The awareness buffs cost mana while the others don’t. You want to use the awareness buffs in moderation or save kabod gold them for emergencies. It depends on your personal power regeneration. It is highly recommended that while crafting you are using the highest level crafted drink you can use.
When you start out Provisioner and only have the progress buffs, it can be difficult making the highest quality (refreshing/delectable), so don’t worry about it. Progress buffs increase the probability that durability will go down, so there are two ways to craft at this point:
Speed crafting – Just spam Heat/Awareness/Spice until you finish, not caring about what quality level you get, Pace the Awareness buffing so that you can “repeat” the recipe with little or no downtime.
Conclusion: The most important thing to remember about role-playing is that you're doing it to have fun, for yourself. It's JUST a Kabod Gold.
A MMOG can be a fun and rewarding experience any way you play it, but for those of us who enjoy role-playing then doing so should only increase your experience with the game.
Good luck to you all and I look forward to seeing you in a not so far galaxy soon.