My Favorite Recipes: August 29, 2019

Chelsey Wilson was born in Leavenworth, Kan., the youngest of four daughters. From there, the family moved first to New York and then settled in Idaho.

“My dad was in the Air Force, so he was gone a lot,” she said. “My three older sisters: we’re pretty close in age. We got in trouble a lot, my parents grounded us a lot as a group punishment. My dad would say, ‘If one did something bad, you all did it.’”

Chelsey grew up in a farm town and did many of the same activities done here – feeding cows, going to the rodeo, and riding horses. After she graduated from high school, Chelsey moved to Moscow to attend the University of Idaho.

“I only decided to go to college because I went to the UI campus and felt at home,” she said. “I wasn’t really thinking about teaching, I was thinking more like daycare. My counselor pushed me saying, ‘You don’t need a degree for that. If you want to go to college, what do you want to do?’ I talked to the advisers – at the time it was Beth Price, Suzanne Plank, and Ling Ling Tsao – they talked to me about this new program where you could work in early childhood but also in a classroom, but you would also get special education [certification], and I was like, ‘Wow, that seems awesome!’ So, I did that, not knowing it was 20 more credits than any of my friends.” Chelsey said in order to finish her degree, she was taking 19 credits per semester while also working a part-time job.

“I was super glad when I was done,” she said. “But I was really young at the time - I had a lot of energy then, but I was definitely glad when I was done.”

Chelsey met her husband, Colby Cocking, through a mutual friend.

“We met at Cougar Country,” she said. “We were friends for a couple of years before we attempted to date. Actually, before we even dated, we said, ‘Well, if this isn’t going to lead to marriage, I don’t see any point in dating you.’ We both decided we could get married, this is something we should try. So, we had the marriage discussion before we even dated!”

They married two years later. Officially, the entire dating period and marriage was done long-distance: “I was still between Grandview or up here in Moscow. He was in California, Texas, and then Korea. I got to join him in Korea,” she said. Colby was a Korean linguist with the Air Force. “That’s why my son calls him ‘Apa,’ the Korean word for dad. We’ve tried to get him to learn Korean with his sign-language and with English.”

Together, they spent one year in Korea before moving back to the United States, specifically to Maryland.

“It was our last base before he finished his contract with the Air Force,” she said. “I always really loved the houses in Colfax – even when we were in Maryland, I was on Zillow looking at the houses there. It seems small enough but big enough to not drive me crazy. I lived in a town of 500, there was nothing to do there. I had a hard time making friends,” Chelsey said. “The older I get, the less I want to be around people. I might want to end up being out further. Right now, I live in town, which I like. I have some really great neighbors. My neighbors will bake me pies and bring them over. I’ll put notes on their doors when we’re having parties and they’ll come over. It feels like the perfect match for us, I’ve always loved how the houses looked on the outside and the inside. I was like, ‘I want to move to Colfax!’ We moved in when I was about 30-weeks pregnant. It feels like I’ve been constantly trying to get the house together since then.”

Their son, Jacob, is 21-months-old. “We love him a disgusting amount,” she said. “It’s pretty gross, we talk about him all the time. He’ll be throwing a fit and we’ll be all, ‘Oh my God, look how cute he is!’”

He is starting to talk and enjoys helping Chelsey in the kitchen. “Last night we were cooking – he helped me cook, he’s my master chef. He’s finally getting to the age where he can help a little more. He’s been helping me with lots of stuff. He helped me put everything in the food processor. Today, he was saying, ‘In? In?’ and then put a handful of hot dogs into my coffee. I was like, ‘Great! He told me, but I just didn’t understand what he was saying. In my coffee. Cool.’”

Because of her degree, Chelsey feels kids are easier to understand.

“I really enjoy working with kids and their families but mainly kids. Really enjoy problem solving about social/emotional skills for kids,” she said. “Some kids need lots of positive reinforcement. Once they come out of their shell, they can be a persistent learner. Instead of saying, ‘good job,’ I have the staff be specific and say, ‘you worked really hard at writing your name, you’ve been working really hard at that.’ We focus on helping them process what they did instead of just saying, ‘good job.’ Kids will focus on getting “good job” their whole lives instead of understanding what it was they did right. I also don’t believe in saying ‘I’m sorry.’ People hate me for that! Instead of that, I work on the kids - “okay, well – do you see you hurt them? We don’t hit, but we can use gentle touches.” Sometimes the other person didn’t say something or they thought they were playing. ‘That hurt.’ Good, you used your words. What could you say? ‘Oh, well, I should have used gentle touches.’ Yes, you should have used gentle touches, you’re right. Then they practice using gentle touches – touching their arm nicely. Or, if tag got too rough, they’ll practice tagging gently. It doesn’t work overnight, it needs lots of consistency,” she said.

Chelsey admits she never really learned how to cook when she was young.

“I actually never learned how to cook until I started dating my husband – I don’t know if we were even dating yet. My body was really tired all the time and I was trying to figure out how to do things. Could I feed my body differently?” She laughed. “I made a lot of noodles,” she said. “Everyone in my family cooks but I never cooked. Now that I do cook, I take pieces from different recipes. A lot of times I don’t follow my family recipes to a ‘T’.”

Her college cooking days were kept very simple. “I ate a lot of ramen,” she said. “I still love ramen – ramen and hot sauce. It’s a staple meal, I used to eat it twice a day.”

After college, Chelsey lived with her sister in Texas. Since six people lived in the same house, Chelsey and Colby ate out a lot to have some privacy, which resulted in significant weight gain. Her solution to her weight gain was to follow a strict Paleo diet.

“I learned how to substitute things and what my body does well with and what it doesn’t do well with. I gained an interest in cooking – what fuels my body, not just what sounds good.”

Today, she enjoys cooking from scratch. “In the winter, I make really great thick, chowder-y soups: clam chowder, chicken and dumplings – I make a roux first. My chicken and dumplings is very thick,” she said. “We really like to make taco skillet – it’s a really quick, kid-friendly dish to make with leftovers. You can make it spicy, or not. I also really like tofu tika masala.”

Chelsey doesn’t eat a lot of meat.

“I got sick on meat for a really long time because I never had store-bought meat,” she said. “I was sick for the first year, and then cut out meat. I found out it was the meat making me sick! I had only ever had hunted meat – bear, elk, deer. ‘Home meat’, I guess. Store-bought meat, I don’t know what was different about it, but my body got sick from it. My body has become desensitized now but when we do meat, I pretty much only buy turkey and chicken sometimes. I don’t really eat beef, I only eat pork from the farm. I think mainly I stay away from beef. That seemed to be a big culprit.”

Recipes:Chicken and dumpling soup

Chelsey says: This recipe doesn’t have a roux, but I usually make one so the base of the soup is very thick. If you have a favorite dumpling recipe, you can use that – the one I included is very involved. If you are not using a roux in your recipe, the dumplings can be cooked in the soup; otherwise, I recommend cooking them separately and then adding them to the soup.

For the soup:

2 (10.75 oz.) cans condensed cream of chicken soup

3 cups water

1 cup chopped celery

2 onions, quartered

1 tsp salt

1/2 tsp poultry season-

ing

1/2 tsp ground black

pepper

4 skinless, boneless

chicken breast halves

5 carrots, sliced (the

big ones)

1 (10 oz.) package

green peas

4 potatoes, halved

6 slices cooked bacon,

crumbled

In a large, heavy pot, combine soup, water, chicken, celery, onion, salt, poultry seasoning, and pepper. Cover and cook over low heat about 1 1/2 hours.

Remove chicken from the pot, shred it, and return to the pot. Add peas and cook for 5 minutes longer. Drop prepared dumplings in the stew. Top with crumbled bacon.

For the dumplings:

1/2 cup butter

1/2 cup milk

1 (1/4 oz.) envelope

active dry yeast

1/2 cup water

3 eggs

1/2 cup sugar

1 tsp salt

4 1/2 cups all-purpose

flour

1 (32-oz) carton chick-

en broth

Place milk and butter in a small saucepan and simmer over medium heat until the butter melts. Remove from heat and allow to cool.

Dissolve the yeast in the warm water placed in a small bow. Set aside.

Combine eggs, sugar, and salt in a large mixing bowl. Mix until thoroughly blended. Gradually stir in the flour, alternating with the yeast and the milk mixtures.

Gather the dough into a ball in the bowl, cover with a cloth, and rest for 20 minutes.

Pour chicken broth into a large pot. Bring the broth to a boil over medium-high heat.

Meanwhile, sprinkle flour over a clean board or countertop. Turn the dough out onto the board and knead lightly until smooth and satiny, about 3 minutes. Add a little more flour if the dough is sticky.

Roll out the dough to be about 1/2-inch thick. Use a butter knife to cut dough into 2-inch wide strips and place the strips into the boiling broth. Dumplings will initially sink and then rise to the surface when cooked, about 10 minutes.

Remove the dumplings from the broth with a slotted spoon and drain on a plate.

Clam chowder

Chelsey says: “I always add more clams, but this is a great baseline if you are unsure about how much you like clams. Do not forget the red wine vinegar, it’s the secret ingredient!”

3 (6.5 ounce) cans

minced clams

1 cup minced onion

1 cup diced celery

2 cups cubed potatoes

1 cup diced carrots

3/4 cup butter

3/4 cup all-purpose

flour

1 quart half-and-half

cream

2 tablespoons red wine

vinegar

1 1/2 teaspoons salt

ground black pepper to taste

Drain juice from clams into a large skillet over the onions, celery, potatoes and carrots. Add water to cover, and cook over medium heat until tender.

Meanwhile, in a large, heavy saucepan, melt the butter over medium heat. Whisk in flour until smooth. Whisk in cream and stir constantly until thick and smooth. Stir in vegetables and clam juice. Heat through, but do not boil. Stir in clams just before serving. If they cook too much they get tough. When clams are heated through, stir in vinegar, and season with salt and pepper.

Taco skillet

1 can tomato soup

1 1/2 pound ground

meat.

Flour tortillas cut into

squares

Milk of choice

Cheese of choice (I like

mozzarella)

Green peppers, diced

1 onion

1-2 tsp garlic powder,

or use fresh garlic

Salt

Brown meat; add 2 tsp garlic powder when almost fully cooked.

Add peppers and onions (cut however you like), sauté with meat for about a minute or two.

Add tomato soup then fill can with milk of choice and pour in. Allow everything to simmer until onions and peppers are soft.

Now add your tortillas, you can add a little or a lot. The more tortillas you add, the less liquid there will be.

After tortillas have been mixed add cheese and allow to melt.

Add salt to taste. I also add hot sauce and jalapeños if it’s just me eating it. I like it spicy.

Tofu tikka masala

2 (14 oz.) packages firm

tofu, drained

1/4 cup olive oil, divid-

ed

3 Tbsp garam masala,

divided

1 tsp ground turmeric

1 yellow onion,

chopped

2 cloves garlic, minced

1 Tbsp minced fresh

ginger

1 (28 oz.) can fire-roast-

ed diced tomatoes,

undrained

1/2 tsp salt

1/2 tsp pepper

1 Tbsp whole wheat

flour

1/2 cup half & half

2 large zucchini,

chopped

Place tofu between paper towels; top with a heavy skillet and let stand 10 minutes to remove liquid. Cut tofu into 1/2-inch cubes.

Heat 2 Tbsp oil in a Dutch oven over medium-high heat; add tofu and 1 Tbsp garam masala. Cook 8 minutes or until browned, stirring occasionally.

Remove tofu from pan. Add remaining oil, garam masala, turmeric, onion, garlic, and ginger to pan; saute 5 minutes or until tender.

Add tomatoes, salt, and pepper. Stir together flour and half-and-half. Bring mixture to a boil; reduce heat, and simmer 10 minutes or until thickened.

Add zucchini and tofu. Cook 5 minutes longer or until zucchini is done. Serve over brown Basmati rice.

Note: garam masala is a blend of Indian spices like bay leaf, cumin, cinnamon, coriander, cardamom, pepper, and nutmeg. Substitute curry powder, if desired.