Friends & Football

This past week my very best friend Mason Scheer came to visit :) Every time he comes in town he experiments in our kitchen and it only makes me love him more. Having friends that appreciate food the way I do make cooking that much more fun. Mason told me that while he was in town, he wanted to make dinner one night. I've never tasted anything I didn't like that he made so, naturally, I was in favor of this idea. Getting in late Tuesday night, Wednesday and Thursday night were really the only reasonable nights for him to make dinner. Wednesday night, however, our apartment complex provided a free door to door dinner from Olive Garden (I'm not a super huge fan of Olive Garden, but I'm a broke college student. I don't say no to free food.) consisting of salad, bread sticks, and lasagna. When Thursday rolled around my roommates and I started asking Mason what he thought he might make. That's when I learned how secretive he is in the kitchen. Apparently, he doesn't like to tell people what he is making until it's ready (yea, right.), so I had to sneak around to find out exactly what he did. Trust me, you'll be glad I did because what he made was phenomenal. 

Unfortunately, my camera decided not to correctly save the photos I took of the stuffed peppers, but above is the mixture he put into the peppers. First, the red bell peppers were cut in half vertically and cleaned. Then the insides were brushed with a sun-dried tomato pesto. The delicious stuffing was loaded up into each pepper and then covered with the four cheese alfredo sauce and cayenne pepper. Finally, the peppers were popped in the oven for a bit and served hot. The result was killer. 

While the peppers were big enough to fill each of us up, Mason also decided to make steak. Below is a picture of the coffee rubbed steak. While I think this time there was a little too much coffee on the steak the flavors were still wonderful together. A little tweaking to the amount of rub and this will be a huge hit. Living in an apartment complex, we don't have a big grill readily available. Instead my roommate, Maddie, offered for Mason to use our fancy shmancy new grill pan. It's basically a large flat non-stick pan with ridges through the middle. We still got to enjoy delicious grilled steak with out the big grilling mess. I was very impressed at the way this was all just thrown together based on what looked good at the grocery store.

Friday afternoon Mason left to return to Austin. Believe me, next time he is in town I will have more pictures and posts to share. After that spectacular week, I was looking forward to some football this weekend. Last night our Aggies played LA Tech in Shreveport. Since the game was on ESPN U, I went to a friends house for a watch party. Boy was that a treat. When I arrived there was spicy cornbread and jambalaya ready to taste. On top of that, my good friend and party host, Craig, began baking a homemade loaf of bread during the party. While the Aggies nearly made me cry, the bread was fantastic. 

I think from now on I'm going to have something baking during every football game, for celebration or consolation. There's more on the way this week so check back soon!