C.W. “Butch” Welch aka CEE DUB – Sporting Friend
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Cee Dub – Writer, Cook, Outdoorsman
Website:
CeeDubs.com
Cookbooks & Videos:
Shop all of CeeDubs Cookbooks!
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Butch on The Sporting Chef
Until the mid 1980’s, folks knew Cee Dub as either Butch Welch or in his official capacity as Senior Conservation Officer, C. W. Welch, with the Idaho Department of Fish & Game (IDFG). But as often happens in life, a new nickname is born for various reasons or circumstances. In Cee Dub’s case, one of his river running buddies started the whole thing by calling him by his initials, C.W. At some point on that particular river trip his buddy’s tongue became a little thick after downing several cold beverages, and it came out as Cee Dub. (It “sthuck”!) Anyway…meet C. W. “Butch” Welch aka Cee Dub!
Butch, a native Idahoan, served twenty-one years as a Conservation Officer for the Idaho Department of Fish and Game. In the course of his career he was assigned to various duty stations around the beautiful Gem State. In 1994 the Shikar Safari Club International recognized Welch as Idaho’s “Wildlife Officer of the Year” for his meritorious service in the field of wildlife conservation and law enforcement!
Cee Dub’s stories and recipes come from his years in the back country, both in the line of duty as well as in the “line of fun”. Cee Dub calls his years of jerking pack strings into such places as the Gospel Hump Wilderness area or finessing his whitewater raft through the rapids of Idaho’s Middle Fork of Salmon River his post graduate period in outdoor cookin’! No one has ever left one of Cee Dub’s camps hungry!
The fall of 1998 Cee Dub not only married Penny; but, in lieu of a honeymoon, they filmed the first eight episodes of his Public Television series, DUTCH OVEN & CAMP COOKING, between backcountry horse patrols for IDFG! After leaving IDFG in 1999, Cee Dub continued to film television shows and to write cookbooks. A total of thirty-nine television shows were produced for distribution on Public Television. In addition Cee Dub and Penny produced a thirteen episode television series titled DUTCH OVEN COOKIN’ with CEE DUB.
In the mid 1990’s Cee Dub started pecking away on an old IBM 286 computer. After months of weeping, wailing, gnashing his teeth, and cussing an electronic mouse, Cee Dub finished his first cookbook, Cee Dub’s Dutch Oven & Other Camp Cookin’. Since his first cookbook hit the market in December 1996, he and his wife, Penny, have self- published More Cee Dub’s Dutch Oven & Camp Cookin’, Cee Dub’s Regional & Ethnic Dutch Oven Cookin’ and ’Gather Round the Table with Cee Dub. They are currently working on another cookbook out in summer of 2014.
In 1999 Cee Dub and Pen started www.ceedubs.com with just one cookbook, a VHS video, and a small selection of outdoor cooking products. Over the years there have been many changes at Cee Dub’s, but their goal when they started the website remains the same today – “Provide Dutch oven cooks with easy to read and easy to use Dutch oven cookbooks along with quality cooking equipment at a reasonable price.”
Cee Dub began teaching Dutch oven cooking in 1997. His “hands-on” Dutch oven clinics draw folks from across town and across the country. In addition Cee Dub appears at several NW Sportsman’s Shows every year along with other venues including the Hubbard Museum/Lincoln County Cowboy Symposium in Ruidoso Downs, New Mexico.
Besides their passion for Dutch oven and cast iron cooking, Cee Dub and Pen both enjoy food preservation whether it’s freezing/canning venison, salmon, wild turkey, grinding their own burger, stuffing sausage; or, freezing, canning, and/or dehydrating produce from their garden. Growing their own herbs adds an extra bit of flavor to homemade tomato sauce, salad dressings, and even sauerkraut that graces their pantry. In other words, “Home cooking feeds the family!”
Powerless Cooking™, the most recent project at Cee Dub’s, combines skills and equipment normally used recreationally for camping together with home preservation and processing of food stuffs such as domestically raised animals, fish, game, and home raised produce in order to assist folks with emergency preparedness in the event they find themselves living in their own home “off the grid” due to natural or other disasters. Why buy it when you can have fun learning to do it yourself?