Side Dishes
Mary found a superb deal recently on Amazon, of all places, for Indian food. I know, I know, so many questions come to mind. Like what is she doing surfing Amazon when there's site updates pending for Mousesavers? I asked that too, and now I have to clean the kitchen for a week in addition to preparing the three course dinners that are expected of me.
Some time ago, we tried a couple of these packaged Indian side dishes from Tasty Bite and then more recently, Kitchens of India. Now, I have been experimenting a bit and I think I can whip up a pretty decent Aloo Gobi or a goat curry (oh, come on, it wasn't like it was anyone's favorite pet or anything, really). But side dishes for Indian cuisine, well, I mean I can sit there in an Indian restaurant and eat paneers and dals till the cows come home. Which in
So side dishes - not really my specialty. But Amazon has these Indian side dishes for sale at an unbelievable deal. For instance, Dal Bukhara, which is a mildly spicy black gram lentil curry and one of the better things I've ever consumed out of a box, can be had for the princely sum of $16.03 for a case of 6 boxes. Each box has about ½ cup, or two and a half servings. That's what the box says though we find it hard to orphan that little half serving to the fridge so we usually just eat that too. So that works out to around $2.67 a box or around $1.34 a serving. Pretty good deal - right?
Well, Amazon, does it one better. Actually, two better. First, Amazon offers an additional 30% off if you use the handy code they supply. Second, if you use Subscribe and Save, an offer I'm not going to go into details on now, you can save an additional 15%. So that case at $16.03, well now it's on sale for $8.82. That's $1.47 per box or 74 cents a serving. I'm beginning to sound like that ShamWOW guy and doesn't he just set off all your internal alarm bells?
Heat up a couple of these side dishes together along with a half cup of rice and you're looking at a full meal for under two bucks per person. Sure there's no meat but that doesn't mean it is inherently bad. There are scientific studies that have proven conclusively that the average American can survive quite well without meat for one or two meals a week. Of course we are talking about lentils and believe me, there was a time when I thought only people who lived in communes or worked at non-profits like this one actually ate lentils. But strangely enough, I found if they're cooked with Indian spices I like lentils just fine and afterwards I feel no compulsion towards helping out the donkeys at all.
Normally we don't go in much for packaged food items such as Dinty Moore Beef Stew and the like. But the Kitchens on
