Meeta's Recipe Cost Guess

Each morning one recipe from the house arrives with no prices, everyone guesses what it cost in rupees, and the evening shows who came nearest.

Who this is for

Meeta Kulkarni cooks in Nashik for six people at dinner, spends somewhere near nine hundred rupees a week on vegetables, and keeps the day's market rates in a kitchen diary out of old habit. At ten to seven in the morning, onions half cut, the radio on, is when the day's recipe should be waiting on the phone for the daughter in Pune and the mother in Nagpur to have a go at it.

How the job is done today

It happens at the table and then it is gone. Someone says this bhindi must have cost two hundred, someone else says have you seen the rate these days, and Meeta says the actual number and everyone forgets it by the next evening. The bill photo goes into the family WhatsApp group where it sinks under forwards within a day. The kitchen diary has the real prices written in a corner of the page, in a book nobody but Meeta opens. Nobody has ever known who guesses best, because nobody wrote down the guesses.

The screens, in order

1. Today's dish — Shows the one recipe everyone is playing today, with the ingredients and quantities spelled out and every price hidden.
2. Your guess — Takes one number in rupees and locks it, so nobody can change their mind after hearing what someone else said.
3. The opening — At seven in the evening it shows what the dish actually cost, item by item, and lines up everyone's guess against it.
4. The khata — Keeps the running account of who owes ten rupees to whom and what has been handed over.
5. Tomorrow's dish — Lets whoever did the shopping put in the next recipe with the real prices, while the memory of the market is fresh.

What it keeps track of

• Recipes — dish name, each ingredient and how much of it, what that ingredient actually cost, who put it in, which day it plays
• Guesses — who guessed, which day's dish, how many rupees, the time it was locked
• Players — name, phone number, which house they belong to
• Khata — who owes, who is owed, how much, for which day's dish, handed over or still pending

The one decision that matters

Where does the true answer come from. One way is a general price list for the city, so the app can price any recipe on its own. The other way is the actual bill from this house on that day, typed in by whoever went to the market. Go with the house's own bill. Onions are thirty rupees one week and seventy the next, and a general list turns every evening into an argument about whose price is correct, plus somebody has to keep that list honest forever. The house's bill cannot be argued with. It also makes the game the right game: not guessing what vegetables cost in India, but guessing what this kitchen paid.

What to leave out of the first version

No paying inside the app. The ten rupees moves the way it already moves, by UPI or a note across the table, and someone taps it as settled. Also leave out photos of the finished dish and any way for a second family to join. Money handling and outside players are a lot of work for a game that has to prove, first, that six people in one house will bother to guess before dinner.

How you would know it worked

At twenty to eight one morning the phone rings from Pune asking why today's dish has not come up yet. And at dinner somebody argues about the price of coriander with the opened recipe held up as proof.

Build it

Paste this in and let it run.

I want a small game for my family. Every morning one recipe from our house should show up with the ingredients and quantities but no prices, and each of us puts in one guess of what it cost to make. Nobody can see anyone else's guess until seven in the evening, and then it opens and shows what I actually paid at the market that day, item by item, and who came closest. Whoever is furthest off owes ten rupees to whoever was nearest, so keep a running khata of who owes whom and what has been handed over, which we tick off ourselves when the money is passed. I should be able to put in tomorrow's recipe with the real prices while I am still cooking, and my mother in Nagpur should be able to play from her phone.