u/HighColdDesert

Harsh! Doesn't the northeastern US have more than 5 common mammals larger than a squirrel?
Deer, groundhog, raccoon, skunk, coyote, fox, rabbit possum... Okay, those are all very common in the parts of the NE I've lived in. But fair enough, that's not many though I've probably forgotten a couple more. The others I can think of aren't very common.

Exactly the same, but I'm from New York suburbs and then educated and lived in New England. I never noticed the "needs "xed" construction until well into adulthood, reading forums online.

A major thing is can you do your v and w differently? That makes a huge difference. West is not pronounced the same as vest. For a v, your lower lip lightly touches your upper teeth and the air passes between them and vibrates. It'll tickle at first. Actually, v is the same as f, but voiced.

For w, purse your lips forward as if blowing into a pipe. Actually w really is the in some ways the same as the vowel u, like saying west or uu-est sounds similar to English speakers' ears. But vest sounds totally different.

Also have you learned about the different t and th sounds in Urdu and English? Urdu has 4 sounds that sound like 't' to an English speaker, but does not have the English th at all. English th is a fricative (like f and s): the tip of your tongue touches the back or tip of your top front teeth, and the air goes out between the tongue and the teeth, vibrating. It's not a plosive, as all four t sounds in Urdu are.

If you can use the proper fricative th in your English, it will make a huge difference in the impression of your accent.

I got a Zyliss garlic press that you can press the garlic without peeling it. Especially thin-skinned garlic, which is the hardest to peel. If the skin is thick, I peel it first.

I saw bagged milk in India and Nepal.

I use roughly half water and half either wine or vinegar, and a drop of dish soap, and it works great. No need for a cling-wrap cover. The fruit flies go in. I compared half-wine and half-cider vinegar for the worst week this summer, and they both caught about the same amount of flies.

I live in a city flat and have only 2 rooms so if I don’t want to hide in the bathroom we would still be awkwardly next to each other while the person is scrubbing everything for 3 hours

They'll be a lot faster than 3 hours! A flat your size they should be done in an hour or less. I have a big house, 4 bedrooms, and they do a great job in 2 hours. Sometimes I'll ask her to skip a certain room that hasn't been used much in the past month, and instead do one of the less frequent tasks.

Sometimes toilet paper, but it tends to leave shreds.

I tore an old multicolored bedsheet into squares that when folded over twice are the right size. I throw them in a basket. Might use 4 to 6 of them each time, but I got a couple dozen squares from the one sheet so it's fine. The first couple times I washed and dried them in the tumble dryer they shed threads off the sides but now they've stabilized and are just nice squares of cloth.

Leave those big logs in there. Now that they've gone through a couple of years, they'll be starting to rotting down there, and your plant roots will be loving it, weaving their way all through the rotting wood.

How many inches of compost and soil are you filling in over the wood? When I have buried wood (a la hugelkulture) I made the top of the wood at least a foot below the surface of the soil.

People didn't like how i "changed how they looked at him,"

I hope they can understand that in fact this is how he actually was for all those years, no matter what they thought of him at the time.

Many of our most common trees and the seeds of our most common fruit have cyanide precursor (amygdalin) in them. It's not a problem. We've been evolving alongside them for hundreds of thousands of years. You can eat a couple bitter almond seeds without any effect, or the seeds in an apple. It's when you eat maybe 3 or 4 times this amount that temporary effects might be seen, and another 3 or 4 times that amount could cause lasting damage or worse.

It's bitter. If you're eating something that you aren't 100% sure is meant to be eaten and it's bitter, stop eating it.

If you make sure the tea bags don't have plastic, then sure, I just throw them in the compost as is. The paper will break down fairly quickly.

Also the few times I've had failure to germinate, it was with Baker Creek seeds. I've always had great luck with Johnny's, Fedco, and Burpee, and this year I got some seeds from Farmington, a small family outfit I saw here on this sub, and those were excellent too.

Fedco of Maine is a coop. And always very reliable in my experience.

Bakers Creek is more about the pretty photos, not about seed quality. They are seriously immoral people.

The Ancestry DNA test is cheap. You could just do it and see if it clarifies things. Maybe it will. If it doesn't, then oh well.

Um, no. I bought 10 saffron crocus bulbs from Fedco of Maine this year for about 7 dollars (in the US).

A DNA test would indicate if you and your sister are full siblings or less.

Okay, I do think it would be easier without a dutch oven. How do you get the crispy crust and large holes between beautiful gluten effect? What are your temperature and time and water spraying techniques? I'd love to know an easier way, to be honest

Okay, yes that's weird: "statement that he had my DNA and I didn’t have his, and this indicated a “one way transfer” from me to him. It was strange and very uncomfortable"

The cartons all have a plastic layer inside, comprising roughly 20% of the carton. They haven't had wax coatings for decades, in fact over 50 years in most places

Don't take these things as accusations. You have nothing to do with what your ancestors or their relatives may have done. Neither does the person who contacted you.

Just take it as hints as you try to build your family tree. At first there are lots of things that seem hard to explain, but gradually many of them will fall into place. Don't take the process as an attack.

No of course it isn't, but a lot of people use their enameled dutch ovens for baking, especially sourdough or that style with the crispy crust and big holes with well-developed gluten.

I recently got a rectangular cast iron loaf pan and have been using that (no lid) for the same type of sourdough, largely whole-wheat bread, and it has come out great. I've only done it twice so far, though.

Isn't halal slaughter supposed to be quick and painless to the animal? Ideally slice off the head in one gesture?

In many places, it is acceptable to have someone else say the Bismillah prayer, not the person actually wieling the knife.

A quick search tells me that a bit over half of Sikhs are vegetarian, and a bit under half are not vegetarian. I've met a lot of Sikhs who were not vegetarian.