A Halloween Murder Mystery Party

Who says hosting a dinner party has to break the bank? I certainly don't!

For Halloween this year my friend Katie and I decided to throw a murder mystery party. We began planning for it in... oh, August. She decided to take care of the housing and the actual dinner, and I would take care of the murder mystery. I researched online for a few days but couldn't find anything for free. I wasn't about to pay $60 to buy someone else's party, so I decided to write my own. It's actually wonderfully fun and a good exercise for a creative writing major.

Writing your own murder mystery party takes a lot of time and planning, but can be really rewarding! Here are some tips for writing your own:

• Choose your theme! The possibilities are limitless: Hollywood glam, pirates, Jane Austen... we chose to do a Halloween-themed 1940s murder mystery.
• Look at murder mystery kits online. Many of them provide party samples and character descriptions. They'll also help you familiarize yourself with murder mystery party formats.
• Decide on your party size and guest-list. It's a lot easier to plan your guest list in advance. You'll have to make up each character, and it can be helpful to pair guests with a certain character personality at the get-go. As you can imagine, the smaller the party the easier it will be to create fully-fleshed characters. For our party we had ten characters.
• Start by writing a party premise. What happens leading up to the murder? Here's ours: 

Hollywood Actress Jean Heather is throwing a dinner party to celebrate her newly released film Double Indemnity, and you’re invited! Not long into the party, Jean realizes she forgot to buy mint for the mojitos! Jean's fiancé, Harold, runs down to the grocer's to buy some, but he never returns. Eventually Jean gets worried and goes to look for him - and finds him sprawled in the lobby. While waiting for the police to arrive, the guests start to wonder if foul play was involved, and if one of the guests themselves could be the culprit…

•  Now you'll need to create the characters, decide on whodunnit (and why and how), and plan the order of events.
• After you're done with all the writing, it's time to create an invitation! (Or, if you're not the creative type, ask a friend who is)

• In addition to the invitations, there are of course more things that need to be printed out: character descriptions, objectives, the evidence, nametags, and the solution to be read out at the end of the party.

The name tags and objective (A) envelopes waiting for everyone at the start of the party.

• And finally, think about printing off awards to give to the guests who guess the murderer correctly, best actor/actress, and best costume!

While I was busy writing the murder mystery, Katie was busy planning the menu. She wanted a fall menu since it was Halloween, and I have to gratuitously include it, because it was amazing: there was hard cider and red wine to drink, then arugula salad with pecorino and toasted pine nuts, crushed red potatoes, and pork medallions with sage and mustard sauce. For dessert she made chocolate hazelnut brownies with vanilla ice cream, and I made pear apple crisp with pine nuts.

If the cost of dinner would be prohibitive, you could ask each guest to bring a dinner dish (or at least a bottle of wine). Our group of friends rotates hostess duties, so at the end of the day we all come out pretty much even.

Happy partying!

Hotroot Soup

When I was a kid, the Redwall books by Brian Jacques were one of my favorite series (in addition to Harry Potter). The stories take place in a world inhabited by talking animals - mice, hedgehogs, squirrels, moles, otters, hares, and badgers were among the "good guys," and stoats, weasels, rats, foxes, and cats were among the "bad guys." Each book featured clashes of good against evil (where good always triumphed, of course), coming-of-age tales, and lots and lots of descriptions of feasts and food. I always salivated while reading them. Over the years my friends and I experimented with Redwall cuisine: when I was in high school we had a "Redwall feast" featuring "Deeper'n Ever Turnip'n'Tater'n'Beetroot pie," (a mole specialty) "Daynurr's Zoop," (an original creation) strawberry scones, nutbread (still one of my favorite bread recipes), and sparkling cider.

Our Redwall feast

But my favorite Redwall dish is Hotroot Soup. This was the otters' specialty, and it is supposed to be very spicy. I can't handle spice too well, so I put in as much as I can handle. Here is my hotroot soup recipe, adapted from a recipe on redwall.net: (Edit: I made this again on 11/16 and have updated the recipe)

Hotroot Soup

• 1lb cooked shrimp
• 1 onion, chopped
• 3 stalks celery, chopped
• 1 red bell pepper, chopped
• 1 15 oz. can diced tomatoes (or fresh, naturally)
• 1 15oz. can corn
  
• 2 tsp basil
• cayenne pepper and chili powder to taste
• Salt and pepper to taste
• 3 cups water
• Vegetable bullion
  
• 1 cup brown rice

In a pot or rice cooker, cook 1 cup of brown rice (should yield about three cups cooked). In a large pot, add 3 cups water and vegetable bullion and set on high. Coat a skillet with olive oil. Salt and pepper the oil, then add onion, red pepper, celery, and spices and cook over medium heat, stirring constantly until tender. Pour into boiling broth and stir in tomatoes, corn, and basil. Mix in the shrimp. Cover and simmer 30-40 minutes. Add cooked rice, mix well, and cook another 5 minutes to heat through. Makes about six servings.

Fall baking

For me fall isn't complete without the smell of goods baking in the oven. On Wednesday I made oatmeal butterscotch and chocolate chip cookies, and on Thursday I made pumpkin bread. They both turned out great!

The pumpkin bread is amazingly moist, and though the recipe said to use three loaf pans, I only have two, so I made it work. I had to cook them about fifteen minutes longer to make up for the fact that there was more batter in each pan.

Here is the recipe, from Allrecipes.com:

INGREDIENTS

• 1 (15 ounce) can pumpkin puree
• 4 eggs
• 1 cup vegetable oil
• 2/3 cup water
• 3 cups white sugar
• 3 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
• 2 teaspoons baking soda
• 1 1/2 teaspoons salt
• 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1 teaspoon ground nutmeg
• 1/2 teaspoon ground cloves
• 1/4 teaspoon ground ginger

DIRECTIONS

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Grease and flour three 7x3 inch loaf pans.
2. In a large bowl, mix together pumpkin puree, eggs, oil, water and sugar until well blended. In a separate bowl, whisk together the flour, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves and ginger. Stir the dry ingredients into the pumpkin mixture until just blended. Pour into the prepared pans.
3. Bake for about 50 minutes in the preheated oven. Loaves are done when toothpick inserted in center comes out clean.

Now I've got enough sweet things to keep me happy for awhile :)