Mission of Hope - Owsley County Hope Day 2014

City Barbeque - Harrodsburg Rd, Lexington, KY

Today I had the privilege of getting a sneak preview of the newest City Barbeque opening December 12, 2014 on Harrodsburg Rd in Lexington, KY. I've been to City Barbeque many times, and love it, but I was still really excited to get a tour of the kitchen, see the smokers, and hear their story. It didn't disappoint.

City Barbeque is a reasonably small chain based out of Ohio. Lexington's second store is the company's 23rd restaurant. It was apparent from spending time with their staff that the company is small enough to maintain a "family" atmosphere amongst its employees. It's apparent from the food that they are also small enough to maintain a high level of quality in each store.

Their four smokers run almost around the clock perfecting turkey, pork, brisket, and of course, ribs.

You might think cooking units as big as those must surely put out a lot of heat, and be a terrible fire hazard. Not so. Truly awesome barbecue depends on 4 key things:

1. Quality Meat
2. Quality Wood
3. Low Heat
4. Time

All their meats are smoked right at the restaurant, low and slow, the day they are served. There are no microwaves at City Barbeque.

This seems like a good time to talk about what good neighbors City Barbeque is. All restaurants have leftover, unsold food at the end of the day. That's just how it works. I've heard from friends in the restaurant business that most restaurants throw out several garbage cans of perfectly good food every night. Well, that's another thing that makes City Barbeque different. They donate their daily unsold meat to God's Pantry Food Bank (www.godspantry.org). God's Pantry is an organization I strongly believe in, and support. I'm happy to hear that City Barbeque does too.

Another thing that makes City Barbeque such a good neighbor is where they buy their wood. As you can imagine they are very particular about the type of wood they use. Each City Barbeque buys wood for its smokers from someone in the same state where the store is located. So if you eat in Lexington that delicious brisket was smoked with the finest hickory from the Commonwealth of Kentucky. 

Great barbeque requires great sides. Most of the City Barbeque sides are passed down family recipes. There's a reason that tastes like grandma's potato salad.

If you live in the Lexington area you have two locations to choose from. Richmond Rd and now Harrodsburg Rd. I'm told several new stores are planned over the next few years including Louisville and New Albany. But if there isn't a City Barbeque near you I can honestly say it's probably worth the drive. 

iPhone 6 and Verizon Problems - Solved!

I don't normally write about tech even though it is a huge part of my life. But recently I was having two major problems with my new iPhone 6 on Verizon. I couldn't find the solution on line, so when I finally figured it out I thought I'd share.

Since picking up my iPhone 6 on launch day I have had two problems:

#1 Voice and Data could NOT be used together even though I had been specifically told they would work at the same time on the 6.

#2 My Voicemail was not working. I kept getting "Sorry your account has no access to the system. Please consult your system administrator."

Voicemail not working wasn't really a problem for me. Most people don't call me, they text. If they do call and leave a message 99% of the time it says, "call me back." So it wasn't a priority to get voicemail working until I realized my wife's phone was having the same problem. After some fiddling I discovered both problems stemmed from the same issue: Voice and Data over LTE.

Here's how I fixed it.
I went to Settings>Cellular>Enable LTE and changed it to Voice & Data.  (It was just set to Data.)To my surprise this fixed both problems. Apparently this enables Verizon's voLTE feature. Calls do sound clearer, but not nearly as clear as FaceTime Audio calls. From what I've read voLTE does not use your data allotment, but counts as minutes on your plan. And the best part is Data and Voice now work at the same time.

Immanuel Baptist Church - Lexington, KY

Pastor Ron Edmondson of Immanuel Baptist Church is my special guest on
Focus on the Church this weekend. Don't miss it:

Life 99.1 FM WJMM
Saturday 3:00a, 6:30a
Sunday 1:00p, 5:30p

770 AM WCGW
Saturday 9:00a
Sunday 8:00a

AM 1250 WLRT
Sunday 9:30a
Sunday 1:30p

Sulphur Well Christian Church

Pastor Tyson Cummings of Sulphur Well Christian Church in
Nicholasville is my special guest on Focus on the Church this weekend.
Don't miss it.

Life 99.1 FM WJMM
Saturday 3:00a, 6:30a
Sunday 1:00p, 5:30p

770 AM WCGW
Saturday 9:00a
Sunday 8:00a

AM 1250 WLRT
Sunday 9:30a
Sunday 1:30p

Jessamine Christian Church

Wally Rendel Pastor of Jessamine Christian Church is my special guest
this weekend on Focus on the Church. Don't miss it:

Life 99.1 FM WJMM
Saturday 3:00a, 6:30a
Sunday 1:00p, 5:30p

770 AM WCGW
Saturday 9:00a
Sunday 8:00a

AM 1250 WLRT
Sunday 9:30a
Sunday 1:30p