This holiday weekend definitely went by pretty fast. I was still able to see some friends and have some fun along the way. Friday night I was able to catch up with a few besties at Kite's in Minerals, my first time there in a couple of months. Seeing great friends I haven't been able to catch up with as much these past few months was a wonderful blessing. Saturday I made a quick errand run to get food for Easter Weekend. I wasn't in the mood for typical Easter faire of ham, etc. Instead, I was craving steaks. I went to Sussex Meat Packing in Wantage up on 23, knowing exactly where to go. I ordered two NY Strip Steaks for Girlfriend Brooks and me. I then went to ShopRite, picking up a package of roasted potatoes, salmon, and what appear to be potentially spicy shrimp. I went over to see Brooks in Hackettstown with both of my arms packed. She couldn't believe all of the food I brought over for us. So far we've only touched the NY Strip steaks and roasted potatoes. We'll save the salmon and shrimp for another night, hopefully tomorrow night.
With the weather, this was definitely a low key weekend for us and many others. If the weather was even halfway decent yesterday you would've seen so many kids and families out doing Easter egg hunts and simply playing. The only folks you saw out yesterday were walking their dogs, and those pups did not want to hang outside in the cold rain for too long. At one point yesterday morning we could even hear the weather hailing. I'm fine grilling in the rain if need be, but grilling in hail was not sounding like a fun adventure for me. Every hour I would open up the back slider door to gauge if the cold rain was slowing down at all for us. By 3pm, I could not only hear a lack of rain, but also tons and tons of birds chirping. Growing optimism on our end! I then started to season with Montreal Seasoning, which has always been terrific for years. My trusty Longhorn dry rub seasoning has been discontinued, and I still need to figure out whether or not their new replacement seasoning can be trusted. I take grilling steaks very seriously! Since I tend to grill steaks on my electric outdoor grill at home, there are systems that usually serve as my go to options for grilling. I'm a nerd and swear by my meat thermometer my parents and late sister Zannie all gave me years ago. When you love steak to be redder and better, a meat thermometer is absolutely a wonderful friend to have!
I googled how to grill this NY Strip steak for my first time in years, because this was my debut grilling steaks instead of just the usual burgers, pizza or shrimp on Girlfriend Brooks gas grill. Google told me that 4 minutes on each side was perfect for medium rare. Welp, turns out Google was a little bit wrong on this one. The steaks came out more closer to medium than rare or medium rare. Welp welp.
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While for many these steaks came out perfect, they weren't one of our favorites due to me overcooking them. Brooks was great and understanding me, assuring that they were both terrific, delicious and it was only my first time grilling steaks this season with her. There will be other steaks, she assured me, and Brooks is right.
The roasted potatoes were a hit. The Reese's chocolate peanut butter eggs were delicious occasional snacks too. Full disclosure, Brooks noticed that I sampled all of the Reese's chocolate peanut butter eggs in their multiple colored wrappings except for the green wrapped ones. She said "Steve, was this on purpose? You can't stand the Philadelphia Eagles and New York Jets so much that you're even avoiding anything in green wrapping?" This honestly was subconscious and not at all intentional, but the comedy was pretty entertaining. Even I couldn't honestly rule it out, and gave her credit for noticing that. No Fly Eagles Fly songs or J-E-T-S chants for me!
Overall despite being low key it was a nice holiday weekend. Time to start planning next weekend, when it's forecasted to be much warmer! Finally!