My parents owned a house on the Eastern Shore of Virginia for a few years.  Once a year, we’d put the pups in the car and make the 14 hour drive from Chicago to a tiny town called Pungoteague.

The Pretty Side of the Eastern Shore ... on the dock with the pups.

The last couple of  hours of the drive were pretty sad.  The poverty in that area is worse than anything I’ve experienced in the city.  Anyone that has traveled on rural highway US 13, knows the terrible smell of the Perdue and Tyson chicken factories. The flat landscape is covered with many long white buildings, like the ones you see in the movie Food Inc., each housing way more chickens than you would think possible.  Mr. T went so far as to call it the most depressing drive on earth.  This is when I first started to realize how different my perception of how food is produced was from the reality of the industrialization of our food system.  And, all this has happened in a relatively short time.  Our grandparents didn’t eat food produced this way.

I was so happy to see this short video with an update from one of the industrial farmers featured in Food, Inc.

We’ve been a little quiet this year on the blog.  We’ll be back in the fall with some great stuff … promise.

Does it date us if we tell you this was taken at a Better Than Ezra show?

Green Juice everyone!  It’s not that hard to incorporate into your daily routine.  We tend to focus on calories and carbs without giving much thought to the nutrients in our food.   We need a ton of Leafy Green Vegetables.  The micronutrients and phytonutrients in these plants are the raw materials we need to stay healthy.

We got our Juice Recipe from Kris Carr, one of our favorite wellness gurus.  A week’s worth of organic veggies for juicing (for two people) comes to about $30.

• Kale – A big handful
• One Cucumber (peel if it is not organic),
• Broccoli Stem (Save the Florets for eating, they will muck up the juicer)
• Romaine – A big handful
• Two Celery Stalks
• Ginger – Small piece
• Parsley – Small handful

Add a half of green apple in the beginning, if the juice seems too bitter.   You can experiment with other greens and use whatever you have leftover in the fridge.

Granted, you may not love the taste at first.  But, really quickly it becomes very neutral.   Who liked the taste of beer the first time they had it?!?

We both have a Breville Juicer.  It’s $200 on Amazon.  It is the most used appliance in the kitchen.

Happy Juicing!

Mr. T has joined the bandwagon of my real food obsession.   He wanted pancakes from scratch so he could control all of the ingredients.  (Organic Flour and Milk, Eggs and Butter from animals raised in pastures.)  He was busy on the internet for awhile, but came across this recipe, which seriously lives up to the title of “The World’s Best Pancake Recipe.”

Combine the dry ingredients in a bowl, whisk, set aside:

2 cups flour
2 tbsp sugar
4 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp fine salt

Combine the wet ingredients in a second bowl, whisk:

2 cups buttermilk
4 tbsp melted butter
1 tsp vanilla extract
2 beaten eggs

Add the wet ingredients to the dry and whisk until just combined. Fry in a pan with butter. Top with real maple syrup.

Mr. T also figured out that you can make your own buttermilk (which is a better version of what’s available in grocery stores.)  Just add a tablespoon of vinegar to one cup of organic milk (from grass feed cows), let sit for five minutes.  Who knew?!?

Hope everyone has a peaceful Martin Luther King Day!

Heather had a rough day yesterday.  She thought she was reuniting a lost cat with his owners.   Unfortunately, after a lot of effort,  it wasn’t the right cat.    This turned into a trip to the Humane Society, and knowing if no one claims the cat in 7 days it will most likely be put down… so sad.  The twist here is that Heather would love a pet, but is highly allergic.  Otherwise, she would have a house full of animals (or at least as many as Mr. O would allow.)  So, in order to cheer her up, I thought I’d share a couple of our rescue success stories.

This is Mica.  She was a feral kitten I discovered on my front porch.  Turns out she had been hit by a car and had a broken leg.   We fixed her up and now she’s three years old and lives with me and Mr. T.

We thought Mica needed a feline companion, so we adopted Bennie from PAWS (an amazing no kill shelter here in Chicago).

This is Fritz.  Just before Chicago’s big snow storm last year, this guy started hanging out under my front porch.  He was really friendly and I was worried about him surviving the storm.  Heather brought over her humane trap and we were able to catch him.  We set him up in my garage until we dug out from all the snow.  We took him to the vet to be fixed and cleaned up… with the hope of finding him a home.  Thanks to our friend Caroline, we were able to find Fritz a home with one of her friend’s great grandmother.  He now is loved by all the seniors at her assisted living facility.

Seriously, we need to find this girl a pet that doesn’t make her sneeze.  I think she would have brought this guy home as a pet if that bug lady would have let her.

My natural inclination is to have all the Christmas decorations out of the house by the end of New Year’s Day.   I’m pretty over the Christmas vibe by then since we are bombarded with it starting the day after Halloween.  Now, I have to suppress that urge.

A few years ago Mr. T and I took a ski vacation the week before Christmas.  It’s become a tradition to travel that week because where ever we’ve gone, we’ve enjoyed fabulous trips with no crowds.  I guess most travelers prefer the week between Christmas and New Year’s.   We’ll usually return home late on the 23rd and spend Christmas Eve shopping for and putting up our tree.   I like a particular type of tree, an untrimmed Fraser Fir.  These trees are expensive, even at half-price Dec. 24th prices.  But, I love them.  The branches resemble trees you’d find in nature … all wonky with the trunk visible.

It seems wasteful to only have the tree up for 7 days.  So, we end up keeping the tree up until mid-January.

This weekend I threw a little dinner party for Heather (Happy Birthday Heather!)  I’m pretty sure everyone else was over the Christmas spirit too, so I thought it would be fun to redecorate the tree for the occasion.

Step 1: Remove all the Christmas Specific Ornaments

Some basics about Heather … she’s a designer and she loves the color orange almost as much as she loves animals.  So, I left all the animal ornaments on the tree and added some orange and purple lights Halloween lights.

Step 2: Supplies

I was inspired by the folks over at Young House Love to use paint chips as ornaments (a nod to Heather’s talent with paint).  After a quick trip to Home Depot for the paint chips, I made a bunch of ornaments with a hole punch and orange ribbon.

Granted, it’s still a Christmas Tree.  But, at least it’s not shouting “Here comes Santa Claus.”  It looks and feels more like “Happy New Year!”  I can handle the decorations for another week.

I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving! Mine was a little crazy, threw my back out the day before but managed to make it for turkey dinner. So while I’m stuck here on the couch I thought I’d help my blogging partner, Tina, who has been doing all the work on our blog and finally write a post about one of my favorite furniture companies, Lee Industries.

I’m a believer in buying furniture that is handmade in our country, Lee Industries is by far my favorite go to furniture company for upholstery. Since their start in 1969 with just 10 employees, they’ve grown into one of the leading upholstery manufacturers in our country all while being family-owned and caring about the environment. They’ve been making great quality furniture using sustainable methods even before it was the popular thing to do.

I’ve purchased many of their pieces including a bed for my master bedroom, a bench for the end of my bed, ottomans, and my living room sofa. There are endless options from fabrics, nail head trims and stain selections to name a few. Once you finalize your decision, you get a great custom piece eight weeks later, which is really fast for custom furniture! I’m always happy when I see one of their pieces featured in the many magazines that I read each month.

 My bed, king size in Patton Flax Linen

As featured in the latest issue of Lonny Magazine

In another great fabric from Urban Grace

Twin bed version that I found on Pinterest

 Bench at the end of my bed in Tampa Pewter leather with Driftwood leg finish

Ottoman in my sitting area in Tampa Slate leather with nail head trim

 My living room sofa in Bristol Metal

I love that on each piece the people who actually made it sign their names! How great is that!!

Lee is not available at the Merchandise Mart so I purchased everything through Jayson Home and Garden which gives a designer discount.

When Mr. T and I travel, we like to bring back some sort of local art from our destinations.  Like this street art we purchased in Rome.

This great mug set we picked up in Ireland.

A serving bowl from Croatia.

When we were in Florence we purchased a set of dishes from a local potter.  I picked out a pattern with little blue flowers on a vine (I swear it was a pretty little flower).  The set was then made-to-order and shipped to us back in the States.

Pretty, right?  Look a little closer …

Do you see it?

We have an entire set of dishes telling us to F#!@ Off.   These are definitely special occasion dishes.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Did you see the 20/20 story on eggs?  It’s hard to watch.  The good news:  McDonald’s and Target dropped this factory farm supplier.  The bad news:  the other suppliers are most likely just as bad.  They just haven’t been caught on tape.

I started buying pastured eggs awhile ago (Heather buys them this way too).   What does that mean?  The chickens are really, truly free range and roam pastures eating bugs and worms!  It is worth taking a few minutes to read this wonderful article about the nutritional differences between pastured eggs and the other options out there.  Just a few facts about the benefits of pastured eggs vs. typical supermarket eggs:

• 1/3 less cholesterol
• 1/4 less saturated fat
• 2/3 more vitamin A
• 2 times more omega-3 fatty acids
• 3 times more vitamin E
• 7 times more beta carotene

Pastured eggs are more expensive than conventional eggs.  But, in the larger picture, an inexpensive protein source.  Vital Farms pastured eggs are $6.99 (plus tax) per dozen at our Whole Foods.  That means a two egg breakfast costs me $1.16.  Way less than most people spend on their morning coffee.  And, lately I’ve been buying my eggs from a local farmer (I love knowing the people producing my food!) at the Logan Square Farmer’s market.  Their pastured eggs are $5.50 per dozen.  So, my two egg breakfast is only 92 cents!

Supermarket eggs are cheaper because factory farms are experts at productivity… by overlooking animal cruelty, poor worker conditions and using cheap feeds (that include a lot of genetically modified ingredients).  These cheap feeds then become our nutrition source.  Factor in huge amounts of money the factory farm industry diverts to lobbying efforts and there is even less spent on the quality of the product.

I haven’t been able to find pastured egg options at regular supermarket chains.  If you don’t have a Whole Foods near you, there are other options.  Take a look at Eat Wild or Local Harvest for local farmers in your area.  Another good read on the topic can be found here.

My goal is to get people interested in where their food comes from and to encourage folks to start looking beyond the cheapest prices and basic marco nutrients (proteins, fats and carbs.)  I really want to do that in a way that sparks interest … not in a way that turns people off by being too preachy.  Let me know how I’m doing!

Our last Old House/New House post clued you in that Tina can be a bit of a design copy cat.  The only other example (so far) is this Ralph Lauren paint color.

Ralph Lauren Blue Leather VM147

Heather is a master at painting.  While it is a Ralph Lauren color, she has it mixed into Benjamin Moore Aura Matte Finish because it is the best paint she has ever used.  Why?  Because:   it is self priming, covers in two coats, you can re-coat in one hour, its washable and low VOC.  She choose it for her master bedroom.  Pretty stunning…

Master Bedroom

Yes, this is still the Master Bedroom.

It’s not totally Tina’s fault she is a copy cat.  Heather recommended the color for Mr. T’s office because she loves the way dark colors contrast with vintage moldings.  Here is an example of the “before” with white paint.

Heather and her Painting Assistant/Niece

And, after a couple of days because the prep work on 100 year old plaster walls can be brutal… the after:

Pretty in both rooms, but completely different looks.

Bennie Cat in the Old House Office