1) I believe he does count them. You need to buy all of the basic recipe sets from vendors before he will start giving you recipes. Just the sets, not all of the single recipes they stock. The earliest you can do so is Fall, if you ship enough to unlock Sakura Country (they sell the last two sets). I just bought them, and started getting recipes right away so I'm nearly certain he counted all of the dishes I bought beforehand.
2) Was it the day of the conquest, not before? Because I made that mistake at first. c; If it was the day of, and you chose most items shipped and not most money made, then it should have counted. So if not, it might have been a glitch?
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And my farmer is Amanda from Ordon Farm. Currently I have my barn animals named after Vikings characters and coop animals named after The Returned, haha. So my cow is Aslaug, my sheep is Bjorn, two chickens are Rowan and Lena, and my rabbit is Simon. Also my horse is named Sergio for no apparent reason, although I may replace him at some point to rename.
I also have the original cow, Hanako, and another sheep also named Bjorn that had the cowardly personality so I had to buy another (forgot to reset beforehand). They will both be sold soon so I'm not really counting them, haha.