Waxahachie: Market Coffee Shop

Should you find yourself in Waxahachie with a need for fresh flowers, farm to table meals or cold brew coffee, check out Fresh Market on S. Rogers Street.  What really set's their coffee apart is the way they brew, roast and select their beans. Henry, one of the owners of Fresh Market said about their beans that they're "going to be roasted that week or the week before...I have got four age barreled beans. What they do is they take an oak barrel and they age that barrel with rum, whisky or scotch. They take the liquor out and put the green coffee beans in it. They let the beans age in the barrel and then roast them. Zero alcohol in your coffee, but they have a flavor that is just amazing.”" -source Zachary and I spent a few hours working at Fresh Market and enjoyed the relaxed, open atmosphere, beautiful flowers on the table & of course, the coffee (tea for him :) ). There are several ways to take your coffee here, including chimex & french press, and they serve all the big city, coffee faves, like; cortodos and cubanos. Yum.
If you are around Waxahachie, or on your way to Dallas via I-35, swing by Fresh Market!

Fresh Market at Crooked Creek Farms is open 7 -11 a.m. and 2 – 7 p.m. Monday – Friday and 7 a.m. – 2 p.m. Saturday and closed on Sunday.

Date Night: Coffee & Italian

As I mentioned previously, we try to have a set aside time & date night together each week. This is especially important for us now that we have a room mate & a pretty full schedule each night of the week. This past week we choose to use our day off for the Tomb Sweeping Day holiday as our date day.

We headed to a coffee shop on Coffee Street to do what we love to do best together, relax, spend time with Jesus, read and blog, in a coffee shop. It's kind of our ideal day.

Date night attire, or "what I wear most days" basically, attire.

The wine bar next to Coffee Street was having a deal on their wine! 3 bottles for only 100 yuan. This is a fantastic deal so we picked up 3. We enjoyed our 33.33 yuan bottle of wine over dinner and skipped out on the restaurants 300+ yuan wine. Unfortunately, we left the other 2 bottles in the taxi on the way home! Shucks! But our 100 yuan wine still was cheaper than the restaurants!

We split a Regina pizza, mushrooms & ham. Delicious! I so love Italian style pizza. It's thin crust but not the kind you get from fast pizza places. I find the thin crust at Papa Johns and Pizza Hut is very crisp, like a cracker, true Italian style, is flimsy & delicious.

After dinner dessert consisted of my favorite, panna cotta. I am fighting to persuade myself  NOT to make a batch of these at home. I've looked up the recipe and it's ridiculously easy! One day, I'll cave, and tell you all about it.

Happy Date Night boo!  Do you take date nights with your booga-boo? What do you guys do?

Loata Thai Coffee Farm

As I mentioned previously, on our road trip along highway 107 in Northern Thailand we stopped off at a coffee farm. This was so exciting for us because it has always been one of our dreams to own a coffee shop & work closely with the plantations. With our love for coffee comes a love for all things coffee, from seed to cup. So, we are very interested in the farming aspect of coffee culture. I was super fortunate to have visited a coffee farm while in Costa Rica in high school. 

As we were driving, I started seeing lush green plants on the side of the hills as we got further into north Thailand and because of my time in Costa Rica, I knew what they had to be. Coffee plants!  

We visited a coffee shop that was advertised for every mile for the 10 miles leading up to it. We were filled with suspense as to what this Laota Coffee House was since there were so many signs.

Once inside it seemed like just a normal coffee shop, in the middle of no where, filled with Thai people but we had honed in on those advertisements. In the corner of the ads we had noticed a picture of coffee cherries. We eagerly asked the baristas what that was all about and found out that they had a coffee farm up the road. We excitedly asked if we could check it out, to which they said, "Yes!"

After saying hello to these cuties, we headed down the road and found the small coffee farm. Since it wasn't harvesting season the farm was completely empty so we had it all to ourselves. 

Most of the cherries had been picked already but thankfully we found a few for Zachary to get a look at them. 

Next door to the coffee farm

We loved walking around the deserted farm and taking in all the sites and imagining what all the plants looked like in season. This small coffee farm was such a surprise to us and just another reason why we were so thrilled to get on the road and explore some of Thailand for our self. 

Have you ever been to a coffee farm or coffee plantation? What did you think?

3 Wave Coffee Club

3 Wave Coffee is a Coffee club founded by our dear friend, Denny and his business partner and friend, Norman. Denny is an American entrepreneur, based out of Tempa, Arizona and loves all things coffee. He spent the last year in China, with his wife April, developing 3 Wave Coffee. The 3WC is a coffee of the month club where each month every customer is provided with a months worth of high end 3rd Wave coffee. Sounds like my kind of club, right?! This is a fantastic deal for coffee lovers living in China, where it's difficult to find quality coffee!

While living in China Denny an April became some of our closest friends. Now that they've moved back to the States Denny is on a monthly mission to find the very best roasted coffee to be exported to China. Denny has found coffee that would convert even the non-coffee drinker, like coffees with hints of blueberry, tomato, fruits, and some that even resemble tea.

Each bag of 3WC coffee gives the taste description and roaster. Know any great roasters in your hometown? Let me know and I'll be sure to pass their info on to Denny to help in his hunt for the best roasters!

We were privelaged to attend 3 Wave Coffee's launch party at a local Resturant and bar in Qingdao. We had such a great time supporting this new business, watching the baristas carefully pour each hand dripped coffee, and of course, trying new roasts! *Check out April's highly professional and informational recap of the event. Really. Check it out. It's much better than mine. :)

Glimpses from  the launch.

At the event, 3WC provide free hand poured coffee and pastries. Hand poured coffee is fabulous! If you've never tried it I highly recommend you do! If you're not in a rush, hand poured coffee is a great treat and some coffee lovers even insist on having it daily. You know, as they say, "Once you go hand pour, you don't go back." Or something like that. ;) The hand pour style originates in Japan where it's enjoyed as more of a ceremony, similar to tea ceremonies.

For such high quality of coffee 3 Wave provides hand pour is the way to go to really enjoy & savor the flavors & complexity of each cup.

"The benefits of pour-over compared to other brewing tactics lie in the timing and control in the wrist. Infusing the ground coffee for the correct length of time with a controlled hand will produce a fuller, fruity taste, often accented with floral notes" -Samantha Reichman at CNN 
To find out more about hand poured coffee, like what the heck it is and how to do it, check here. :)

So, what is 3rd Way Coffee?

Third Wave Coffee is a movement where coffee producers seek to produce the highest-quality of coffee. The movement considers coffee as an "artisanal foodstuff, like wine, rather than a commodity." Third Wave Coffee is coffee that has been improved in all levels of production, from bean growth to micro roasting and brewing. To further explain, I'll let the highly factual ;) wikipedia do that for me, "Third Wave Coffee aspires to the highest form of culinary appreciation of coffee, so that one may appreciate subtleties of flavor, bean varietal, and growing region – similar to other complex culinary products such as wine, tea, and chocolate. Distinctive features of Third Wave Coffee include direct trade coffee, high-quality beans, single-origin coffee (as opposed to blends), lighter roasts of the beans, and latte art." via

i.e. Third Wave Coffee is just better. And awesome. :)

You know if your coffee provider has a tattoo, he's legit. ;)

April, his wife, is the cutest & such an amazing woman. She of course, photographed it all! You may remember April from her blog & 10,000 Smiles Project!

If you're in China and want to sign up for the 3 Wave Coffee Club you can do that here.