After asking a number of people what they thought of cooking in Skyrim, I was frequently told that its useless and kinda sits there as an added feature. While that might be just the case, i thought of an alternative way to approach cooking (alot of people probably had the same idea, just putting it out there).

-Getting Hungry
Over time your character in Skyrim can become hungry and as a result can become slightly choppy in combat. The longer you go without eating, the harsher the penalties.
Eating will sustain you for a few hours, after that a character may experience a decrease in performance. For example:
-decrease in damage out put from weapons by 5%,10%,15% and up to 20% depending how long it has been since they last ate.
-increase cost of magicka when casting spells, as your mind may not be completely focused on the task at hand due to hunger, by 5%,10%,15% and up to 20%.
-the cost of stamina when swinging weapons, holding breath for bow, and while running is increased by 5%, 10%, 15% and 20%
-health, magicka, and stamina suffer a decrease in regeneration by 30% at all levels
-and maybe a last example could include a decrease in running speed slightly by 5% and up to 10%.

- Skill Tree For Cooking
This could include features such as buffs and improvements to eating food. For example:
-20%,40%,60%,80% and 100% increase to health gained from eating foods
-buffs from foods are doubled in duration and potency.
- the last perk could be a master chef perk that allows you to learn certain rare recipes that give the user access to foods much greater than regular meals, and with substantially larger buffs.
-Foods can be poisoned and can be placed in inventories of victims for a swift death, same as poisons.
-temporary speed buffs from certain foods.
-other possibilities if you guys have ideas.

Lets hear what you guys think, and hopefully we can see a system like this in the future =).