Olivia Byrd at Rockfish in Grandin Village sent out an e-mail today announcing that, beginning tomorrow, they will serve breakfast on Wednesday through Saturday mornings. This is in addition to their highly successful lunch and dinner service and the tasty Sunday brunch menu.

The hours for breakfast are 7:30 to 10:30 a.m., and the menu will include fresh muffins, biscuits, egg dishes and espresso beverages. So if you live in the Grandin area and you’ve grown tired of microwaveable 7-Eleven fare, check out Rockfish.

This would be a good time for me to also mention that Rockfish recently opened a wine shop beside the restaurant that is open Wednesday through Saturday until 6 p.m. I want to say that the shop sells more than just wine, but I haven’t had a chance to pop in yet.

In other food news, Roanoke’s unofficial start to the summer season happens the weekend of May 3 when the Community School’s 27th Annual Strawberry Festival and the 28th annual Virginia State Championship Chili Cook-off invade downtown.

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Okay, sorry for the rather graphic title today, but the truth is that I’m having a little trouble typing this blog entry due to a kitchen injury I sustained this weekend.
Have you ever had one of those nights when it seems that everything is going wrong in the kitchen? Last night was one of those for me. I think fate was flipping me the bird for picking on my friend Stacy about her ugly bundt cake.
First, while slicing onions for my black bean soup experiment, I sliced the tip off my finger instead. Not all the way, mind you. But it’s bad enough. How embarassing! My knife skills have gotten much fancier over the past year and I’ve never cut myself before in my life. There’s a first for everything.
Next, while explicitly following the recipe directions for my soup, I removed several cups and placed them in my blender to puree and return to the soup. Well, I don’t know if it’s because the soup was boiling hot or what, but it immediately blew the top off my blender and I had tiny black bean skins all over the counter. Clean-up on aisle 5!
(I’d love to know if anyone else has had problems pureeing hot soups. Maybe I should have let it cool for a bit, but that’s not what the recipe suggested.)
Finally, my rooster sauce seemed to have a bit of a clog in the nozzle, so it came shooting out exactly perpendicular to the bottle itself and sprayed across my kitchen floor. Much cursing occurred at that time.

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