Ghazal Indian Restaurant - Review

Ghazal is a relatively recent addition to the row of restaurants on Centre Street in Jamaica Plain. They might not have the following of Bukhara but that's just because people just don't know about Ghazal yet. All of my room mates who have tried Ghazal love it and either go to Ghazal more or at least just as often as they go to Bukhara. You have the option of dining in or ordering takeout or delivery (on the phone or via Seamless web). (By the way, if you use the Seamless web link here, you can get a $5 discount on your first order, if you're new to the site.) It's one of the few places that don't charge a delivery fee on top of the tip. I like that.

The fact that you can choose to have your food as hot or mild as you like is a great thing. If you think you can take it, the nice chefs at Ghazal will make your meal "Indian hot," which means that it is way hotter than any American food you've ever had. Seriously. Personally, I'm too much of a wimp for that sort of thing. Medium is about as hot as I'll go.

Ok, so what do you order when there are so many choices on the menu? If I'm getting delivery, I like to get the Special Dinner for one. If you're eating with someone, there's also a dinner for two (which is probably enough food for 3 or 4). For less than $25 per person, you will get more than enough food for one meal, unless you're a football player, in which case it will be just enough (see picture below). It includes a samosa, soup, rice, naan bread, crispy things (sorry, I don't know what they were but they were really tasty), a curry dish of your choice, rice pudding (aka "kheer"), and coffee or tea. Oh yeah, you also get 3 sauces: a green one, a brownish one, and a reddish-orange one with onions. The green one is spicy and minty, the brownish one is sweet, and the reddish-orange one is spicy with oniony goodness.

So, how was it? I enjoyed all of it except for the samosa, which was ok but nothing to write home about. Perhaps it would have been better straight out of the fryer. Next time, I'll put it in the toaster oven for a minute before eating it. All of the dishes were nicely seasoned and balanced. The curry dish I chose was the lamb and spinach one (saag?). The fact that they give you rice, crispy things, and naan is great because you can have different dipping instruments for your curry (and soup). That just makes eating Indian food fun! The mulligatawny soup was flavorful and complemented the curry and samosa. For desert, the rice pudding (aka "kheer") has some cardamom in it, which adds a nice flavor to it. After a big meal, the rice pudding was perfect because it was light. The coffee came in a deli container and it was what it was. All in all, it was a really good Indian meal and I would definitely order it again for delivery or take-out.

Meal for one - enough for at least 2 meals!

Rice pudding "kheer" - flavored with cardamom - Perfect ending to a big meal.

Review: Goya Beef Potato Puffs

These snacks were $3.29 a box at BMS Paper Company. Considering the fact that they're easy to prepare and quite tasty, they were a good purchase. All you have to do is put them on a tray and pop them into the toaster oven for 30 minutes at around 350F. In a regular oven, you need to set it at 375F.

Package

Potato puffs in the toaster oven

The inside of a beef potato puff

Basically, these are just balls of seasoned ground beef wrapped in mashed potato and deep fried. When you put them in the toaster oven, the outside browns and the inside gets nice and hot. They are really good comfort food and one or two would be an ideal afternoon snack with some tea. I suppose a whole box could be a meal.

If you want to get fancy, perhaps you could throw them in a stew and they could be like dumplings or something. 'Nuff said.

Popeye's Chicken - Crawfish Tackle Box review

Now that I have a scooter, I can get to the Popeye's Chicken that's only a 10-minute scoot from my house. Last week, I went there and tried their "Crawfish Tackle Box," which is shown in the picture below. It includes fried crawfish, fries, a biscuit, and creamy horseradish sauce. For only $4.99, this was a pretty good deal. There's a KFC about a block away but I would much rather go to Popeye's just because their breading is lighter and crispier. The Cajun fries have some nice seasoning making them better than the plain salted KFC fries. The creamy sauce is ok for what it is. Personally, I like to make my own seafood sauce with ketchup and horseradish. Of course the part that I really love about any Popeye's meal is that light and fluffy biscuit. Awesome! I recommend this tackle box deal.

The "Crawfish Tackle Box"

Riding a scooter (moped) in Boston

The first thing you need to do before getting scooter or moped is to make sure you have either a driver's license or a permit. If you're from another country, you need to convert your license to a Massachusetts license first, before you can apply for a Class M permit, which you need to get if you want to ride a scooter with an engine that is larger than 50 CC. To ride a 50 CC scooter, you just need a Class M permit or driver's license. I waited in line at the DMV for over an hour and was told that I had to get my driving record from Canada before they could convert my license and then let me test for a Class M permit. It didn't matter that my license was expired either. If your license can be converted, then it has to be converted. Whatever. So, I paid $18 to get my certified driving record and had to wait over a month to get it in the mail. When Ontario says that it takes 10 to 15 days to process your order, they start the time when they actually send the thing to the processing place. They sat on my application for almost a month before sending it! Okay, enough about that.

This is a video of a typical ride from Jamaica Plain to Super 88 in Allston:

Ok, so why am I telling you about buying a scooter when this blog is about eating and drinking good stuff for not much money? Well, the point is that one is limited to places around the subway (aka "T-stations" in Boston) if you don't have a personal mode of transportation. A car is just too expensive and bicycles are a little dangerous on some roads. Scooters can give you convenience and help you save money in the long-run. I had a room mate who got into at least 2 bicycle accidents but was fortunately saved by his helmet. He eventually got a motorcycle. For me, I'm just not a big enough badass to get a motorcycle, so I got a scooter. However, I wanted to be just a little badass and opted for the 125 CC scooter instead of the 50 CC scooters, which don't require an M license. The main reason for wanting to get the 125 CC one was because I wanted to be able to keep up with traffic on roads that have speed limits of 30 mph. I know that the 50CC scooters can go up to 30 mph but sometimes the actual speed at which motorists travel on those roads is a little higher. In short, the 125 will give me a few more choices in terms of roads that I can travel on without feeling like I'm holding up traffic. I bought my scooter at Scooters Go Green. Having a scooter gives me a lot more options in terms of where I can go. Public transit only takes you so far and going beyond the central area costs extra. The commuter rail is quite expensive if you go outside Boston. With a scooter that runs 80 to 90 miles per gallon, each trip costs much less than a subway ticket. Some great cheap eats are only bus accessible, which means that you either have to pay extra for delivery or take the bus to get there and back but have cold food. And, if you can get take-out instead of delivery, you'll save on the delivery charge (sometimes $2) and the tip. If you still wanna tip, that's great - I respect that. There are also some places that are only bus accessible or would take 30 or 40 minutes to walk there but only 10 minutes to scoot there. This is when having a scooter is really cool - you get to explore the places that you would never have gone before! For example, I live near a Popeye's Chicken, which would take about 40 minutes to walk there but on my scooter, I can be there in about 10 minutes. There's also a Save-a-lot market near there and I would never have gone without my scooter. If you think about the mileage in terms of how much it costs to scoot one mile, at the peak of $4/gallon at 90 miles/gallon, it's only 4.4 cents a mile! I used to pay $3.40 a day to commute to school but now, it's just a little over a buck a day (it's 12 miles each way). That really adds up. [Update - Jan. 14, 2012 - MBTA proposed fare hikes] Insurance and Safety If you have a clean driving record and take the motorcycle course, your scooter insurance could be as low as $100 a year. So, you're not only saving on gas, but also on insurance. Also, I highly recommend taking the MSF motorcycle course for safety (and not just the savings on insurance). It's quite obvious that riding a scooter or motorcycle is more dangerous than driving a car. However, the MSF course will help you lower your chances of getting into accidents because they will teach you everything about riding a motorcycle safely, from what to wear when riding to learning how to swerve safely. It only takes a weekend and you'll save 10% on your scooter/motorcycle insurance for the rest of your life (and maybe your life too). As an extra precaution, I try not to ride my scooter in the rain or snow. I've ridden in the rain before but it's not fun. Sometimes you'll still have to take public transportation but hopefully the weather cooperates enough so that you can realize some significant savings in addition to the added convenience that the scooter provides. [Update: July 2012]: Recently, there have been a few scooter thefts in the Boston area. If you don't already have one, get a heavy duty chain lock and make sure your scooter is securely locked to an immovable object, such as a light post. One of the scooters that was recovered was in ugly condition when the owner retrieved it.

Frugalism - the more effective way to "occupy"

With the recent "Occupy" protests around the U.S. recently, I was thinking about whether there might be a more effective way to address large corporations and get social justice. If we think about the financial system as it is, a lot of what is being sold is hot air and marketing bullsh*t. Think about how much people pay for status symbols and luxury goods. When you look beyond the hype and advertising, you'll see that they are just a bunch of physical objects. The only reason we think of them as being status symbols is because a lot of people have fallen for the marketing bullsh*t.

So, what does this have to do with the protests? Well, I was thinking that the more effective way to protest would be for everyone to adopt a lifestyle of frugalism and make those status symbols meaningless. Once individuals become aware of the fact that those status symbols are perpetuated by their own consent, they can then collectively withdraw their consent and make those status symbols irrelevant and meaningless. For example, if we all agree that Gucci bags are symbols of wealth, fashion, prestige, or whatever, that's what they are. The bag is not inherently so. Once a critical mass of people are aware of the marketing bullsh*t, we could then collectively agree that Gucci bags are merely objects that stupid people buy or change the meaning of the Gucci bag entirely.

It's not enough to just protest and say that things aren't fair because all of us collectively make society what it is. Sure, the protests will get attention and people getting arrested definitely makes a statement. But the only way anything will get done is if there is some kind of disruption that forces change to happen and the disruption does not have to be violent at all. It can be very subtle, through the act of collectively re-thinking what is important and helping each other to see through the marketing bullsh*t. We can do it because many of the people protesting are intelligent young people - at least I hope so because a lot of them are college students! If we all channel more of our money towards stores that recycle (aka thrift stores, Goodwill stores, etc.), not only will those charitable organizations earn more for their causes (usually helping the disadvantaged in some way), we will all be kinder to Mother Earth because we will be buying things that are in decent condition and would otherwise be adding to our overflowing garbage dumps. Corporations will then have to make things that are actually useful to get our dollars. Only then will we be able to "occupy" Wall Street and any other street in this nation.