The Same Old Place - Restaurant Review - Jamaica Plain

On Centre Street in Jamaica Plain, there are a few places where you can get really good pizza. There's the Real Deal with their fancy combinations and the JP House of Pizza on the other side of the street. Same Old Place is unique just because their pizza is tasty without anything fancy on it. The guy making the pizza is visible from the front window so you can watch the whole pizza-making process. However, he might get a little creeped out if you actually stand there staring at him while he works...

Yup, that's the window where you can stare at the pizza guy...

If you look at their menu page profile, you'll see that they're open early at 7 a.m. for breakfast until 11 p.m. and their menu is quite long. In addition to their pizzas, they have various types of burgers, subs, pastas, and sandwiches. They also serve beer. You can tell they have a loyal following from the friendly banter between the customers and the people behind the counter. There was a shooting in late 2010 at Same Old place and the JP community came out in support a few days later by having a peace vigil even though it was cold and windy. I suppose JP is just a very cool neighborhood too.

The last time I went there, I finally ventured into the room that's at the back of the restaurant, to the right. There's a large TV on the wall so you can watch TV while you're eating your meal. The restroom is in the back corner and it's very clean. I liked sitting at the large table with the bench, facing the TV. The place was about half full but it didn't seem loud and I could hear the news clearly. I had the cheese pizza combo, which includes 2 cheese slices and a small 12 oz soft drink. It was a little too much pizza for me. I usually get just one slice and a small drink. The slices are pretty big but the crust is very thin and topped with plenty of cheese.

Anyway, this place is great for poor students who want some great comfort food at almost any time of the day. A slice  and a soda is under $5 and there are all kinds of other things to eat for less than $10. Go try it!

Cambridge & Thames Viennese style cream wafer rolls - review

Recently, I found these tasty Cambridge & Thames wafer rolls in Jamaica Plain, MA. The snacks are made in Greece and the ingredient list looks pretty good (no high fructose corn syrup or complicated-sounding things). They're very tasty and only $1.69 a can. There are 17 rolls in each package. They are available in two flavors: Vanilla and Cappuccino. Each can has an inner metal lid with a pull-tab so the snacks stay fresh until you open the can. The plastic lid is reasonably tight but it's nice to have that extra seal on the can.

When you bite into these wafer rolls, the texture is very light and flakey. The cream is sweet and complements the wafer perfectly. Of course the cream is not very moist or else it would make the wafer soggy. Ideally, these would go with a nice cup of coffee or tea because the cream is actually quite sweet after you eat a couple of these. They might go well with ice cream too. If you want to get fancy, these could be cake decorations.

Since this blog is for the frugal-minded, I'd like to mention that the can is not only small enough to stash away in a small compartment of your backpack, it's also durable enough to reuse! These cans are probably recyclable but if you need a strong container for storing things, this can is surprisingly well made. There's one in my scooter's cup-holder for putting little things like a small cloth and a pen. I suppose if you had office supplies (e.g. paper clips, pens, etc.) or small workshop materials (e.g. nails, nuts, bolts, etc.), these cans would be ideal for organizing those too.

Cappuccino and Hazelnut flavors

Bread Machine - an investment that's worth the dough

When bread machines first came out, people thought that they were the best thing since sliced bread. But now, it's quite common to see at least one or two at the local thrift store for only 8 to 15 bucks, depending on which shop you frequent. If you get a new one, they're anywhere between $50 to over $200, depending on brand, whether it's stainless steel or plastic, size of loaf, etc. This is the kind of thing a frugal person would want to try out by getting a used one first and then deciding if it's really going to be used on a regular basis before spending big bucks on a new one.

In my latest youtube video, I showed the whole process of baking bread, using a bread machine to mix the dough and a toaster oven to bake it. I included a short section on what the bread should look like while it's mixing in the bread machine. If it's too moist, add a little flour at a time until it looks right. If it's too dry, add small amounts of water until it starts rotating properly. This video has been featured on http://largetoasteroven.net/

The machine itself is not a complicated contraption. There's a loaf pan with a paddle that is connected to a peg in the pan, which is placed in the machine. The motor in the machine moves the paddle, which agitates and mixes the dough for set times, depending on which mode you choose. When the dough is mixed, you can either take it out to rise and bake in a regular oven or keep it in the machine, which will bake the bread in the shape of your loaf pan. Personally, I like to use the dough function, take it out and bake it in either a toaster oven or regular oven because my machine's loaf pan creates a vertical loaf, which is just a little weird and awkward to cut. The paddle also makes a hole in the bottom of the baked loaf. Furthermore, the pan is very difficult to wash if you bake the bread in the machine. It's much easier to just wash the bits of raw dough.


The basic recipe is:
1 cup water
1 Tbsp oil
1 tsp salt
1-2 Tbsp sugar/honey
3 cups flour
1-2 tsp yeast


It's important to get flour that has a high gluten content because it will help your dough rise properly. When I started using my bread machine, I made quite a few dense bricks because I was using the regular all-purpose flour from the supermarket. Then, I tried the flour from BMS Paper company and I was finally able to make a nice fluffy loaf. The Pillsbury brand flour works well too. If you want to use whole wheat flour or any other type of flour, start experimenting by replacing only 1/4 cup of the white flour with the non-white flour. Eventually, you'll get a feel for how much of the white flour you can substitute before the bread starts coming out too dense or falling while it bakes. If you can find unbleached white flour, that seems to work better than most other flours.


The main advantage of letting the dough rise and then baking it in a regular loaf pan is that you can let it rise as much as you want. The bread machine's mixing and baking cycles are timed so that the dough only has a certain amount of time to rise before the machine automatically starts baking it. However, there is such a thing as letting it rise too much (see picture below). If this happens, just knead it by folding it a few times and then let it rise again. No big deal.

This is what happens when the dough is allowed to rise too long!

As a poor student, using the bread machine to mix saves time and allows you to do your homework while the machine does all the hard work. The only time you need to get your hands dirty is when you dump the dough into the regular loaf pan. Hopefully you have a toaster oven with a timer so that you can just set it and get back to your books. Baking your own bread also allows you to control what goes into your bread. If you read some ingredient labels, you'll notice that some companies still use high fructose corn syrup, which is just a tasteless sweetener. Why use that when you can use honey or molasses? It's also fun to try adding other flours like hemp flour, coconut flour, or whole wheat flour. When it's baking, it also makes your whole house smell good.

Bagelville - the place to get huge bagels!

I had a groupon for Bagelville and finally had to use it because it was about to expire. It was worth $14 and I ended up getting a dozen bagels with a container of scallion cream cheese. I couldn't believe how large the bagels were! And, the cream cheese was really smooth and tasty. If you don't like bagels, try their cream cheese. It looks like they make it in-house because it's fresh and has an expiry date. I've only tried the scallion flavor but would like to go back to try their other cream cheese flavors. Here are some pictures of the bagels and the scallion cream cheese. Check out how large the bagels are!

Scallion cream cheese from Bagelville

Vegetable bagel on top. Bottom one was multi-grain, I think.

Plain bagel

Whole wheat?

Chocolate chip bagel with a bite out of it...

Sesame bagel

Asiago bagel

 The bagels are $1.41 a piece or $9.95 for a baker's dozen. It's located in Quincy Market right now (Dec. 2011) because Market Place at Faneuil Hall is under construction.