Oh, man, the barbecue place (Jimmy Jack’s Rib Shack) was good. I didn’t have ribs, but I had a very tasty barbecued beef and pork sandwich, plus beans and coleslaw and really great cornbread. It doesn’t have quite the soul of Al & Irene’s (and by this I mean that the only black people there were customers), and Denny missed the good natured harassment he suffers at the hands of the Al & Irene’s staff, but it’s much more convenient. In fact, Jimmy Jack’s is only about 5 minutes from our house–much easier than Cedar Rapids. It seems to be doing excellent business, which makes me happy because it’s locally owned.

They do take-out, too; it would be really handy to get a barbecued chicken or a rack of ribs on the way home from work. I hope they would include a little unit of their 4 Alarm sauce (though to be quite honest I would rate it around a 2.5 Alarm). It’s an excellent addition to the neighborhood.

And you should believe me because I’m kind of stuck-up about this kind of thing.

There’s a new barbecue place in town, owned by the same people as one of my favorite local restaurants, Atlas. We were planning to have flank steak salad with bleu cheese dressing and caramelized onions tonight, but I forgot to set out the flank steak to thaw. I’m trying to talk Denny into trying the ribs place. He seems to be fairly easy to convince.

I had a whole healthy day planned out (the bleu cheese dressing is low-fat, you see), which doesn’t look like is going to happen. That’s ok; it’s my running night anyway, so I’ll just take a long-ish run. You can’t go around not eating ribs. What kind of world would that be?