Thank you for this! Do you just mix miso with warm water or do you make a miso soup everyday? This would be so convenient for me compared to other soy based recipes to make! I don't drink miso as often as you, but it is a regular item on my menu and I enjoy the taste very much.

I wish that I knew for sure if Soy is good or bad for women. I also seem to have heard that it is bad for men as well as it messes up with their hormones. I was told to take Soy supplements or increase soy intake for perimenopause symptoms, but I am hesitant because I don't know for sure. What I have been doing is to add Soy products 2 times a week to my diet hoping that moderation is the key.

Leaving aside the burden of this disease on the healthcare sector and the overflowing hospitals: there is no guarantee that intentionally getting infected by the Omicron variant (or not exerting enough care to avoid disease) will prevent us from getting the next variant. So, I don't see any benefit in letting my guard down now after being cautious since the advent of this virus. If you account for unknown damage to internal organs that this virus may cause (anecdotal evidence is there but it has not been studied scientifically) and long Covid there is enough reason to stay cautious. My friend has had long covid since August and he is out of breath walking from his bedroom to the kitchen and pants all day long. He is a former athlete and a runner, in his 40's and had a mild case of Covid last summer. I feel sorry every time I see him because he is a shadow of his former self, almost disabled. I don't want that to happen to anyone, including myself.

I have a collapsible silicone set with various sizes like this: https://www.amazon.com/Kitchen-Funnels-Silicone-Collapsible-Transfer/dp/B08QYJNCQW There are several such sets on amazon and Bed Bath and Beyond and you could find the exact size you need and get them.

I have driven to Los Angeles and back on the same day from my home in NorCal for family events (births, memorial services, graduations, baby showers etc). It is 5-6 hours each way and it takes longer if I hit evening LA traffic. We used to take one break closer to LA where there are clean restrooms, but don't do that in Covid times and simply drive right through.

You are very sweet to be so caring and concerned about your GFIL. What you did is what any nice, caring, sane and proactive person would do in a raging pandemic. It is the right thing to do to go looking for a safer alternative and to let everyone know that they don't have to sit in a germy room breathing germs during a pandemic. What I think is going on (with or without the PPD factored in) is that your ability to shoulder so much in your life and your inventiveness in finding options for everything related to the safety of your family is making her question her own abilities and judgements and she is jealous of you for those qualities and resents that you always have solutions (or she looks at things that way, anyway). It is best to ignore her tantrums and keep the relationship superficial with her. And, please do not feel guilty for doing what you did - you probably saved someone in your family from serious disease.

I am sorry that you are going through this. Your description brings back suppressed memories of fun times at my IL's. My MIL used to cook petite portions of food to feed 5 adults because my DH and I ate so little anyway (because we were slim, she assumed that we ate very little and went around saying so), she was always feeling ill and not hungry anyway and it was only FIL who had a "man's appetite" (her words) - true to form, FIL used to finish off the lion's share of the dinner, my DH never showing interest and moving on to snacks right after dinner and me eating tiny scraps while my DH's married sister and her grown son sometimes popped in to share the tiny portions! She used to chop quarter of an onion and half a tomato to make her dinner dish with! Depending on where you are visiting right now, there ought to be Chinese, Thai and Indian restaurants/buffets/takeouts open all of tonight and tomorrow. Another option is to buy some groceries or supplies if food emergency arises tomorrow at international markets, ethnic grocers or 24 hour grocery stores/pharmacy stores. Good luck and I wish you more peace for the rest of the year.

Greek Style Mustard Sauce? Yefsi Pastourma? Uses mustard seeds and hard boiled eggs: https://www.greekboston.com/food/mustard-sauce-recipe/

I used to have a thin rectangular body and now I am blob-shaped. I do intermittent fasting and extended fasting and have lost almost all the surplus weight I had but my body is still an irregular blob with ups and downs all over. I am also in perimenopause and am insomniac and I have been told that those could contribute to it.

I actually set my cream cheese on my counter for a few hours so that I can use it at room temperature (as the recipe calls for) in cheesecakes and the like. It is fine.

If she is driving, she could postpone her departure by 12 hours and leave on Monday (the same amount of time that she asks from you) and make all the phone calls and arrangements that need to be made and then leave for the vacation. Your time and your life are as important as her time and her life. So, she could easily do that out of consideration for you. I would, if it were me in that position (and I have done many such things so as not to burden anyone else with the outcomes of my decisions).

My DS loves this sweet and crunchy Korean Tofu (in Korean, tofu is pronounced “dubu”). The recipe is called Dubu-gangjeong. The author dredges the tofu cubes in potato starch and fries them until crispy. I don’t deep fry, but shallow fry with a tablespoon of oil on my griddle. Full recipe here: https://www.maangchi.com/recipe/dubu-gangjeong Video of recipe here:

I am too embarrassed to ask here, but it was my belief that "furrie" was a sexual fetish. I once went to a comic-con (long story, the reason I was there was because my young son and I were catching special event pokemon which were available only at that location for that event) and there were a lot of sexualized furrie related costumes there and I learned then that some people associated it with a fetish. Now that school districts are talking about this, I might be totally wrong and might have misunderstood the concept! ETA: NVM. On further reading the thread, other details on kids and furrie culture are clearer to me now.

I go with what I paid for. I sent some fancy Japanese stationary for my DS's gift exchanges and I got them on a clearance sale a few months ago and had hoarded them - the value of the gifts were more than $20 each, which was the price limit, but I am happy that the recipient got something that they might not normally buy for themselves. In return, DS got many high end chocolates and edibles as gifts and he is thrilled to have so many goodies.

My DH just picked them up for me at Target today after he heard me talk about it (since I don't eat any candy, at all, and I mentioned reading about it here). He got me the "miniature" version and I must say that I expected more of the "brittle" in it and was disappointed at how little crunchy texture there was - but it was good! You can see if they have inventory in your zip code: https://www.target.com/p/reese-39-s-holiday-peanut-brittle-miniatures-9oz-16ct/-/A-83020715

I live in California and the instruction we received after the exposure were as follows, and they were as per the California Center for Disease Control and Prevention (obviously, your protocol might vary depending on where you live): For a fully vaccinated person: If you have been fully vaccinated and around someone who has COVID-19 (close contact), you do not need to stay away from others (quarantine), or be restricted from work unless you develop COVID-like symptoms. We recommend that you get tested 5-7 days after your last exposure to someone with COVID-19 and wear a mask in public indoor settings for 14 days or until you receive a negative test result. We went above and beyond these requirements by staying out of circulation until the negative test results were emailed to us.

If you test on the 5th day of when you think that you might have been exposed and get a negative result, then you are clear. So, your GFIL could stay away for at least 5 more days. My DS has had 2 exposure notices so far (one of them for 4 hours of exposure to an asymptomatic person in a closed room while masked), we monitored for symptoms and we tested on the 5th day each time (as we were instructed), got a negative result and moved on with the activity he participates in.

Trader Joe's and Whole Foods have it in my area.

I would suggest that whatever you make, portion that out as 2 servings of each dish, put in ziplocks and freeze flat with labels. That way, they don't end up reheating a whole container of a single dish and are stuck with it for several meals. I freeze nutritious vegetarian soups flat in quart sized ziplocks to give to my elderly friend occasionally. It is best if it is defrosted in the fridge overnight and reheated though it can be put in a pan of warm water to thaw and then microwaved in a bowl. If you can freeze some rolls for them as well, they will have an easy meal to eat quickly.

I color my hair because I have small grey hairs sprouting at my temples. Though I have very rapid growth of the grays (only the grays grow fast!) my coloring will last me around 5 weeks before the grays become obvious. At that point, I use Clairol's Root Touch Up (at about the 6 week mark) and it allows me to go without re-coloring my hair for 12 weeks: https://www.target.com/p/clairol-root-touch-up-permanent-hair-color-kit/-/A-21492393 ETA: There are many people recommending the root touch up already on this thread ...

Others have said a lot about how to respond to your daughters. But, I would like to say something about the quoted portion of your post: you should consider discussing this with your own counselor. This point, either consciously or subconsciously, seems to be a source of unhappiness and frustration towards your daughters for you. In my humble opinion, since you think that you did not screw up your kids and that you did your best, the status of your relationship as adults does not diminish your worth as a mom or as a human being. Your daughter is out of line if she is discussing her mother's political views with her boyfriend's mother and feeling defensive about your political likes and dislikes - it is fine if you can not meet someone who is indirectly connected to you due to who you voted for. Ask your daughters politely to stop discussing you with people who don't even know you. And ask them to please consider that you have your own fundamental rights to choose and live as you please just as they have the right to choose and live the lifestyle of their own choice - and if that means that you are discussing weather and shopping and recipes for years to come, so be it.

Around age 6 or 7, I think. We were at Panera and DS had finished eating his sandwich-soup combo and he started eating my sandwich and soup combo after he finished his portion when I was still waiting at the counter for some drinks to arrive. That is the day I realized that he had been eating adult portions larger than my own portions, though it had not registered until then. We also only ever ate out at restaurants and ordered adult foods for him because that is something our pediatrician said was a healthy habit, so he was used to eating adult foods and never small portions off the kids menu.

I used an app called "Shop" for a while to provide very good tracking for all my online orders. It did a good job of tracking my purchases and notified me of deliveries (it asked to access my emails and notifications): https://shop.app I don't use it anymore because I was uncomfortable about sharing my shopping habits and giving access to apps to my personal information. But FWIW, it was a good app.

this is very important (especially in people middle aged and above as well as toddlers and young kids). I add leafy greens like spinach, kale, collards, romaine lettuce and parsley every single day to my diet to get my lutein from natural sources because it is known to prevent/reverse macular degeneration as we age. If you cannot stand to eat so much of these greens, add kale or spinach to a smoothie with fruit/carrots etc to hide the taste and you will get your daily dose of lutein without tiring of eating the greens.

Keep your life simple for now until you figure something out. Move all his clothes out of his room for now. Give him clothes that he needs to wear every single time. Purchase a bunch of used halloween costumes with accessories from the thrift store and store it in a special "dress up" area and he can use those to change in and out of.