I received one of those “You know you’re from New England when….”  e-mails, and one of them was “You measure distance in how long it takes to drive somewhere.”  And I thought “Yup, I totally do that.”  You know, an hour to Boston, 20 minutes to New Hampshire, 3.5 to NYC, 10 to Washington DC, 11 to Ohio (13 if you have 3 little kids with you), and so on.  When someone would ask me “How far away is that?”  I would probably answer, “It’s about an hour away.”  Most definitely.

But then I thought, wait, I bet everyone does this.  Is that true?  Do people from Florida or North Dakota?  What about Saskatoon, Canada?  South Hampton, England?

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Tonight for dinner, mom and I had tuna steak!  The local grocery store had it in their flier, and we decided to try it.  I’ve never had tuna steak before, but my mom had.  I got a recipe off of Allrecipes.com, because I really trust them.  The recipes are rated, so I trust them more than ones from cookbooks or other websites.  Marinated Tuna Steaks - it had orange juice in it!  I had to make sure I didn’t drink all of it, so I had cranberry raspberry juice this morning instead (I do about 3-4oz juice with 8oz or so water).  The recipe itself wasn’t terrible, but the fish was kind of dry.  Perhaps I cooked it too long.  My mom liked it, and I didn’t dislike it.  I asked her if she’d like to have it again, and she said yes.  I said that I could do without it.  I like salmon much better, and it’s a lot healthier, too.

With my tuna, I had a very delicious spinach salad. I babysat this afternoon, so I didn’t have one for lunch, so I made up for it for dinner.  I LOVE spinach salads.  I made this one with red pepper, raisins, sunflower seeds, and light honey mustard dressing.  It was awesome.

I asked my mom this morning if we should go to Thyroid Cancer Support Group this month.  She said no, because it’s too cold to enjoy walking around in Boston.  I was kind of disappointed, but then I thought “Well, why do I really want to go?”  Last month, I didn’t think it was all that helpful.  I thought about what I’d be disappointed about missing, and I thought of the reason.  After the group meets, we all go to the Mass General cafeteria and have lunch together.  They have a fantastic salad bar, and really good looking baby spinach.  I wanted to go to the support group so I could go to the cafe and have a spinach salad.  Seriously.  I wanted to go to the salad bar.  I figure that’s not a good enough reason to drive an hour into Boston (in non-time distance, it’s 50 miles, or 80.5 km).

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My dad shouldn’t be allowed to go to the grocery store.  I think he goes to the store hungry, and he winds up buying the strangest things.  This week alone, he came home with prunes and bologna from the deli.  The bologna started with me asking, “Dad, what’s bologna?”  And he said “It’s a deli meat.”  And I said “Yes, I know that.  But what IS it?”    The grocery store had turkey bologna for sale, and I was wondering what the difference was.  What was real bologna made with?  He happened to go to the grocery store with my mom, and got 1/4 lb of bologna for me to try (I had half a slice).  I think it cost $.70.  In the past, he got one of those really tall religious candles in glass that they sell in the Goya aisle.  It’s still in the basement.