Dinner's Ready!

Dinner's Ready! is a family culinary card game promoting healthy eating by challenging players to collect recipes and their necessary ingredients. Players are dealt 5 recipe cards. The objective is to collect a "balanced meal:" an appetizer, an entree, and a dessert that together contain one ingredient from each of the food groups (fruits, vegetables, grains, meat, dairy). Players choose their "best" three and discard the others. The objective is to collect the ingredients to make your appetizer, then the entree, then the dessert. You must go in order! Each player is dealt four ingredient cards. On their turn, players may ask for a particular ingredient from another player ("Go Shopping"), pick up the top ingredient card on the "Compost Pile," or draw a replacement Recipe card. The first player to successfully prepare their "balanced meal" wins, exclaiming "dinner's ready!" The goal of the game is to educate players on the versatility of healthy ingredients, the basic concepts of cooking, and fun facts about food. If children are exposed to food at an early age, they are more likely to eat healthier as adults. Who says you can't play with your food?