Murder of a Very Fine Gentleman

For Matt's 30th birthday party we hosted a murder mystery dinner party at our apartment. Matt wrote the mystery himself and spent a really long time making up cards and games. He sent out character sketches to everyone invited and even made up a fake newspaper! We invited 10 of our nearest and dearest to participate and everyone really got into their roles. The costumes were fabulous! Steph was pretty silly- hopefully no one is offended by her "black face". It was in good fun- she put cocoa powder in her foundation and smelled delicious all night!

We spent the whole morning cooking. We decided to take a very organized approach and chop and measure everything out and label it before it was time to cook. Sort of like a birthday cooking show. This worked out pretty well since it's tricky to have everything ready at the same time. Here's the menu:

Beverages:
Lassi
Chai Tea

Victuals:
Naan
Nariyal Chawal
Garden Salad

Butter Chicken
Aloo Gobi
Sambaar
Palak Kofta
Palak Paneer

It all turned out great (except the sambaar) and everything was made from scratch except the naan and the palak paneer. Oh, we also didn't make the butter chicken sauce from scratch, but we did pretty good!

The story goes, Mr. Pagels was an extremely wealthy man, but loathed by many. He came into his money through marrying his poor Indian wife (me). I have to take care of his blind sister (Alisse) and my only friend is the maid (Laurie). I am tied to the kitchen- this was not fun. Also invited were the Madame (Bryn) from the local brothel, Mr. Pagels' war hero brother (Sev), a Nun (Leah) from an orphanage Pagels plans to bulldoze to make into a bar, a gangster interested in becoming a bar partner (Steph), an unwed mother (Kasia) who claims the child is Pagels, a fortune teller (Tia), a gambler (Dylan) and a doctor (Steve). It was so much fun!

After the dinner party we met up with some more friends at a local pub and helped Matt forget he's turned 30. He decided to stay in costume and ended up looking like a Hutterite! Haha. We stumbled over to Steve's to play Rock Band and have some birthday pie and then it was time to call it a night. If you want to see all the pictures (in a non-slide show format) click here.