Melissa and Doug Play Food Complete The Meal

We’ve purchased or been given a variety of items for our pretend kitchen and restaurant adventures over the past few years. All of it plastic, all of it bendable, breakable and generally cheap junk that soon lost it’s use as a toy. But on a trip to Helen, Georgia we went into a small, locally owned toy store and spied an excellent alternative of food products for Cafe Pretend.

Let me introduce to you wooden food from Melissa and Doug.

Sanded smooth as can be and finished, the different food groups are represented so that you can make balanced pretend meals or just be silly and mix whatever you want together. My five year old thinks it’s funny to put an onion on bread and offer it to you.

The colors are bright and attractive. You can make sandwiches with the bread offerings, which is something that my littles ones love to do. A living room picnic is even more fun when the food you are using is fun to look at and hold.

Melissa and Doug are committed to providing safe toys for children to play with. The safety statement on their website details the testing that is done to make sure that the paints used on their wooden toys exceed our government’s safety requirements. Given the number of recalls on painted toys lately, I found this very reassuring.

Written by Gidge, who is a mother of a 5 year old boy and 3 year old twin boys. A transplanted Hoosier, die-hard Colts fan and professional call center manager, she likes long walks on the beach, penguins and playing ping-pong. Her turn-ons include sleep and silence. Read all about her life here.