The Smoke Signal online

Stained Glass

2011-02-09T13:58:00.000-08:00

A few years ago I was working at Herrin Maytag on the dryer line with a good friend. We were talking about God and who we are in relation to Him. This was, by the way, typical of the type of conversations we’d have. Those of you who know me know that for the last year or so I’ve been on an identity kick. It’s about who the Bible says we are in Christ Jesus. I’ll post some random thoughts on that later.

This conversation was a little different. This had more to do with our place in the body of Christ. There are 2 passages that stand out to me;

Romans 12:4-5 For as we have many members in one body, but all the members do not have the same function, so we, being many, are one body in Christ, and individually members of one another

1 Corinthians 12:27 Now you are the body of Christ, and members individually.

Prince Of Peace Akiane (puzzle overlay by me)

Being an effective part of the body of Christ means that you must pursue a relationship with Jesus Christ. Each of us has a part to play as part of the body and we were created with just the right tools to be that part. Each is equally important and none are disposable. Deciding that your roll isn’t important means the body has a missing part. It’s like a puzzle with a missing piece. No matter how beautiful the puzzle picture, with even 1 piece missing it just isn’t right.

OK, back to the conversation, my friend said “you know Daniel J., we’re like pieces of stained glass.” Then he just stood there and smiled. At that moment, God put this picture in my head of a stained glass window with the sun shining through it! Then over the next few moments He explained what it all meant. God’s perfectly pure white light has always shone brightly with us or without us. Because of His great love for us he makes his light beautiful by shining it through us.

Wall Street Journal March 20, 2009, 2:28 PM ET Pictures of the Day

Each of us is like a piece of stained glass. (Psalm 139:14) Some are blue, green, red, yellow or any other color imaginable. Gods pure light hits us and explodes into a rainbow of rich vibrant color that takes your breath away! Each of us is flawed. (Romans 3:23) Irregular, cracked and even broken pieces are used. When the Master Craftsman (John 15:1-8) has an odd shaped space to fill, He may even decide to take you and break you into just the right piece He wants!

None are colorless either because we’re stained!! But look what a loving master craftsman can do with a bunch of broken pieces of stained glass!!!

You are not allowed to think that you have no value!(Romans 5:8) Nor are you allowed to view anyone else as less valuable than you.(Matthew 25:34-40) I’ve never looked at a stained glass window the same since!! By the way, I’m the red one!!

Glazed Grilled Chicken

2010-08-20T19:15:00.000-07:00

I love grilled chicken! It is probably my favorite grilled meat. It's usually very inexpensive and very forgiving and will take everything from chicken salad to stir fry to a completely different level.
Tammy and I thought it would be fun to take pictures of our dinner tonight!! here we go...

Make the rub according to your own taste. Here's mine l-r back row:
salt, paprika, cayenne, course ground black pepper, granulated garlic
then front row sugar and Tony Chachere's spice and herb seasoning (McCords Market West Frankfort)
3/4 cup of salt and paprika. 1/4 cup Cayenne and Tonys. 1/2 cup everything else. Just add 'til it tastes right to you.
Mix it all together in a bowl and set aside.

We bought some chicken thighs pretty cheap at Mad Pricer.

Just cover them in the rub on both sides.

This is one of my smokers (yes those are flames!!) I use a chimney starter instead of starter fluid and I use natural lump charcoal (as organic as I get) Just stuff the bottom with newspaper and the top with lump and light.

We did burgers and chicken. The coals are only under the burgers on the left side as I want direct heat under the burgers and to indirect for the chicken. I also tossed a few burning chunks of charcoal into the offset box and placed a piece of apple wood on them because I want to smoke the chicken before I grill it.

When the burgers were done I moved the chicken over the coals and the burgers off the coals so the indirect heat would melt the cheese on the burgers. I love the color of the smoked chicken. I wish you could smell this!!!

When the juices run clear it's time to glaze!! Rugged Cross BBQ's Apple Chipotle Sauce and Glaze will kick this chicken to the moon!! Brush on all the pieces of chicken and keep them moving. Turn and glaze then turn and glaze repeat as many times as you like just keep them moving.

brush and turn.....

Here is what I ended up with. I did 5-6 coats of glaze.

The appearance in the picture does not do the chicken justice!

It is deep luscious burgundy. Oh my my!!

This is what you want!!

Pick up a bottle of Rugged Cross BBQ's Apple Chipotle Sauce and Glaze today and try it. It's easy to get this result. You will be a Rock Star!!!

Send me a picture of your dinner!!!

Available at The 1 Stop Cafe' in the VF mall and Mad Pricer both in West Frankfort and Anjo's Pizza in Sesser.

www.ruggedcrossbbq.com everywhere else!!!

What is your act of worship?

2010-08-17T21:14:00.001-07:00

Whatever you do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks through Him to God the Father. Colossians 3:17 NIV

I have been a guitar player most of my life. I think that aside from my God and my family it's what I love more than anything. There is just something about the way it feels and sounds in my hands that just makes me crazy! With my guitar, my heart can say things that my tongue cannot express. It's one of the things I use to express my love for Daddy.
My words sometimes seem so inadequate. My good friend Dottie says my heart flows through my music. I know she's right. For me, playing a guitar is an act of worship but, it isn't the only thing.

As you have probably guessed I also had my own restaurant. It was a little BBQ joint called Rugged Cross BBQ. Oh the restaurant is gone now. It failed and we closed it.
One of the things I enjoyed the most about cooking BBQ was the aroma.
If you are not currently cooking some Q while you are reading this then it may be a little painful to read so...you've been warned.
I would get to the joint to prep for the day at around 7am. I would brew some coffee and carry a chair out back by the smoker and just sit quietly.
The aroma of hickory and apple smoke hung in the morning air like a soft and gentle spirit. Mixed with the aroma and flavor of the coffee It was often overwhelming. Daddy would often sit right next to me, enjoying our sweet tome together.
It was in those times that the Holy Spirit was tangible and I just wanted to give Him the best that I had.
We do special things for people we love. That is called worship.
Everybody should have something extra special they do to express their love. My friend Sherri Murphy can paint the most beautiful pictures with her words and voice. Or my friend Derek Steed who paints with...well...paint. Derek is an artistic genius, from music to graphic art (he created my logo by the way) to painting a portrait to a song. Both he and Sherri share a common passion and it's called Worship.
My friend Nick used to throw his push mower in the back of his pickup truck and go to mow a yard for somebody. Often along the way he would see a house who's lawn needed to be cut. He would stop and get out his mower and mow it. When he was done he would load up the mower and go on to do the lawn he was supposed to do. Nick didn't wait around for a pat on the back. Love guided his actions.

My little children, let us not love in word or in tongue, but in deed and in truth. And by this we know that we are of the truth, and shall assure our hearts before Him. 1 John 3:18-19 NKJV

An auto mechanic, a truck driver, the kid behind the counter at McDonald's, a _____________________ all have the potential to do what they do as an act of worship.
What about you?

Where to begin...

2010-08-16T17:57:00.000-07:00

I’m Danny Parkhill and I own Rugged Cross BBQ. It used to be a BBQ joint but it failed so it is now becoming a line of BBQ products.

I couldn’t really find information on how this process actually works so we took notes.

This blog journals our adventure. Go easy on us, we’re new to all this and I don’t have the best business sense but I’m honest and I’m learning.

We did some stuff right and we did some stuff wrong but that’s how you learn.

We started this process 4 or 5 years ago and it is not finished by a long way.

OK, maybe a little history, about 5 years ago my wife Tammy and I opened a little carry out and delivery BBQ joint in a 2^nd house that we owned…ok, quick note; before you buy a house, make sure to SELL the one you currently own FIRST!! God forbid the real estate marked should crash!!! We couldn’t sell it and renting it proved to be worse. It sat unoccupied 2-3 years.

My job at Maytag went bye bye and I couldn’t find work. I needed to come up with a way to make a living.

I can do 2 things really well, play guitar and cook BBQ. So we decided that if we’re gonna pay the mortgage on the house then we’re gonna use it and Rugged Cross BBQ was born!!

We remodeled the kitchen to meet health code and away we went!! Well, almost…

West Frankfort, IL is kind of a quirky little town. It used to be quite the place then the coal mines closed and the community never quite recovered. They like what they like and that wasn’t me. It also wasn't KFC or Burger King. Both also failed here.

Don’t misunderstand me, the food was really good and all who ate agreed. I just simply wasn’t their choice.

So the house was 4 blocks off Main Street in a very residential neiborhood. We had hoped it would become a crack house for ribs!! We had several regular customers we would deliver to and a few dozen that would pick up but that’s about it. We decided it was our location. We began praying that we could get a place out on Main Street.

Well God smiled and we moved (that will be a future blog) to 414 E Main Street!!!! WOO HOO!!! ½ block west of the high school!! Perfect!!

We loved the location. Parking wasn’t so good but it wasn’t any worse than any other business right…

Ok, so when you hear the expression “LOCATION, LOCATION, LOCATION” Throw out whatever is in your head that contradicts that because unless you have a ridiculous marketing budget and can simply dominate the business community, then you’re wrong.

You see West Frankfort is known as "The Furniture Capitol of Southern Illinois" and those stores are all located on the east end. The food is on the west end. I was on the east end across from E.R. Brown Furniture, “LOCATION, LOCATION, LOCATION”

You cannot build a successful restaurant on the backs of high school kids’ lunch business. They aren’t even there 3 months of the year. 2-1/2 years later we decided we couldn’t make it. We had done a little advertising but just didn’t have the budget to do what was necessary. The restaurant just didn’t have the support of the community but our BBQ sauce business THRIVED!

I had been given a recipe for a product a few years before we opened that I had tweaked quite a bit and Holy Smokes did it take off!!!! Apple Chipotle Glaze was a ridiculous success!!!

We looked at having it made by a contract packager but didn’t have the startup money so we decided I would do it myself at the restaurant. We ordered bottles, lids and security seals online and went to it.

Well, I couldn’t make enough!!! I would make the sauce, bottle and shelf them and they would be gone in a day or two and I had 3 other products that were just as popular, Rugged Cross Sauce, Carolina Sauce and All Purpose Seasoning. We needed a better way to do this when Tammy reminded me of a friend she met at her former job at Maytag.

Tammy had also lost her job at Maytag after more than a dozen years as the secretary for the Sr. Dir. of Operations. She met some really good people while she was there. One of those people was Tom Harris from Walker Die Casting. When Tom would come in he would bring with him this WONDERFUL sweet hot pepper relish. He told Tammy that his son makes it and has a company that does that kind of thing called Brothers Fine Foods in Lewisburg, TN. Little did we know that a few years later we would come to know this company quite well.

When we closed we decided we would go with plan B and be a sauce business. We called Brothers and got most of our questions answered. We had not been able to use Brothers earlier because they we only set up to do large batches. We had filed bankruptcy a year before and I had cashed out my 401k to start the restaurant, which later failed. Yes, it was quite a couple of years.

So we prayed. That's what we do. We listened for Gods answer. One day just before halloween, he answered.

I served in Operation Desert Storm in Saudi Arabia with the USAF. One of the people I met in the Air Force was a guy named Carl Johnson. Carl and I got to be close friends through the years and had stayed in touch until I lost his number (that really sounds like a lame excuse after typing it but it’s true!!) we reconnected on facebook a few (like 5-6) years later. I’m sitting in the restaurant one day and I look up and there is Carl and his wife Lois walking into my place!!!! Carl had looked over my Facebook page and drove all the way to West Frankfort just to eat at my place!

He fell in love with the glaze!! So over the next couple of months we became partners.

Brothers had opened a smaller production line and so here we go!!

Check us out next week to see how the process actually works

Later…