Without perking into anything to increase forge ahead drops or cooking magazines, I unlocked the stews only about 1-2 real hours before the dew collector. The dew collectors allow me to make stews without issue. Before that, there's steak and potatoes that is a good food option that doesn't require water and also requires fewer crops than the stews, making it also easier to cook before you have a farm really producing well (for those of us who don't put points into LotL right away). I also use 0% return for jars because I don't want empty jars to begin with, let alone having to get more whenever I drink something. Anyhow, I get that people like empty jars. And I get that people play the game differently than I do. I do a lot of scavenging in the early game so I have the resources I need to do a decent base early in the game rather than trying to focus on building the base immediately. After all, there isn't any real need for a base for the first few days. I'll drop a few storage crates by the trader until I have a base with storage set up and, if needed, I'll even drop a workstation or two there in a land claim so I can move them when I build a base. But for those who want to spend the first days building a base or mining or whatever instead of scavenging, the game will play out differently for them.