I was making whole wheat pancakes this morning when I was reminded of a story dad told me a couple times.
When he was little - and still called Ian Beaton - his family had to make it on not much money. One outcome is that they would always cook and bake with whole wheat because it was cheaper than refined white flour. He used to tell me you could make everything out of whole wheat - even pastry. He thought regular people were crazy for thinking you 'had' to use white flour in certain recipes.
Dad and his siblings used to go to Bible camp - up in the Cowichan I think - and one summer when he was a teenager there was a major disaster. The camp was supplied with tons of whole wheat flour instead of white flour. As he told me the story, this was a major major problem, because at camp they ate wheat like it was going out of style. Pancakes for breakfast, bread for sandwiches for lunch, pastries for dinner and dessert. There was mass pandemonium in the kitchen, because the cooks and everyone there claimed that you could not possibly cook and bake with whole wheat. It just didn't work. At all.
Apparently Dad goes in, and says, you guys are crazy - of course you can cook and bake with whole wheat! And they say, no way, and he says yes way, and they say - prove it. So he cracks open one of the gigantic bags of whole wheat and starts cooking in the kitchen and shows all those adults how it's done.
He amazed everyone, and from then on they'd ask him to work in the camp kitchen and show people how to cook and bake with whole wheat. According to him, they were most amazed with his pies - they never thought you could do 100% whole wheat pastry - but for dad, he'd never known anything else. He said since he grew up only eating and cooking with whole wheat, it was first nature for him.
I got the sense he loved working in the kitchen and cooking for so many people at camp. As I recall it also granted him some special privileges and access to the pantry :)
When we settled down in Hazelton in the late 80s/ early 90s, camp dad came to life as he would take us on lengthy camping trips for much of the summer. The camp dad you know was really born here, as he'd always rig up some new invention or process to make camping better, more efficient, and a bit more like home but outside. He taught me to roughly plan meals and properly pack ingredients. He loved to stick to the basics, and always had a white gas coleman stove. He pretty much never threw away a piece of kit - one of the last times we camped with him, we slept in the same tent we had as children.
I think of him often, daily, and today it was camping as I whipped up a big batch of 100% whole wheat pancakes for us and our 4 guests this morning.
Love, -jb