The photo of the week was submitted by blog reader Kat (a.k.a. The Boss).

She rubbed this salmon with a mixture of French salts, then grilled it slowly on a cedar plank.
The side dishes are roasted garlic mashed potatoes and sauteed spinach that came from a Franklin County farm. Kat says it only cost 99 cents per pound.

“We first heated the pan and used pork fat as our oil,” she wrote. “Then I browned some garlic in that and tossed the spinach in. After seasoning with some salt, the finishing touch was juice from half a lemon. The tartness made everything taste bright and fresh.”

Do you have a beautiful food picture? If so, submit it to my Flickr group or e-mail me at Lindsey.nair@Roanoke.com. Have a great weekend!

Hey folks, as you might have noticed at the end of my Front Burner column today, I’ve got Sunday brunch on the brain again.
Ever since before I started this food beat, I’ve been dismayed by the lack of a truly unique Sunday brunch experience in Roanoke. I’m craving something quirky and cool that doesn’t just serve standard breakfast options until 2 p.m.
Until recently, the best brunch I’d experienced around these parts was at Cafe Succotash in Vinton, which has long since closed. I can remember having some kind of twist on eggs Benedict with spinach and fresh tomato, all washed down with a poinsettia (champagne and cranberry juice).

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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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Important news today from the Southern purveyors of good old fried dough: Krispy Kreme Doughnuts, Inc. says their entire menu is now trans fat-free!

They say you can enjoy an original glazed doughnut for just 200 calories and zero grams of trans fat. Well, let’s all rush out and get a hot dozen!

I’d like to pause for a moment to address the debate over whether Krispy Kreme doughnuts are better than Dunkin’ Donuts: They are.

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