How was your weekend? What did you do? Did you check out everyone's farmers' market finds? Did you see the beautiful black raspberries I found?
After my fabulous Friday, Saturday had a lot to live up to. There were a few things that Jeff and I each needed to shop for, so we decided to make a day of it and see what the outlets in Freeport and Kittery had to offer.
We took Gunner to his friend's house on Friday night, so we could hit the road bright and early Saturday and not have to worry about leaving him alone all day.
I go to Freeport and Kittery with my mom every year, and last year I got Jeff to venture up to Kittery with me, but he had never been to Freeport before. I was excited for him to see a place I really love to visit. It amazed me how quickly we could get in and out of all the little shops on the main street. My mom and I need a whole weekend to do the same thing!
L.L. Bean, Coach, J. Crew, Banana Republic, a couple of shoe stores, and The North Face are my usual stops, and while heading in and out of those stores and ones that Jeff wanted to stop at too, I was surprised to discover a new few places. Let's keep in mind that it's very hard to go on any sort of trip with me and not have it have something to do with food. The new spots I discovered are both bakeries: Simply Divine Brownies and Wicked Whoopies.
We found Simply Divine Brownies first. It's an adorable, little brownie shop decked out in pink and brown.
The girl at the counter told me it used to be pink and pearls (while donning a string of pearls), but once boys started working there, the pearls got dropped. I learned that Simply Divine Brownies was actually started by her sixth grade teacher, and I was impressed to find out that they use local ingredients as much as they can. There's even a Maine blueberry brownie.
I left with eight different kinds to try: Chocolate Pecan, Calmel (turtle), Blueberry, Merry Cherry, Caramel and Sea Salt, Sweetheart (chocolate raspberry), Mintuition, and Love Affair (chocolate peanut butter). I also grabbed a bag of brownie ends, which I broke into during the car ride home. You'll be hearing more about these brownies once I have a chance to taste them all. We sampled the classic while we were there, and I loved how rich and fudgy it was.
Somehow I was finally able to tear myself away from the adorable shop and hit a couple more stores. Once we got down to the other end of the street, we found Wicked Whoopies.
I had no idea there were so many different kinds of whoopie pies! I've had the classic, and I've made pumpkin at home, but I never imagined an oatmeal one with raspberry cream filling or the chocolate dipped ones (you can bet I bought one of each of those).
There were also a few different sizes, including mini whoopies, which could fit in the palm of my hand and jumbo whoopies, which are bigger than my head. I wanted to pick one up for a picture, but I wasn't sure if that would be appreciated.
After stocking up on baked goods and grabbing lunch at Azure Cafe, we drove down to Kittery to finish shopping. Lindt was having a huge sale on chocolate bars: 10 for $15! I use a lot of 70% chocolate when I'm baking and those were included in the sale bars, so I decided to stock up. With such a good sale going on, I couldn't help grabbing some of the 85% and 90% bars as well as the Touch of Sea Salt bars.
We left the sale section and scoped out the rest of the store. I always pick through the rejected truffles to find the hazelnut truffle shells. And then I decided to check out some new flavors like the Black Currant chocolate bar and some raspberry vanilla yogurt bars. Jeff picked out a pistachio bar, and then we both thought maybe the toffee bars would be good in some sort of future baked treat. We got up to the register and found out we got 2 pounds of free chocolate and a free chocolate bar. The bag we left with was so heavy!
It was really a successful trip! We grabbed a quick dinner at DQ and then made the trip home, stopping to pick Gunner up from his friend's house.
Have you tried Simply Divine Brownies or Wicked Whoopies? Have you been to Freeport or Kittery?