So I have challenges to craft quality food and somehow I just can't. Is this a skill you learn later on or am I just bad? I'm getting extras when I craft
If your skill/stats are too low, getting high quality isn't that easy. I've found that getting Great on everything guarantees it(regardless of how long it takes to finish the craft), getting one or two Nice you most often get it, and on longer harder crafts getting a few "nothing" bonus still can yield a quality item, but mostly it'll fail. You should try to make sure you get as many great as possible.
In terms of being lower geared and such, the one where you have to press A when the bar is in the middle is the easiest to Great, stats don't even matter as long as you time it right, the spam A is a mixed bag depending on your stats but generally a good one, the hold A is the worst. Because of that, you can manipulate the RNG by restarting a craft when you get too many "Hold A" actions, or until you get enough of the yellow power ups to power through them.
Restarting doesn't consume the items, for whatever reason(I mean it's intended that way, but it's a weird choice, I think losing random materials when cancelling would have made more sense), which means you can just restart until you get a lot of timing and spam ones and can HQ almost everything this way.
Other choices would be to level up a bit doing other stuff and put points into Focus(I think it's focus for cooking), crafting an artisan armor set if you haven't yet(it's +1 focus per piece and is fairly low level weaver), crafting or buying a new tool if yours isn't the best or grinding random easier recipes to increase your cooking skill.
Also a question, I'm closing in on 50, was wondering, is the Lunares coin gear unique or can it be crafted eventually? It seems most of it isn't in the crafting list I've seen, is that gear better than crafted stuff?
