I just had a wonderful Sunday night and I’m pretty much exhausted. Two of our friends came over for dinner and some intense Scrabble playing. Our friend Minal is a vegetarian, so we made an all vegetable meal. This was a little different for me, since I usually make steaks or burgers for my friends. We found two nice recipes on the internet. One for orzo, the other for some mushroom sandwiches. The sandwiches were a real hit. I marinated them in a mustard, rosemary, and oil vinaigrette. That kicked up the flavor. The rosemary came fresh from the garden. The orzo was colored up with some roasted red peppers. We added those to the sandwiches and it was great. I learned that when you want to roast red peppers, you should just put them whole on the grill, then char the outside. Stick the peppers in a paper bag for 15 minutes to make the skin literally steam off. The skin is kinda tough when you finally get it off, but the steaming really helps. The sandwiches were totally awesome once we finally bit into them. Even Yara ate most of hers. Minal brought some delicious brownies over, then we cracked our knuckles and sharpened our wits for Scrabble.

It was a tough match. Matt is an English grad student and works for a newspaper, so he sees a lot of words in a day. Minal and Yara are med students. I went to Vandy. Yara led early in the match with a masterful use of the triple word score. Minal then used a Y and an E on a triple letter score to produce some 28 points. Matt never really got going, except very early with his word, “Fiasco”. I managed to pull into the lead with “Zen” played off of Yara’s “Zit”. That gave me a ridiculous 36 points with a triple word score. I then finished them off by playing an X (8 points) on a triple letter score. I ended up winning with Minal in 2nd, Yara just behind, and Matt still challenging “GAR”. (Turns out it is a fish!) Minal showed me that QAT is a word, it’s a plant common in Arabian countries. Maybe Qatar is named after it.

It was a fun night and we had a really good time playing and talking about lots of things. Matt and I will probably hang together some more since I found that he loves playing video games. He saw my Gamecube and Dreamcast and was pretty excited. I hope to whoop up on him in Soul Calibur. But for now, I must rest… much work to do before Christmas. Gotta go buy gifts too!