The Goodness Of Whole Wheat

I have long been into whole foods.  Not the eponymous supermarket change, aka Whole Paycheque, a store where I never go shopping because their prices are simply stratospheric.  While we are on the subject I will tell you what also this post is not about: it has nothing to do with the dangers of gluten (scientifically unfounded apart from those with proven allergies and celiac disease), ditto about GMO (research still needed).  I am simply writing here about this most wholesome and satisfying food, so much the staff of life in so many parts of the world: whole wheat.

I buy it at the store in a big ten pound bag.  Utterly cheap at less than five dollars and totally affordable when, like me, you have to eat on a budget.  And doing everything from scratch instead of buying it in a plastic bag in a store is so infinitely satisfying.  Here, I will try to explain why.

My mother raised us on whole wheat bread, claiming that white bread, which we craved since it was always on TV and all the other kids' moms gave it to them to eat, was garbage that she wasn't going to feed us.  This was during the sixties' when people were still happily eating whatever junk was being milled out to them.  Full disclosure here: my mother grew up on a farm and my grandfather was a wheat farmer, so something tells me she already knew something that a lot of kids' moms didn't.

For this reason I think I can thank my mother that even at sixty I have no signs that indicate even creeping diabetes.  As a teenager, my mother`s insistence on whole foods was further reinforced by my friend, Big Bird, from whom I learned how to be a vegetarian and enjoy it.  On her advice I bought Francis Moore Lappe's famous cookbook and nutritional bible, "Diet For A Small Planet".  I bought and ate only whole foods, with an emphasis on whole wheat.  I discovered bulgur, found it more satisfying that brown rice, and for years that became a dinner staple of mine until it became hard to get.

I have often baked through the years, always using whole wheat flour.  For a few years I was making yeast bread, and then I learned about quick bread.  I make this now every Saturday morning, a very easy recipe requiring whole wheat flour, milk, baking powder and oil.  There is something infinitely satisfying about baking from scratch.  Handling the flour, the dough, shaping and forming it with my hands, then letting it bake till it's done and, oh, the lovely flavour, texture and nutritional goodness that awaits.

I also bake cookies, mostly chocolate chip, with whole wheat of course.  Lately I have been making flour tortillas, or if you will, chapattis, which I learned to make in my early twenties.  I have invented and adapted my own recipe: a couple of fistfuls of whole wheat flour, with a bit of salt and baking powder, moistened with milk and sunflower oil.  I shape and form it in my hands until it is a large flat patty, then cook it in an oiled skillet.  It is so satisfying in every way you could imagine.

There is a spiritual dynamic about cooking from scratch using whole foods.  I cannot put my finger on it, but I think it is both a way of honouring our Mother Earth while also reverencing our ancestors who for thousands of years prepared and ate food in this manner.  It is a way of saying thank you to God with our hands and our bodies and the joyful satisfaction of consuming and nourishing our bodies from the earth's goodness.

And, no, I don't have a microwave.  I have no plans of ever buying one, Gentle Reader.