August 31st 2014: Helping My Friend Move Furniture

I woke up early in my friend's place today, as we had to meet a mutual friend who was in town for brunch. She was staying at the Nine Zero Hotel in the downtown Boston area, the lobby of which was pretty nice while we waited.

After our friend came down, we decided to head to the Omni Parker House nearby

for brunch at Parker's Restaurant inside, which was pretty fancy as expected.

This place is where the Boston Cream Pie originated, so we definitely had to get one, if not two.

For our meal, I decided to get a single Boston Benedict (corned beef hash, poached eggs, Boston brown bread, hollandaise)

and a single Seacoast Benedict (Lump Crab Cakes and Hollandaise),

while my friends got the Boston's Best Corned Beef Hash (House Hash with Two Eggs, breakfast potatoes and toast)

and the Traditional Eggs Benedict (Canadian Bacon and Hollandaise).

I loved my two egg dishes, especially the corned beef hash and the sweet brown bread that came with the Boston Benedict. The dessert wasn't too bad either, but I don't really see what the hype is all about.

After a pretty good meal, it was on to help my friend move furniture. It was amazing how we managed to stuff an entire queen sized mattress into my car, and removing it was even harder without more help from cleaners who were cleaning her apartment. She wanted to thank them for their help by heading to the Danish Pastry House in Medford nearby to get some desserts for them. However, by the time we came back, they had already left, which meant I could have one of the Bear Claws (apple jam, almonds).

I guess I'm glad they left.

We had to dismantle the dresser and desk in order to get it to fit in the car, but we could not do that for the mattress box-springs, so we had to carry that all the way home. In the end, we decided to discard it, and chose to have lunch at the Greek Corner Restaurant, a Mediterranean place with a cafe like atmosphere in Cambridge, as my friend had heard good things about it.

After looking at the menu, I recommended that she try the Taramosalata (Red caviar blended with bread and spices, topped with olives), something different from the usual hummus one can get at these places. We also got the Avgolemeno (Egg-lemon soup with rice and chicken)

and the Lamb Shish Kebab (Delicious marinated lamb or pork on a skewer with green peppers and onions, cooked on charcoal).

The pate was pretty good, while the soup wasn't too sour. The lamb was cooked pretty well too, being tender and juicy. Unfortunately, because of the brunch we had earlier, we could hardly finish the food, and my friend brought all of it home for leftovers. I remained at her place to write this blog for a bit, waiting till it was time to head to Green Tea, a small Chinese restaurant in Newton, to get some Chinese takeout, namely the Singapore Delux Rice Noodles,

to bring to another friend's place in Natick for a potluck party, where I had a lot of fun catching up with friends I had not seen in a while. I'm amazed at how many of my friends have become attached to each other. Not going to happen for me any time soon I think, but who knows.