My Favorite Recipes: Meet Helena Johnson, Colfax

Johnson family summer hike up to Colchuck Lake in the Cascades near Leavenworth; if you go, beware of mountain goats! Nicholas missed the hike because of a summer internship. Connor, Aaron and Helena Johnson.

Helena Johnson has the perfect credentials to be mentoring a robotics team–she is a chemical engineer, and her mechanical engineer husband, Aaron, works with her. Her father was a petroleum engineer, so the engineering gene seems to exist.

Helena’s parents both immigrated from Colombia, South America, and met in the United States. Her father graduated from the University of Texas in chemical engineering.

An adventurous young woman, Helena’s mother earned her nursing degree and traveled to the United States. The youngest of nine children, she was the only college graduate of a farming family. Her family owned farms, including coffee and cattle operations.

Growing up, Helena spoke Spanish with her mother and English with her father, although both parents spoke both languages. Some bilingual families help children keep the two languages separate by this practice.

Helena was born in Oklahoma, moving with her family as a toddler as her father’s career led him to California. Her mother was a preemie nurse in a neonatal intensive care unit. Growing up in San Marino, Helena lived within walking distance to the Rose Bowl, where she watched soccer during the 1984 Olympic Games and the WSU Rose Bowl games. Her mother still lives there.

Helena studied chemical engineering at California State Polytechnic University at Pomona and moved to Wenatchee when she accepted a process engineering position with Alcoa at its primary aluminum smelter. She fell in love with Washington.

Her office mate was a fraternity brother of Aaron Johnson at Washington State University, who was then working as a mechanical engineer at Boeing. After they married 26 years ago, they lived in Seattle. Looking forward to raising a family, she went back to school to the Seattle Art Institute for a degree in communication arts, starting a new career as a graphic designer.

When Helena and Aaron moved to his hometown of Colfax, she was equipped with a career in which she could work from home and be available to her children. Aaron farmed for a while, but has retired from farming to work as a mechanical engineer for Pentar Development, specializing in plastics. He has designed for projects such as ultrasound machines and Xboxes. He travels frequently, including to China.

Being involved with her sons has kept Helena busy. She was a Cub Scout leader for nine years, moving to the Boy Scout committee when her sons moved up. She has been active in the Art Connection, bringing innovative art projects to classrooms in Colfax Schools.

Her tenure as leader of a 4H robotics group came next, and she helped with 4H robotics camp this summer, held at the Public Service Building in Colfax and at Umpqua Bank in Pullman.

The robotics fun continued with FIRST – For Inspiration and Recognition in Science and Technology. The purpose is to inspire young people with fun activities.

FIRST Robotics Competition is the high school program in which teams build robots to play a three-on-three game. The teens research, design and build robots, working as a team. The focus is on gracious professionalism instead of just competition. Professionalism includes helping out your competitors when they need materials and so on. Helena and Aaron mentor a team in this program. Aaron, she said, keeps the robots working and specializes in SolidWorks.

This team meets in Pullman, with members from Pullman, Colfax, Colton and Moscow, with one member from Garfield/Palouse. The team is in the Pacific Northwest District, which includes Washington, Oregon and Alaska, which is home to 158 teams.

Of the 19 teams in eastern Washington, three went to the World Championships. Helena’s team has gone three years in a row. With 75 teams in their field, they came in second place. Worldwide, 800 teams participate in the program.

Nicholas, her older son, is starting his junior year at Washington State University, majoring in mechanical engineering. Connor, a junior at Colfax High School, is also interested in engineering, and he has artistic talent as well. He is working on his Eagle Scout badge for the food pantry.

Aaron, Nicholas and Connor all volunteer for Fire District 13, and they love being able to serve. Aaron’s father Ed was also a volunteer. Volunteers receive text messages on their cell phones for fire alarms, as they have better coverage than pagers do.

For a woman reared in San Marino who lived happily in Seattle, Helena has adapted happily to country life. Loving country living, she appreciates that everyone seems to have a heart for service. They came to Colfax with one cat, and they now have three, plus two German Shorthair dogs, four chickens, a dozen fish and a bunch of 4H kids. It is so much fun that they are considering getting goats, perhaps fainting goats.

Active at Onecho Bible Church, Helena feels it an honor to be involved with the Heart-to-Heart ladies group. They enjoy exploring the Palouse, with a highlight trip to the Pataha Flour Mill. She also participates in a ladies Bible study group.

Living in Colfax has made Helena appreciative of how precious it is to be part of an extended family, a church family and in the Colfax community.

Helena learned to cook with her mother and with Aaron’s mother, Eileen, from whom she inherited many country recipes, especially pies. She actively collects recipes from Onecho Bible Church ladies and Colfax CREW members. Working at the Steptoe Fireman’s Booth is fun, and her favorite activity is Business Appreciation Day on Valentine’s Day. CREW members take trays of cookies to Colfax businesses to thank them.

Recipes:

Grandma Eileen's Pea Salad

2 - 16 oz packages frozen baby peas, thawed

1-2 cups celery, chopped

1 bunch green onions, chopped

6 slices bacon, crispy and chopped

1/2 cup salted cashews, chopped

1 pint sour cream

Salt, pepper, garlic powder

Season sour cream with generous amounts of salt, pepper and garlic powder. Add peas, uncooked, celery and onions. Let set overnight. Add bacon and nuts just before serving. Add some milk if needed to make it moist.

Abuelita Gabby's Colombian Lentils

From Helena’s mother

2 cups lentils, soaked

1 Tablespoon brown sugar

2 cup chicken broth

8 small carrots

2 cloves garlic

Handful of cilantro

2 teaspoon rosemary, chopped

5 basil leaves

2 tomatoes, chopped

1/2 onion, chopped

8 ounces tomato sauce

6-7 slices of bacon, crispy and chopped

Boil lentils with sugar, carrots, broth and enough water to cover lentils. Simmer for about an hour. Take out carrots, squish them, add them back in. In a sauce pan and with a little oil, sauté onions, tomato, garlic, basil, cilantro and rosemary. Add to the lentils. Add tomato sauce and bacon. Simmer until drier.

San Marino Easy English Toffee

2 - 10 ounce packages of almonds, sliced

2 - large bars Hershey's milk chocolate

1 cup butter

1 cup sugar

3 Tablespoons water

1 teaspoons vanilla

(sorry, no bacon in this recipe….yet)

Grind up the chocolate, crumble up almonds (pounding works well). On an ungreased cookie sheet, spread out half the almonds, then layer half the chocolate.

In a large sauce pan--melt butter, add the sugar and water. Slowly bring to a boil on medium heat, stir constantly past the yellow, foamy stage, until it reaches hard crack temp (290-300F). It will become a warm caramel color. Take off the heat and add vanilla. Pour immediately over the chocolate and spread. Layer remaining chocolate and almonds on top. Cool and enjoy!