Whodunit?

I had a Clue party last night. I've always loved Clue, the board game. I played it a ton as a child. Recently, I saw a vintage Clue game on ebay, and I snapped it up. I figured we could assign each guest a character, have everyone come in costume, eat dinner, then play. (Sounds like a great Halloween party, right?)

Our party of six (plus three little people) gathered at the house last night to find out who really killed Mr. Boddy. My only real concern was behavior of little people. Would they be sweet? Would they destroy the house? Would we be able to play an entire board game in peace? We'd have to risk it to find out.

First, the menu. Here's what I served:
Appetizers - mixed nuts, garlic herb dip with veggie dippers and crackers. (The dip was a recipe from this month's edition of Cooking Light. I really liked this. It was light, and not too strongly-flavored.)
Entree - Baked Chicken with Peas (This was an old recipe that I used to make all the time in college. I thought, "Hey, since we are going retro with the game, I'll make a retro recipe!" In hindsight, I probably would not make this again. My tastes have changed in 10+ years. Plus, for fear of oversalting, I under-seasoned this dish. This one goes in the toss pile. But, hey, you can't win 'em all.)
Dessert - Apple Crostada with Vanilla Ice Cream (I made this one from scratch from a Barefoot Contessa cookbook, and I thought it came out really well. The crust was reallyreally good, probably because it was mostly butter!)

We also ordered a cheese pizza for the little ones to inhale while they watched Bolt on hubs' big-screen TV. Once the dishes were cleared away, out came the board game.

The good thing about Clue is that, even if you've never played before, it's an easy game to pick up. Plus, it doesn't go on and on and on like Monopoly. It's fairly quick to play a game, which was good for us, since we had two toddlers to tend to. We played two games, then bowed to the demands of little people and packed it up.

And might I say that our little people were pretty well-behaved? Aside from pile-driving poor Adeline as if he were in the WWF (I've got to send that girl some babysitting money or SOMETHING.), Clay was pretty decent. (A relief. I never know what I'm going to get!) Adeline was, as always, a sweetie, and precious little Ace kept us company with regular informative updates such as "I'm a boy!" (I love that kid.)

We ate at 6-ish, played the game around 7, and were wrapping up by 8:30-ish, a perfectly acceptable toddler schedule. (Though Stace did say that they achieved full nuclear meltdown on the way home. Whoops.)