Busy Busy Tomorrow = Cracked Whole Wheat Venison Pasties for Dinner!

Tomorrow is going to very incredibly busy for us, something rare for us honestly. We spend a good portion (well, most) of our evenings together at home, for ease of my sanity and ease of our family time. We don't often eat out, we run our errands outside of family time as often as we can, so when a busy night hits us, we usually have a few days of warning.

Tomorrow after school my oldest has a church activity followed about an hour later by his first soccer practice of the season. We will have limited time between commuting for some sort of nourishment, and for the love of Peter, Paul and Mary this does NOT mean McDonald's. After reading Michael Pollan's experience of McDonalds and the raw truth of the food and the institution in his book, In Defense of Food, I hesitate to return to the place from my childhood I recall sentimentally.

In our given time tomorrow, we will feast on pasties! Pasties are meat and potato pies wrapped in a crust. Everyone in Montana has their own version, and ours smells just like the state I grew up in and cherish. The whole wheat flour is from Wheat Montana, whose farm is located near Three Forks, about 40 miles from us in East Helena. The ground venison is a doe my brother hunted this fall. When these bake, they make your mouth water! 

I have the two components (filling and crust dough) pre-made tonight so tomorrow I can put them together later tonight or tomorrow without much fuss.

Ingredients for Crust:

1 cup all purpose flour

3 cups whole wheat flour

3/4 cup vegetable shortening

1 teaspoon salt

sprinkle garlic powder

1 cup ice water

Filling ingredients:

3/4 pound ground venison

1 teaspoon beef bullion dissolved in 1/8 cup hot water

4 Yukon gold potatoes, diced small

1/4 onion diced small

1/2 teaspoon pepper

1/2 teaspoon salt

Combine all dry ingredients for the crust together and use a pastry cutter or two forks to cut in the shortening until small like pebbles. Drizzle in the ice water and use your hands to mix it into a ball. It should not be too sticky, but wetter is better and you can always add more flour if you need to.

After the dough is made, refrigerate it from 10 minutes to overnight to give the shortening time to come back together after melting a bit from the body heat of your hands.

Combine the filling ingredients in another bowl and mix together. Divide the dough into 5-6 balls and roll them out with a rolling pin until they are round discs. Add a palm full of filling to the dough and fold the dough over into a little pie, crimping the edges to reflect the picture above. Bake on an ungreased cookie sheet for 35-45 minutes.

We like dipping ours in ketchup, but gravy is another option.