Deano’s answer to: “What are some great and easy vegetarian recipes for a poor college kid?”

Actually, you may wish to pick up "The Four Hour Body" by Tim Ferriss… The dietary portion of that manual is very veggie-compatible, and the whole plan revolves around very simple, cheap, and easy to prepare meals. Black beans, especially, can be prepared in a LOT of interesting and delicious ways, are incredibly cheap in bulk, and basically keep forever dry.

Once you've got the basics down, it's also easy to start fiddling with ingredients to produce differentiated flavors, and keep things interesting…

Of course, this meal plan is also basically a fat loss diet plan, so if you're happy where you're at, make sure to either cheat a lot, only cook the recipes occasionally (1 of your dailies, perhaps?), or chuck the advice about cutting out soda and juice.

Mr. Luster's recipe is on my list for dinner tomorrow (any good meat-based substitutes for the Eggplant, Jonas? 😉 ), but it's definitely going to take a LOT longer to make than a "4HB" style meal… Which reminds me:

Whatever you cook yourself, unless you totally screw it up, is going to taste just a little bit better than the same thing made by someone else (for non-professionals, at least)… So if you're trying to keep things cheap, I'd focus more on that aspect at first – cooking ingredients that don't break the bank in a fashion you'll actually consume.

Then, work on cooking for tastiness once you've nailed cost-effective, and made regular meal prep a habitual part of your routine.

What are some great and easy vegetarian recipes for a poor college kid?

Deano’s answer to: “How long does frozen home-made stock keep?”

Wow. Months, huh?

Not impressed.

Of course, it'll depend a lot on how "clear" the stock is, and how it was initially prepared/how good your antimicrobial controls were… But if it's under a year or two, there's minimal 'freezer burn', and you're not financially in a position to toss it out of hand, just add some salt and overcook it a bit.

Judging from the lawsuit-fearing bastions of Internet cooking, realistically you're looking at 4-6 months, which is again likely 50% reduction from anything like an actual limit (which makes my year totally reasonable). And, you know, if there are no starvation concerns, it's like eating stale non-moldy bread… Probably not gonna kill you, but may impact your dish's flavor enough to make eating it much less pleasant than if you "started fresh".

How long does frozen home-made stock keep?

Deano’s answer to: “How can we get people to post their bios on Quora so we can get a better sense of who to follow?”

If Quora were a little more overt about the reputation/people rank aspect of the site, they might promote a complete profile, including bio, as a means of improving one's rank.

Along similar lines, it might be nice to allow "endorsements" or "upvotes" on a well done bio.

How can we get people to post their bios on Quora so we can get a better sense of who to follow?

Deano’s answer to: “Is Despicable Me appropriate for 5- or 6-year-olds?”

My not-quite-3 year old enjoyed it on several levels on the plane back from Japan a while back. I'm not sure she gleaned any particular message from it, but if you're asking in terms of action/violence/language concerns, Despicable Me is pretty tame stuff – almost all the really scary/painful looking stuff happens to vaguely-anthropomorphized yellow blobs.

At 5-6, it'd probably also make for an interesting plot that's also "easy enough" to have an extended conversation about, to help draw out themes, vocabulary, etc if you want to take things that way.

Is Despicable Me appropriate for 5- or 6-year-olds?

Deano’s answer to: “What Jackie Chan movie has the most amazing stunts that would be a fun (and appropriate) first Jackie Chan movie for a 7-year-old boy?”

I'm trying to imagine what I would be afraid of showing a 7 year-old from Wheels on Meals, and I'm coming up blank. None of Jackie's movies are better in terms of single-take stunt/fighting shots. In fact, according to Wikipedia:

Wheels on Meals was the first of two films which paired star Jackie Chan against former professional kickboxing champion Benny Urquidez (the other being the 1988 film Dragons Forever). Their fight in this film is typically regarded as one of the greatest on-screen martial arts fights ever performed. At one point in the final battle between the pair, a spin-kick performed by Urquidez is so quick that the resulting airflow extinguishes a row of candles. This is shown onscreen, with no cuts or trick photography.


More information on the movie (including the wacky titling) here:

What Jackie Chan movie has the most amazing stunts that would be a fun (and appropriate) first Jackie Chan movie for a 7-year-old boy?