.:: Fire The Housewife ::.

If you’re looking for more Boyfriend Birthday Cupcakes, you might like THIS post. If you’re here for the squirrels, read on…

It’s simple, the boyfriend loves squirrels, I would be stupid not to exploit that on his birthday, so, just for today, the day of The Boyfriend’s slide towards 30, we have … THE SQUIRREL CUPCAKES.

Turns out getting that chocolate squirrel off the waxed paper was a lot harder than I thought so not only are there squirrels there are acorns, which took way less time and effort to make.

Okay, so if you want to copy the squirrel cupcake it is just oh-so-easy!

You’ll need:

24 cupcakes (baked!)

1 can of frosting

food coloring (green)

chocolate candy melts (in dark chocolate and milk chocolate)

waxed papers

some squirt bottles (I got mine at Michael’s, but you could definitely use those restaurant ketchup bottles too.)

Milk Maid Caramels

Chocolate Jimmies

Make your cupcakes first, set them aside to cool, don’t worry, you’ll have plenty of time.  Draw a picture of a squirrel on a piece of paper, or you can search google for some clipart, I hate to break it to you, but I threw away the piece of paper with my squirrel on it, so, I can’t upload it for you, but I freehanded it, so you can do it too.

Put your waxed paper over the drawing of the squirrel and draw the squirrel with the dark chocolate, I gave my squirrel a light chocolate spot on his tail just for added effect, once mine cooled the colors looked inverted though, I have no idea why, yours will probably turn out better.

After you have drawn a lot of squirrels (I made 28 squirrels and still only ended up with enough for 12-14 cupcakes, those suckers break pretty easy so don’t worry about putting the chocolate on a little thick, it’ll make your life easier.)

For the acorns:  unwrap 3 or 4 caramels and put them on a plate, microwave them in 3-5 second intervals  (I never microwaved mine for more than 8 seconds) and roll them into a ball.  Using a bowl of melted chocolates dip the top and turn using the non dipped part of the caramel, once you have it covered dip it and twist it in the chocolate jimmies. lay on waxed paper to dry.

Finally, the green grass on the cupcakes:  use your canned frosting (life will be easier, I promise) and remove about half of it to a bowl, mix it with green food coloring until you like the color, I left mine pretty light since the boyfriend’s birthday and spring nearly coincide, YAY PASTELS!

I used the Wilton’s decorator tip for grass and hair and put the frosting on, I’ve seen ways of doing it by trimming an M shape into a ziploc bag but I didn’t like the look of it as much as this frosting tip, plus, who doesn’t love getting new frosting tips?!

Before your frosting sets make sure you put all those squirrels and all those acorns on the cupcakes, then make your boyfriend ooh and aah over them and scream happy birthday in his face.

So, The Boyfriend and I usually frequent the Ballard and/or Fremont Farmers Markets on Sundays (I cannot wait til our local farmers markets start opening, I saw an opening soon sign on one the other day!!) in an effort to get some tasty veggies from local farmers.  Yay for supporting locals!

I’ve been wondering lately which fruits and veggies were in season when so I can pretend I’m not eating something that has been sitting around for 3 weeks before it gets to me all pumped up on chemicals.  I’m not super super picky about eating organic, I’ll usually choose the organic fruits because I cannot stand the wax on the non-organic ones even after you’ve washed them thoroughly, but I don’t mind that I’m eating pesticides most of the time.  I like to buy the leeks at the farmers market because the wonderful person that brings them in cleans them so well that we hardly have to get any sandy soil out of our leeks.

I found some pretty helpful websites this morning to answer a lot of my questions, first I found this moderately helpful article about fruits and vegetables being in season.  I’m mostly excited to start going to you-pick places here and freezing fruits for the occasional pies and tarts later in the year (oh and just think of how much pumpkin puree I’m going to make this year) so I browsed through this list.

Also, to decide what is really worth my extra dollars to buy organic I found this great article that connects you to another site, it made me feel good about the things we have been buying organic, and a little silly about the things we have been buying organic, but like they say, you live and you learn… who knew buying sweet potatoes from the grocery store was fine, but regular potatoes you should definitely buy organic?!

The Boyfriend might have used my wishlist to find my birthday presents, but that is okay because holy crap he did such an awesome job.

The Hello Cupcake book I’ve been wanting, the popover pan I’ve been wanting, an ADORABLE notebook made from 100% recycled paper, cadbury cream eggs, and the ultimate gift…

The KitchenAid Stand Mixer I’ve been wanting.

I even got to talk to my dad on the phone, and the hello kitty banner my neice sent in the birthday box was hung up.

It’s only 8:41, I’ve been alive for 24 years and 3 minutes, and it’s totally the most awesome birthday ever.

So, you may have noticed the lack of content to this blog since I moved to Seattle. Well, let me tell you a little story, it all started a long, long, time ago, say, 3-4 months ago. I was preparing to pack up all my belongings (by all I mean whatever I could fit in a couple suitcases and afford to mail, oh and not so much that I would need any sort of storage space because The Boyfriend is pretty busy saving notebooks from the 6th through 8th grade in any storage space we have) and consulted the boyfriend on the thought of shipping my desktop computer. “Oh No!” he says, “It’ll be pretty costly and I have a computer here you can use!” “Awesome,” I replied, “Does it work?” “Of Course!” he replied.

Fast forward a couple months…

“THIS @#$$#@ COMPUTER! NOTHING EVERY @#$^@#$ WORKS ON IT! I CAN’T EVEN PLAY A @#$@^@#$ FLASH GAME ON IT”

“Oh, I could probably fix that for you”

Now, heres the deal, this computer can run only one program, ever. In my world, that program is Firefox. I use it to check my email and facebook and occasionally write a blog post, which has to be without pictures because I can’t even think about putting photoshop on here, let alone trying to put a picture on here. The Boyfriend gave me an external hard drive which I was to keep all files from my old computer on and FOR THE LOVE OF GOD DO NOT EVEN THINK ABOUT TRANSFERRING THEM ONTO THE DESKTOP COMPUTER BECAUSE THERE MIGHT BE SOME SORT OF LAVA SPILLAGE.

Stupidly, I sold my computer to my dad for a measly sum, because, it worked fabulously despite it’s old age. I ran photoshop, while I had 17 firefox windows open (I didn’t use the tabs for a while, don’t worry, I’ve converted.) and basically could run the world from that thing. It got me through 5 long years of college and a couple years of high school I believe. The thing still worked like a charm.

Now I’m working on a computer that is the same one my dad purchased as a floor model for $150 at some store in Topeka.

I’m pleading with you here, PLEASE, PLEASE PLEASE, WIN THE LOTTERY AND SEND ME THE MONEY FOR A NEW COMPUTER. Or, someone pretty tech saavy, send me all the parts I need for a new computer, or best of all, buy me a mac, one that no one else will want to touch, just me, and me and my mac will be best friends and I’ll promise to put all sorts of pretty pictures on the internet for you.

I PROMISE.

So, most everyone in my real, non-internet life knows of my struggles to cook for The Boyfriend and myself because he won’t eat anything but meat and potatoes.  Slowly but surely I’m making him fall in love with new foods and tonight I did it.  Seriously, after he finished he laid on the couch going “oh my god, I’m so full, that was so good, I’m so full, Housewife, that was so delicious, meow mew purr snort.”  It was close to that anyway.

I had been talking about experimenting with leeks for a few weeks since I started reading this book. We went on over to the Ballard Farmer’s Market this morning to look around, I had the most delicious Veggie Quesadilla, but that is not the point.  We bought a couple leeks to try out and after a little reading up on leeks and leek recipes we came up with this beauty… We like to call it

THE BOYFRIEND LOVES LEEKS…the soup

You could also call it Potato Leek soup, or anything else you want to call it, but I’m calling it The Boyfriend Loves Leeks…the soup.

You’re going to need

1 medium sized leek

1 clove fresh garlic (use a little more if it is jarred)

1/4 of a medium sized vidalia onion

2 tbsp. butter

1 large russet potato

chicken stock (we used 1 can)

1/4 c. shredded cheddar cheese

Okay, first throw the butter into a pan and let it melt (use a soup-sized pan)  slice your leek (make sure you wash it REALLY well, we were lucky because our friendly farmers washed them really well before they took them to market.) and dice your onion.  Throw the leeks, garlic, and onions into the pan until the onions are starting to brown.  While this is cooking call your entire family into the kitchen to take a big whiff of the mixture, they’ll immediately fall in love with leeks, this is the method I used on the boyfriend.

If you have a good boyfriend he would have done all the chopping while you did the peeling and stirring, so at this point your potatoes are peeled and chopped and ready to be put into the pan next.  Put enough chicken stock into your pan to cover up those potatoes.  We used a can of chicken stock and added about 1/4 a can of water.  Let your soup now cook until the potatoes get soft.  At this point it’s up to you, I mashed our potatoes up with a fork until the consistency looked tasty, but that is totally up to you.

I thought the soup looked a little bland still so I threw in a 1/4 c. shredded cheddar cheese.  We added a little extra cheese on top and The Boyfriend put in bacon bits, I also added some pepper to mine and some salt.

The recipe made a little over 2 servings, I had a smaller portion than The Boyfriend and he had the rest for seconds, so you could probably feed two adults and a child, or two adults and a model, or 15 anorexics, or something.

Happy Leek Eating!