Boston!

I spent the weekend in Boston and hit up some of my favorite foods from the four years I spent attending college there. The second I landed early Friday morning, I headed over to Quincy Market for clam chowder. As it turns out, tourist attractions don't open at 9AM on cold Friday mornings, so I wandered to the North End to pick up some Mike's Pastry. I was going to meet with friends on Sunday to stop by this very place, but I had an hour to kill and a stroll ending in fresh cannoli sounded perfect. Plus, I figured I could earn brownie points by bringing some to the friends I met with on Friday & Saturday who weren't participating on Sunday's North End trip.

I happily consumed a cannoli at Quincy Market while watching tourists filter through. In this manner, an hour passed quickly and I was able to obtain a bread bowl clam chowder from Boston Chowda Co. Combined with a semi-interesting book (Capitalism and Freedom by Milton Friedman) and the mid-morning March sun, this was a very comforting brunch. I knew I was too full from the cannoli to eat the bread bowl, but the memories it brought back were too much to care. (Plus it makes for a nicer picture, don't you think?)

Having arrived on a red eye from California meant I'd only gotten four hours of spotty, restless sleep at best, so after several hours of meandering around Boston and MIT, I headed to the hotel for a much-needed shower and power nap. While I don't particularly love lobster (I prefer crabs), I also have fond memories of Quincy Market's lobster roll, so I'd gotten one to take to the hotel with me. Again, I wasn't hungry enough to eat the bread, but the lobster salad filling was so delicious that I simply couldn't bring myself to care. I also managed to confirm that a to-go lobster roll could stay for several hours, so getting one on Sunday to bring to the family in California would be doable.

Now, it's simply impossible to mention this weekend without mentioning that Saturday was Pi Day and the team had thoughtfully acquired pie for the entire tournament. No, I don't have fond memories of this particular pecan pie from Lyndell's Bakery, but I do miss the nerdiness that was such an inherent part of everyday life at MIT, and the fact that I got to celebrate another Pi Day at the Institute was indeed rather happy.

No trip to MIT is complete without some campus food. I couldn't catch the dining hall when they were open, but Anna's Taqueria never fails to deliver. Now granted, I don't care for Anna's half as much as Roshni does, but I did really like their breakfast burrito on the rare occasion I passed by the student center while they were still being served. Eggs, sausage, rice, beans & cheese, all wrapped in a flour tortilla - what more could a partly white-washed, mostly California-raised Asian ask for in a non-Asian breakfast?

As previously planned, Sunday resulted in more cannoli & clam chowder (this time not in a bread bowl). I carefully placed a box of cannolis in my purse and stuffed a (well-wrapped) jumbo lobster roll in my carry-on. The pastry of the cannoli were soft by the time my family bit into them some 13 hours later, but they still enjoyed them a lot. My Boston pit stops will probably never change from this pattern, but I really don't think I care.