't know who it will help out, but when I figured it out I thought it would be useful for others to know, my cooking system.
What you do:
1)Create a state that lasts for 1 second.
2)Create a non-cooked item and the cooked version of it (ie. raw meat and cooked meat).
3)Make an event, like a fire or stove, and have it change your state to a specific state used for cooking (that lasts for 1 second).
4)After the fire event changes your character's state it opens the menu (followed by a 17 frame wait, enough time for the game to open the auto-opened menu and still be in a cooking state but not enough time for someone to exit the auto-opened menu and open their own menu).
5)There the player goes to items and selects what they want to cook (ie. raw meat).
6)The item (non consumable) runs a common event when selected that checks for the cooking state on the player.
7)If the player is in the cooking state the common event offers a choice to confirm cooking of the selected item.
Notes:
-Have to create a common event for each item that can be cooked.
-For the "else" on the conditional branch that checks for the cooking state put something that the game will say when it denies cooking of the item (ie. I'll need a fire to cook this).
-Have an imput number in the conditional branch for the cooking state so the player can choose how much of the item they want to cook at once.
Thanks for your time, SRS Siege