Less. I started making cheaper recipes in general (for health reasons) and I've been making almost everything from scratch since we're home all the time. We rarely eat out in general so that hasn't changed.

Ooo that's a good idea. I love swedish meatballs. There's a recipe for them in my Southern living book

I made shepherd's pie last year and that was pretty easy. It doesn't have to be a big roast. Sometimes I just make fancier-feeling dishes like gnocchi with homemade sauce, mozzarella, and a glass of wine. I think I remember my mom making Cornish game hens a few times, if you like that. This year our church is selling Romanian cabbage rolls 👀 for charity on Christmas Eve so as soon as I find out whether or not they contain wheat, I'm ordering 12 of them. I've been craving cabbage rolls literally all year. Edit: Oooo what about a leg of lamb?? My Italian cookbook has a recipe where you stick garlic in it.

When I was a teen, I saw a counselor once a week and the psychiatrist I think every 3 months to make sure I didn't need the dose adjusted.

I end up doing it all. Even gifts other people send because no one sends wrapped gifts anymore. It's all just Amazon stuff and often not even in the Amazon gift bags (which I really don't care for anyway so I wrap those, too). If DH is giving me a gift, he wraps that, though one time he actually tried to convince me to do it. 🤦‍♀️

Oh, yes, that's not safe then. We sing but wear masks and that's been fine but singing without a mask is bad even if people are distanced.

We've had several people get covid in our congregation, but it was always caught at work and there hasn't been any spread. I'm getting a test on Friday before a medical test for my asthma and if I somehow do test positive, that will be the only case of spread at our church since March. Churches are pretty safe, at least in our experience, if people are masked and distanced.

My middle school had uniforms and we just wore those for performances. If you were in choir, maybe you'd be asked to wear something specific for that part of the performance, but usually not. In high school we were supposed to have dressy clothes for choir performances, but that school didn't already have a uniform and it wasn't an all-school performance.

I love trying new recipes. My mom always made steak, chicken, or pork with a potato and steamed veggies. Or pasta with steamed veggies. Every night. It's still hard to find some things in the stores here due to the pandemic but I often try new recipes if I can find all the ingredients. And I also have to since covid somehow triggered gluten sensitivity (it can caused by illness apparently!) and baking is a major hobby of mine. I've been on a big Greek food kick this year, but I've also been making Thai curry, stir fry, Russian food, and Texan food (my mom and FIL are Texan).

That's interesting! My only risk factor was mild asthma. Exercise-induced, they said, and it only bothered me for a few years. I only had an inhaler because someone was smoking on our hallway last winter and it was affecting me. We caught covid in March and while my husband only had a sore throat for a day and our daughter just had a mild fever and cough, I almost ended up in the hospital. Now the cold air is really bothering me when it never did before so I'll probably be put on the steroids this week.

I showed it to my husband and he immediately said it looks like a you-know-what. I guess I'm just really sheltered/naïve. 🤦‍♀️

Maybe I'm sheltered but I wouldn't have thought it looked like a phallic symbol at all. It doesn't really look like anything in particular to me. If that's what they're going for, they didn't even do a good job. 0/10

That's horrible! My church has a compost bin that gets picked up by Compost Crew, so when we do have the occasional unfortunate food waste I feel less bad because I can put it in the compost.

I'm guess I'm really lucky that despite living right by DC, our church is very nonpartisan. I've never heard someone bring up politics at coffee hour. The only reason I know anyone's views is from seeing them on Facebook before I deleted it. I still have no clue what our priest's views are, aside from being pro life and really jaded about politics in general. It seems like there's a good mix of views and a lot of people who don't like either party.

For me, participating in those sorts of conversations is a dilemma. On one hand, I love talking about politics and I've followed politics since middle school. But on the other hand, I was bullied a lot as a child and was threatened with physical harm for my political and religious views in high school and college so I can have a minor panic attack if someone starts getting aggressive/upset and it's made me a bit afraid to openly disagree with people. Especially these days when people are so polarized and quick to cut you off. In fact, I had a close family member cut me off over the 2016 election.

We're just wearing masks and avoiding people outside of our quarantine bubble. Other than doctor's appointments. The pandemic is killing my mental health and I don't have the energy to disinfect everything. We almost never get takeout but when we do, I don't heat it up because it's already hot.

That's true. My pastor suggested watching The Social Dilemma and it was really eye-opening. Social media's artificial intelligence really does create an echo chamber.

My parents are like this. They'll spout legitimately extreme stuff and if you disagree, they yell that you're a stupid commie. I've started ignoring political texts and responding "okay, mom" on the phone once she gets started on how Vermont wants to send people to the gulag.

I'm also really bothered by the assumption that if you're Christian, you're a creationist. I mean, where are they getting this idea? I grew up Christian and aside from that one class, I didn't meet any creationists until I went to college and joined Christian Fellowship there. It's not even the majority view: https://www.christianpost.com/news/how-many-christians-believe-in-evolution-depends-on-how-you-ask.html

The covid-denial, at least in my area, seems to be mostly political. I think it's just that people who are creationists tend to have conservative political views, so there's overlap. A lot of it seems to be about distrust of the government and distrust of experts. In a way, I feel like the internet hasn't helped because people can go on crackpot websites to "research" and that makes them feel like they understand as much as, if not more than, the experts. As far as creationism, I was forced to go to a class on that by a sports development program I was in (don't ask; I have no idea). A few years later I took a biology course on evolution in college. The person trying to prove creationism to us clearly didn't have a solid understanding of evolution. I'm not saying that's true of everyone, but it was definitely true of him.

I definitely agree. People were so insistent though that I started to wonder if I was missing something. To me and definitely to my husband, it's the equivalent of letting children decide whether or not they believe in germ theory or heliocentrism.

I think so. And they do have a lot of good science books listed. I can just leave out the few books they insert for creationism apologetics and use a different curriculum in the later years where they suggest apologia.

I'm still waiting for my copy of WTM to get here. USPS is taking forever. I'm open to putting stuff together myself but the Charlotte Mason method really appeals to me and we're on a tight budget so Ambleside is perfect aside from some of the science.

It feels like every single affordable curriculum I look at uses Apologia, unfortunately. Edit: Ambleside Online and Mother of Divine Grace, for example.

Do you present creationism as an equally valid theory? My husband and I don't at all see the point of that and in fact, he would forbid it. But the curriculum I'm planning to use assumes all Christians are creationists (which isn't remotely true in my experience), and insists that it's important to teach both sides and let the child decide. Otherwise I love the curriculum and I'm fine just subbing that stuff out when we get there, but I'm wondering what others with our beliefs do. Seeing people who use that curriculum talk about how evolution is stupid nonsense freaked me out a bit