Editing metadata?

Hi. My blog is at brittanieshey.com/blog.

I’d like to add a link to comments in the metadata for posts on the home page. I’d also like to exclude the “featured” category from showing up in the category list. Ascetica is using shortcodes in the theme and I can’t for the life of me figure out how to modify this. I do have a child theme set up. Thanks in advance.