Eat Boutique

I'm pretty sure Sundays are my favorite. 

They're big, long, languid days when it's ok to sleep in and then sit around reading the newspaper for an hour (or two.) They're days when I probably should think about visiting a church, days when it's a good idea to spend at least a handful of hours in the kitchen, especially in the winter. Sundays are the time to pull friends closer and slow life down, enjoying every single second before the start of the next work week.

On this particular Sunday, I picked up my friends Kate & Katie and we headed over to the Eat Boutique Holiday Market.

Eat Boutique is an awesome little business run by food champ Maggie Battista. I love this snippet of their mission statement: "We eat boutique, which means we eat small, local and independent." I think this is another way of saying, "We're out to save the world."

The Eat Boutique Market is a place for independent food businesses to share samples and meet new friends, and for savvy shoppers to check some folks off their holiday shopping lists. There were a wide range of goodies to be sampled: tons of cookies and candy, spiced nuts, sweet jams, and even booze (!!) The booze, in fact, was one of my favorite parts...

keep reading >>

because while I'm pretty good at putting together a couple dozen cookies, I have not yet ventured into the world of concocting alcoholic beverages.

GrandTen Distilling was sampling their 'Amandine' almond liqueur and their 'Angelica' botanical liqueur. Both were unlike anything I had ever tried before: smooth enough to sip on, but not too sweet. And it turns out the Dorchester distillery is open every Saturday for tours. Sounds like the perfect diversion for the long post-holiday months before springtime rolls around again.

My other favorite part was that Joy the Baker was at the event signing cookbooks. I've been a fan of Joy's blog for awhile now, and listen to her podcast every single week (usually on the way home from teaching.) So it was beyond awesome to get to meet her in person. She was warm and friendly, and really took time to chat with us even though we were toward the end of a very long line.

Plus she signed a library book for me :)

I reserved the Joy the Baker cookbook from the local library a few weeks ago. It just so happened that the book came in on Friday, so I had it in my hands today. Even though I planned to buy a copy at the event, I thought it would be funny if Joy was up for signing the library version. And she totally was! Hope it brings smiles to plenty of unsuspecting bakers in the future.