Michael's birthday extravaganza

Yesterday was Michael's 24th birthday.  His dad and sister (and her hubby) came down and a big celebration was in order for my favorite boy.  We started as soon as I got out of work on Friday.  Several beers later, we were all sort of too incapacitated to make anything fancy, so I whipped up some 'chicken' fajitas with guacamole.

big pot of sizzlin' yumminess

Those are Morningstar organic chickn strips, onions, some garlic, and a bunch of those peppers from my freezer, mixed up with a packet of fajita seasoning.  We hadn't had fajitas in a long time (mostly because I haven't been buying the chickn strips) and these were deeeeelicious.

allll the fixins

I did mine up right with salsa, lettuce, guacamole, hot sauce, and scallions.  Michael did all that, but he put it in a bowl and ate it with a fork.  As usual, it looks nicer than mine!

After a nice long sleep, I made him breakfast in the morning.  A scramble and potatoes were requested, so off I went to create some awesomeness.  Michael likes his scrambles mexi-style, and even though we had fajitas just 10 hours earlier, mexi-style it was!  Still, I did it a little differently than usual, and it turned out quite nicely.  

served up with roasted potatoes, toast, and salsa

These were totally just what we needed while watching Heavyweights on the Hallmark channel nursing slight hangovers.

perfect way to start a birthday

I spent the next 3 hours creating cupcakes for dessert later.  Michael wanted the apple cider cupcakes from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World, so that's what I did!  It's amazing that these even came together at all because I decided to double the recipe (totally unnecessary, but whatever, you can't have too many cupcakes right?) and realized that I was lacking in a few ingredients.  Like, apple butter, maple syrup, AP flour, and regular sugar.  Ha!  I used up what apple butter I had and subbed in some pumpkin butter, but it was using too much, so I topped it off with applesauce.  I had almost enough maple syrup, topped that off with agave nectar.  Subbed in whole wheat pastry flour for AP, and beet sugar for regular granulated sugar.  (Beet sugar is awesome, by the way!  It's super cheap [cheaper than sucanat] and works just as well as normal sugar.)  Anyway, they ended up turning out pretty damned spectacular, if I may say so.

miles and miles of cupcakes

As you can see, my piping skills could use a little work, but it was my first time piping frosting EVER, so it's not too bad for that.  I added pumpkin pie spice to the icing (vanilla 'butter'cream) and sprinkled the tops with cinnamon.  Michael frosted a special one for himself:

it's in the top left corner, making my cupcakes look stupid in comparison

For dinner, we went to Hibachi to eat in the Japanese section.  It's one of those tepenyaki places where they cook in front of you (and Michael works there, but in the sushi section).  Because of that, we know everyone who works there, which made a nice little birthday celebration dinner.  Michael promplty got lost in a bamboo forest!

'where am i?'

And this is Nick, our chef and buddy:

he's the coolest dude who works there.  we hang out.  it's fun.

We started off with a seaweed salad.  I love seaweed salads.  That sesame dressing is...oh yes.  Yum.

it looks so weird, but tastes so good.

The show started off with an onion volcano!

haha...

And here's all our wonderful veggies on the grill:

broccoli, peppers, onions, zucchini, mushrooms, and bean sprouts in the background

Since we know the chefs, they always cook our veggies before any of the meat, so we don't get tainted food.  On top of the best noodles on the entire planet, this ended up being a pretty fabulous meal, even without any protein.

i could eat those noodles all day every day forever and ever

That's ok, we had to save room for cupcakes.

here's our friend andrew, chowing down on a vegan cupcake and loving every bite

So then my camera died.  Boo.  However, the birthday awesomeness continues today (except way quieter with much less drinking involved) in the form of laying around and watching football (Pittsburgh totally destroyed Cincinnati!  Yeah!) and later making Michael his requested homemade birthday dinner.  

Sorry if this has been a little dry...but I'm tired and a little braindead, so you'll need to forgive me!