Usage without explicit Blog subsection and the post preview marker

[dakky]

Is there any way to configure the theme that the index of the site shows the list of the last x posts?
At the moment this happenes in the "blog" submenu. I want to get rid of this menu and have the list of posts on the first page

And another issue I have: i'd like to use the <!-- more --> marker in order to mark the point, where the preview of a post should end. Any way to do this?