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Introducing the Java Joe Sandwich
NOTE: This is a cross-post from our coffee blog, one of those topics that fits equally well into both blogs.
Necessity is the mother of invention, or so the saying goes. Turns out it’s true, as I discovered once again Saturday morning.
- Here’s Farmer Tim whipping up a batch of Java Joe Sandwiches. I love Tim – he’s like the perfect combination of Dilbert and The Marlboro Man
Every Saturday morning, we venture out to farmer’s markets around the area to sell coffee. While we’ve come to like something about each of those markets, it’s safe to say that the Western Wake Farmer’s Market has become all of our favorites. One reason for that is we get to set up next to Grandview Farms, purveyors of fine grass-fed, grain-finished beef (contrary to the preferences of so many “Neuvo Foodies” running around these days, I prefer my cattle finished on grain). Tim has established a bit of a tradition with the vendors that adjoin his freezer-filled butcher shop on wheels by cooking up burgers for all of us around 11 AM. When we launched Muddy Dog Coffee BBQ Dry Rub this past summer, he started seasoning the burgers with our rub. We thought it couldn’t get any better than that. We were wrong.
This past Saturday was a miserable market day, there’s just no other way to say it. The unpleasantness of a steady, cold rain was compounded only by the fact that we were loaded down with twice as much inventory as normal since this was to be the day of the WWFM craft sale, too. All of this is simply an elaborate excuse for the fact that Tim forgot to thaw the burgers.
So at 11, we were cold, hungry, and without our usual lunch. But that fast thinkin’ Tim is a farmer, after all, and they are an adaptive breed prone to improvisation of all types. And so it was on this cold, rainy Saturday that Tim invented the Java Joe Sandwich. We were gonna call it the Mudwich, but we thought that to be a less appealing name, and figured that those fellas over at Manwich might have a problem with it, too.
The Java Joe Sandwich is a thing of beauty: a loose-meat (aka “sloppy joe”) sandwich made with Tim’s ground beef, our BBQ rub, and water. Nothing else. No cans to open. No ingredients you can’t pronounce. Just pure beef and coffee rub. And as we discovered Saturday, you don’t even need to thaw the beef. One pound frozen beef into a skillet. Four or five tablespoons of rub. Keep adding water as the whole thing cooks, up to maybe a cup or a little more. That’s it! And you wind up with a delicious sandwich. It doesn’t get better than this. Till it does.
- Java Joe Sandwich. A thing of beauty.
The Foodwhisperer 