New Home for The Okey Dokey Chronicles

Hello All,

The Okey Dokey Chronicles have moved to a new url.  Same content, new look.  In fact, I’m kind of indecisive and will likely be playing with the look of the page for a while.  So if there are things you like/dislike, please let me know.  I have moved the content from my first blog Prichard Family link onto this url as well.

Thanks for reading!

Check out:

http://itsokeydokey.com

Enjoy!

Chris

Pesto @ The Ranch

The Makings of a Fine Pesto

Ashley came by this past Sunday and we made a batch of pesto. Yummy. I started out by harvesting all five sweet basil plants from my garden, which was enough to yield about 10 cups of basil leaves. The recipe goes something like this:

2 cups basil leaves, packed

3 cloves garlic

2 T fresh lemon juice

1/4 cup parmesan cheese, grated

1/2 c olive oil

1/4 cup toasted pine nuts, or if you’re like me and you burned the pine nuts, toasted walnuts

salt and pepper to taste

Put all ingredients in food processor and mix until they form a paste. Freeze by the 1/2 cup in plastic bags. (We used snack sized bags put the snack bag into another snack bag so they are double wrapped. Use on pasta, pizza, tofu, chicken or fish. I like to put the pesto on noodles and add chopped green olives, artichoke hearts and sundried tomatoes. Good stuff.

We made five batches and will be eating summertime goodness through the winter. I’ll likely do another batch with purple basil before the end of the month.

No whining, Mr. Crabbedy

Call it a blending of like minds, a synergy of creative forces, or just plain bad hearing, but Flash and I came up with a nearly perfect way to describe Avery’s less-than-charming side.

In a word: “crabbedy.”

As I was getting breakfast ready under a fog of Benadryl and lack of sleep, Avery asked me one of his standard morning questions: “Am I staying for nap today at school?” Unfortunately for him, the answer was “yes.” So I cringed, waiting for the whining, pleading, and stomping onslaught to begin.

“I HATE NAP!!!!!” Avery screamed, only the preamble to a verbal tirade that I endure on a daily basis. Why he does this, I’m not sure. It is rare, if ever, that I give into this type of behavior.

To be fair, I know nap time is hard for Avery. He rarely falls asleep anymore and is forced to lay on his cot for at least an hour while much of the rest of the class sleeps. This is very difficult for a boy of Avery’s energy level, and I feel for him. I’m amazed that they can even get him to lie down, really.

Patterns

So much has happened at The Okey Dokey Ranch in the past month, it is hard to know where to begin.

Suffice it to say, the long-awaited arrival of Flash has more or less taken place. He keeps saying things like “when I get here,” as if he hasn’t moved in yet.  (I don’t think he considers himself “here” until the house is arranged to his liking; we’re not there quite yet, I am told.) Yet it seems like he’s here to me.  Much of his stuff is here.  And he’s rearranged so much of our living space, I feel disoriented in my own home.  Yet grateful.  Things had gotten pretty chaotic around here.  And this guy has the perfect combination of obsession and organizational skills to tackle things like building shelving and rearranging furniture and CDs until things make more sense.