It’s nice to have some pure time off for R&R, especially in Boston, one of my favorite cities. I’ll try to post as often as I can, especially since the readers have informed me that I’m only marginally entitled to a life!
In the meantime, here are some photos from activities yesterday and the day before.
The doors of the “Biolabs,” the entrance to the Biological Laboratories of Harvard, are a marvel (I’ve already shown pictures of the animal-themed brickwork and the rhinoceri in posts about my last visit): they show various animals and plants. Here’s the middle of three doors (with a slight self-portrait), the “insect” door.
Many advances in biology were made in this building. Behind these doors, for instance, Wally Gilbert devised a method to sequence DNA, for which he won the Nobel Prize. It was here that Mark Ptashne and others discovered how genes were regulated (turned “on” and “off”). And it was here that E. O. Wilson began devising his ideas about sociobiology (he later moved to the newer Museum of Comparative Zoology Laboroatories, where I worked).
A wasp and self portrait:
Lunch on Friday at one of my favorite restaurants in Boston: Durgin-Park, whose antecedents go back to 1742. It is a bastion of New England (Yankee) cooking: lobster, baked beans, Indian pudding (more below), scrod, and so on. Here’s a substantial lunch: Yankee pot roast, mashed potatoes (real, not from flakes!), and mashed butternut squash.
And the obligatory dessert for me: warm Indian pudding with a scoop of homemade vanilla ice cream, which melts into a creamy sauce that perfectly complements this earthy, granular pudding. Indian pudding, found only in New England, is made from cornmeal, molasses, butter, eggs, cinnamon, and other spices, and baked for a long time. Here’s a recipe, and perhaps a reader would like to try it. People whom I take to this restaurant (and offer a bit of the dessert) either love it or say, “meh”: there are far more of the latter than the former. But I regard it as one of the great achievements of American gastronomy.
Below is Durgin-Park, ensconced now in the temple of capitalism and kitsch that is the Faneuil Hall Market. When I first moved to Boston in 1972, it was a real market with purveyors of meat, cheese, and produce. Now it’s a big tourist attraction with nothing uniquely Bostonian save this restaurant. The rest comprises the usual stores and food emporia you find in these “renovations.” And of course it’s a prime tourist destination.
After lunch, a walk along the Freedom Trail, which hits many of downtown Boston’s historical high spots: the site of the Boston Massacre, Paul Revere’s house, the Old North Church, the ship the U.S. “Constitution” (“Old Ironsides”), and so on.
But it was cold, and a robin registered its displeasure with the weather.
I’ m told sidewalk plaques like this one are common, but this was the first I’d seen:
You could find a billboard like this only in Boston, and baseball fans will know what it’s about.
My friends Naomi Pierce and Andrew Berry, with whom I stayed the first two days, have acquired a huge rabbit named Wallace (after A. R. Wallace, of course). It lives in a two-story cage, but it’s sometimes let for noms and romps (no fusses, though, because it bites!) Here’s Naomi feeding Wallace. He is huge, a veritable Jungfrau of lagomorphs. Perhaps some reader will recognize the breed; I can’t remember it.
Wallace nomming:
Andrew, preoccupied with a talk he was giving in Florida on Darwin that evening, demonstrates the proper way to eat Weetabix, the breakfast of choice at Chez Pierce-Berry. According to Andrew, the biscuits must be eaten only in even numbers (I like three, and am roundly excoriated for it), doused only with a tiny bit of milk, and eaten quickly lest they become soggy. Given that I like them partly soggy and in odd numbers, I suffer greatly at breakfast (Andrew does not forgive miscreants lightly).
Lunch was at the Penang. We tried the Gourmet Dumpling House first, which Steve Pinker, who lives in the area, recommends as Boston’s best Chinese restaurants. And it’s the best I’ve tried, but yesterday it was impossibly crowded. We thus headed for a nearby Malaysian restaurant that is one of my standbys, the Penang. Here is beef rendang, a moderately spicy beef dish with sauce:
Chicken with ginger and greens:
Green beans with shrimp:
My favorite dessert, called “ABC”, which is the Malaysian equivalent of a sno-cone. It’s a mound of shaved ice doused with rosewater and other syrup, and various things like corn kernels, black beans, grass jelly, and other oddments. It’s very refreshing.
A classic: mango with glutinous rice (and pineapple):
A classic Boston historic sight: The Granary Burying Ground, where many notable American patriots (and other famous Bostonians of the colonial era) found their final rest.
It’s a somber place on a gray winter’s day:
The resting place of John Hancock, whose large signature on the Declaration of Independence is famous:
Mother Goose! Actually, Mary Goose (and her husband), supposedly author of the Mother Goose stories, a claim that is disputed:
Samuel Adams, an active patriot during the American Revolution, which started in Boston, and now known largely for the beer named after him:
Paul Revere, silversmith, patriot, and the man who made the the famous Midnight Ride to Lexington:
And finally, for breakfast this morning, a passel of Verna’s donuts: genuine homemade dunkers produced by a family operation a block from where I’m staying.
