This is a crazy week. I finally got home from Cedar Rapids yesterday at noon after spending the night in Denver. We leave first thing tomorrow morning for our 4,000 mile road trip, and we haven’t started packing. So I wasn’t quite sure when or if we could pull off a completely local meal. We had Mike’s mom over for dinner last night so I decided to give it a shot. Not 100%, but it’s the best I could manage this week.

Tonights dinner was whole wheat spaghetti with meat sauce and salad followed-up by homemade cherry, chocolate chip, almond ice cream. Never had a chance at getting a photo of the ice cream - but it tasted amazing. The spaghetti was pretty good too, but it’s hard to tell in the photo.

Spaghetti:
Italian Sausage from Samish Bay Cheese (Bow, 50 miles), the onion and garlic from Maltby (15 miles), and the fresh basil from our porch (0 miles). Non-local but organic incredients: the jarred marinara sauce from Muir Glen in San Joaquin Valley, organic whole wheat spaghetti from IL and parmesan from Italy. The parmesan I bought thinking it was from the cheese monger in Seattle, but when I reread the label it turns out that they’re just the importer and it came from Italy. Oh well, now we’ve got to use it up.

Salad:
I used the same ingredients, from the same sources as OLS #3. I made a fresh salad with lettuce (Mt Vernon, 45 miles), cucumber (Maltby, 15 miles) and tomato (Snohomish, 10 miles). I made my own blue cheese vinaigrette dressing - the ingredients were domestic, but not necessarily local. The blue cheese came from Oregon so somewhere around 200 miles.

Ice Cream:
Whole milk and cream from the local dairy - I tossed the carton and can’t remember the name. About 40 miles. Cherries from our trees (0 miles). Imported were the milk chocolate and the almonds, both from California.

Well, it’ll be quiet around here for a little while as we’re gone for the next 11 days. We’re going to take photos and collect funny stories on our way through WA, MT, ND, SD, MN and WY and will post when we can. Our OLS meal next week will be with my family in Ely, MN.