Steak Night!

I love steak. I'm usually terrible at cooking it but I do love it. On a recent trip to BJ's Wholesale Club, of which I am a member (yay inexpensive food to feed an army!) I decided to pick up a few strip steaks. I have a grill pan, which usually smokes out the entire house when I use it, so of course I decided to try again.
Ladies and gentleman, boys and girls... we have success!! FINALLY! I can actually cook steak without burning it and/or leaving the center completely raw. My secret this time... I cooked the outside on the grill pan to give it the nice char marks, then put the whole pan in the oven at 400 degrees. I probably could have cooked it a little less but it was still quite tasty, and not burned, just over cooked in the center. I prefer my meat to be on the rare side of medium, these were on the well side.
I also did not marinate the steaks in anything, frankly a good steak should not need it. A little dry rub of salt and steak seasoning and you should be good to go. I am a big fan of McCormick's (I sound like an ad for them don't I? I should be paid for this, Hint Hint, GIVE ME A CALL! ;) Spicy Montreal Seasoning. It gave the steaks a nice kick without overpowering the meaty flavor of the strip steak.
One of the best parts is strip steaks are pretty inexpensive on the scale of steaks. I paid about $10 for 2 good sized steaks. Plus the flavor of a strip steak is outrageous. I love me a good filet for the smooth almost buttery quality, but a good NY strip is a dream on a Thursday night. Forget the steakhouses, I'll just learn to make it better at home!
I served my steaks with stir-fried peppers and onions, the contrast of the sweet peppers and onions to the peppery steaks was perfect! Nothing fancy but it sure made us happy.

Free steak!

It's not every day that free steak shows up on your door. But you know what they say. Don't look a gift steer in the mouth. I'm certainly not complaining!
The whole story is this. I came home from work at lunch after having made an emergency grocery store run (I had a very empty fridge and had reverted to not eating enough again) and there was a big white cooler on my doorstep with a hazmat placard on the side. The placard was a hazard class 9 which could be just about anything. So needless to say I was a little concerned and approached with caution. What I found was a cooler of Kansas City Steak Company steaks on my doorstep. The problem? They were addressed to someone else, who hasn't lived here in over 3 years. I contemplated taking the cooler inside and not telling anyone at the company I had received a miss addressed box of steak. Unfortunately my conscience got the best of me (damn all that Catholic school training) and I called the company when I got back to work. When I relayed my story to the lovely lady who answered the phone she said "Congratulations you have steak!" It was like Christmas in October!
Currently I have 8 burgers, 6 sirloins, and 8 strip steaks. Now I need to figure out what to do with it all! I'm thinking a free steak party is in order!!
I've already cooked up 2 sirloins and they were quite good with just a little Mrs. Dash steak seasoning on the grill pan and some A1 on the side.
Here's KSCS's website. They might not be free for you but they were so nice to me I thought I'd give them a plug. Plus I can endorse them because the meat is quite good
http://www.kansascitysteaks.com/