Economical, Nutritious Lunches Part 2 HOMEMADE HOT POCKETS

Welcome back to Homesteading with the Zimmermans, where we work hard and play hard on our little corner of land in Iowa. My husband and I were born and raised old order Mennonite, or horse and buggy Mennonite, as some refer to them as, and although we are no longer part of that culture or community, we are intentional about passing on the old-fashioned skills of our childhood to the next generation. Good morning, everybody. I am so glad that you are back for part two of Packing Nutritious Lunches. Last week, I shared all the snacks that we put into our lunches, our children's lunches, and as I mentioned last week, we, most of the time, we have leftovers. And the two older children take a glass container with leftovers, they heat that in the school kitchen, and then they serve their younger siblings at lunchtime. And that's one of the beauties of being in a small school, where they all have lunch at the same time, and they can mingle somewhat during lunchtime. But what happens if I don't have leftovers, or the leftovers aren't enough to go around? We need some other options besides leftovers. So today, what I'm going to show you is how we make Hot Pockets, and also I'm going to show you how we avoid buying lunch meat at the grocery store. I bought lunch meat at the grocery store for years and years, and then prices started going from $3.99 a pound, $5.99 a pound, and I just started buying less lunch meat. And then when it went to $7.00 and $8.99 a pound, I was like, nope, not worth it. There's not enough nutrition in that lunch meat to make it worth that much money. And besides, we have a whole freezer full of meat, meat that we raised on our farm. So why spend $8.99 a pound to buy other meat when we have a whole freezer full of meat? It was just a matter of adjusting what we expected in our sandwiches. So I'm going to show you how we use meat from our freezer instead of buying lunch meat. First of all, let's make Hot Pockets. Now Hot Pockets that you can buy at the grocery store have a list yay long of ingredients, and these are going to be much simpler. And I promise you they're going to be simpler to make than you thought they are. And the ingredient list is going to be so much simpler. They actually will count as nutrition and not just filling your family's stomachs. There's a difference between nutrition for the body or filling the stomach, and these Hot Pockets are actually going to be nutrition for your family's body. The very first thing is for the dough, for the outside part of the Hot Pocket, we're going to use my hamburger bun recipe. So I'm going to do a quick run-through of making that dough, but also I'm going to link the hamburger bun recipe below. And those of you that are already familiar with the hamburger buns and have made them, you're going to love this because you're already familiar with this recipe and the dough. But those of you that have not yet made the Mennonite hamburger buns, I'm going to link the video for you so you can go and watch that if you need to. You don't need to go back and watch the hamburger bun video. I will make sure that you have all the instructions that you need in this video to start making your own Hot Pockets. Okay, so I am making a double recipe today because one, a single recipe will do about two days worth of lunches. And if I'm going to all this bother, I might as well make a double recipe. So if you go to the description of this video, there's the word more and three little dots. And if you click on those three little dots, it'll give you a drop down and in there will be the link to your printable recipe. So in this pot, I've got my milk and my water. So for one, for a single recipe, it would be one cup of milk and three-fourth a cup of water. And then you will need half a cup of butter. But of course, I've got a whole cup of butter. And I like to melt my butter before I add it because otherwise, I have to get my milk and my water too hot in order to melt the butter. And if my milk and my water is too hot, then it'll kill the yeast mixture. It'll kill the yeast when I add that. So I need three tablespoons of honey for one recipe. So I just added six tablespoons of honey. And a commenter a couple weeks ago said, I like that you measure with your heart. So my heart said that was six tablespoons of honey. And I need two teaspoons of salt. So I'm just going to heat this up a little bit until it's warm. And I'm browning this ground beef. It's going to be part of my pizza hot pockets. So that's what I've got going on there. So now I've got my warm mixture, which is the milk and the water and the honey and the butter and the salt. I've got that warmed and in my mixer. Now I'm going to add my yeast. This is active dry yeast. And your recipe is going to call for two tablespoons. I'm making double so mine calls for four. And then we're just going to mix that up a little bit. And now that we've mixed that up, we're just going to let it set and watch that yeast activate and dissolve. So now that that's foamy, we only have the flour left to add. And the recipe calls for a total of four to five cups of flour. And so that means I need eight to 10 cups of flour. So first of all, I'm going to add half of the flour that the recipe calls for. And I'm going to mix that in. And when that's mixed in nice and smooth, I am going to add some more flour, but I'm not going to add all of it. So if my recipe calls for eight to 10 cups of flour, I am going to add, so I had four, five, six, seven. So that's seven cups of flour. And it's still not where I want it. I'm going to add one and a half more. That brings me up to eight and a half. So now I've got eight and a half cups of flour in and this dough is starting to, you can see how the bowl is clean. So that's a good sign that I've got enough or getting close to having enough flour in, but it's still fairly sticky. So I'm going to add another half cup of flour. This would bring it to nine cups. Okay, we are going to call this dough done. Remember that if your dough is still too sticky, the answer is not always in adding more flour. Sometimes kneading it, actually I should say most times, kneading your dough will develop the gluten and take the stickiness out of it. We're going to cover this up and let it rise until it is double. Okay, I'm going to link my favorite mixer that you just saw me using, but if you cannot afford one, or if you don't have a mixer with a dough hook, please don't worry because in the video of the original hamburger buns, I actually did it by hand to help those of you out that do not have a, you know, big fancy mixer like this one, because I know they're very expensive. Elvin got me this one for Christmas a couple years ago and it's so beautiful for all the yeast dough that I make. And it actually has helped me to make more bread and more hamburger buns and things like these Hot Pockets because it takes so much of the work out of the yeast dough. Now, while we wait for that dough to rise, I'm going to give you a quick illustration of why flours, like say in this recipe, why they say four to five cups of flour and why everybody, why we always add less flour than the recipe asks, and then add a little more and a little more until it's the right consistency. And here's why. Okay, so I've got my scales zeroed out and I'm going to scoop some flour and drop it in there until we get to the one-half cup mark. So I made my flour come up to the one-half cup mark and that is 67 grams. And you see how light and powdery that was because I I scooped it and poured it in. So now I'm going to take this measuring cup. Hang on, first I've got to zero out my scale. Scales is zeroed out. I'm going to use the same half cup measuring cup. I'm going to scoop it out and I settled this flour. That's 82 grams of flour, but it's also half a cup. So that right there is why sometimes you'll need to add more flour than other times. Because here's another thing. When I have this filled from my bucket, when I fill this from my bucket of flour and I'm scooping flour in here, it's all nice and fluffy. So even when I scoop it out, it's still nice and fluffy. But let's say this flour container has been, you know, used for a week and we've gotten it down and we've set it on the counter and we put it up and, you know, we kind of bang it around. That flour is going to have settled a whole lot more and what you measure out is going to be a lot more solid. You're going to have a lot more flour than you did when you measured it out when it was fluffy and light. So that is why some recipes use grams because then they're always the same. But if you're like me, you always just add less flour. Let's say a cookie recipe calls for five cups of flour. I always add four cups of flour and mix it and then I check to see how they bake and then, because I can always add more flour, but I cannot take flour out of a recipe. So there you go. Simple explanation of why you can't just say, oh, 10 cups of flour and add that and expect to have a product that looks exactly like mine did. You have to ease your way into the flour and get accustomed to what your dough should feel like. Okay, so while we wait on our dough to rise, we're going to get the filling for the Hot Pockets ready and I'm going to make ham and cheese Hot Pockets and I'm going to use this ham from our freezer. So this is a cured ham. They were actually labeled ham steaks and when I got up this morning, I threw these frozen ham steaks in the Instant Pot for 35 minutes and then I let the pressure come down naturally. And now I'm going to use this grinder and I'm going to grind this up. If you don't have a grinder, you could just chop it really fine. Some of my children are funny about meat that they have to chew. So to make this more like ham, like deli ham that I would buy at the grocery store, I'm going to grind this up because whatever I don't use for the Hot Pocket filling, I'm going to turn into ham salad for sandwiches. So this little grinder, I've had this grinder all of our married days and my grandma actually found it for me at a thrift shop before I was married and she said, hey, you might need this. And sure enough, I use it a lot. I will try and remember to link similar ones. So next up, I'm going to grate my cheese and this is the mozzarella that I made yesterday and I don't expect that I will need all of it. And this is my Muhly rotary grater and this actually is a vintage piece that I found at a thrift shop and I really, really like it. It's the only grater I ever really use anymore and you can still find them on eBay. There's also more modern versions, I think that you can get at Walmart. So we're getting ready to make our hot ham and cheese and because this ground ham is a lot drier than what your deli ham would be, I am just going to add some of the broth back into it until it's nice and moist. So it took me about 20 minutes to grind that ham and shred the cheese and my dough has definitely doubled in size and now I can't get this off because there's so much pressure in it. Let me see which way I need to turn. I need to turn this way. I should have taken the dough out of here and put it in a bigger dish but that's okay. Now I'll just have to clean the lid Okay, so we're getting ready to start making our hot pockets. So I'm going to be using one of these pie presses and if you do not have a pie press, you could use a large can lid like we did for the hamburger buns and that would work or you can take your dough for a single recipe and divide it into 16 parts and then roll those out individually. So I'll show you how each one of those would work. So first of all, I'm going to divide my dough in half so that I can work with it easier. Actually, I'm even gonna divide it into fourths so that I can roll it out more thin. So I want to roll this out as thin as I can because we want more protein in each bite and less dough. Okay, so you can take anything that you have that's the correct size and you can cut out a circle and this dough is beautiful enough that you can stretch it if you want. And I'm gonna start with my USA pan and if you remember last week I said, hey whoever sent me this, please let me know so I can properly thank you. And that box full of USA pan bakeware was sent to me by Julie and Jack Chaffin from Boise, Idaho. Thank you so much. Okay, you could add some mustard or even spicy mustard to this ham but then what you're going to do is you're going to and this is going to be a pretty tiny hot pocket. So you're going to take a little bit of ham and a couple, I have big chunks of shredded cheese. You're going to fit that all in there and pinch it closed and that's how you're going to bake them. So I'm going to take my pie press, just adding my meat. Make sure to keep it back from the edge a little bit. Adding my cheese, wetting the edge and then just folding it over and sealing it, pinching that closed. So the other thing that you could do if you don't have anything that you can cut them, cut your hot pockets out with, is you can start with a little piece of dough and roll it out into a circle. Roll it out into a circle like that and they won't be perfect circles if you do them like that but I don't care if you don't care. And then you can just seal them just like that. You could make them pretty and fold them over at the ends and there you go, there you've got your hot pocket. I'm going to put these in a 400 degree oven for 8 to 12 minutes or until they're golden brown over top. When you get them out of the oven, you could brush them with melted butter if you want. Look at that, beautiful and yummy. For this next batch of hot pockets, I have some ground beef here. I'm going to add some pasta sauce and these will be pizza hot pockets. You could use pepperonis instead of ground beef or you can go any direction with these hot pockets. You can make dessert hot pockets or you could use little pieces of chopped up steak and have a steak and cheese hot pocket. There's really no end to the variations to these hot pockets. For the pizza ones, after I brush them with butter, I sprinkle some basil on top and that's how we tell that those are the pizza ones. And on the ham and cheese ones, I have sprinkled a little bit of garlic salt. So there we go, they're all wrapped up and ready for the freezer. And yes, I used plastic wrap to wrap these up. I used saran wrap and the reason is using a bit of saran wrap for each of these is still a whole lot less plastic than if I were to buy them at the store. And I'm saying all this in response to some of the comments that I got last week about using plastic and disposable lunch baggies for my children's lunches. And the other thing, yes, my children will heat these in their microwave at school. They know to take them out of the plastic wrap and I always send a glass container so they can put them in a glass container and heat them in the microwave that way. And that is the option that's available to us. I'm not going to be the parent that makes things difficult for the lunch lady or the teachers or anybody that's in charge by demanding that they get a different method to heat my children's lunches. We all do the best with what we have. And the other reason I'm using disposable lunch bags for my children is I am one of two people in this household of seven that is in possession of a fully developed frontal lobe and that means that I am one of two people that will be consistently responsible for lunch containers. And it's just too much. Five children and all their containers and needing to organize and wash and store them even though they're a great help with chores. It's too much. Right now we are using paper lunch sacks, lunch baggies, and saran wrap so that everything can get thrown out because that way I get to be a more pleasant mother when they walk in the door because I'm not always harping on them about where are your lunch containers. And guess what? Mitchell and Hadassah who are 13 and 15 at one time they were in elementary school and they took disposable lunch containers and now that they are in middle school and high school guess what? They take leftovers along every day and heap them for their little brothers and they bring those containers back every day. It doesn't matter how much I harp on them it just takes time for their brain to develop into being more responsible. We have the other reason is with my three little boys I feel like we are doing so much character training right now that letting them take disposable lunches is one less thing that I have to correct them on or nag them about. Okay here's the other thing whenever you're making something to use at a later date the trick to having it taste just as fresh when you get it out of the freezer as when you put it in is to put it in the freezer as soon as it is room temperature. So the sooner you put it into the freezer the more of that freshness you're going to lock in. Now the other thing that I'm going to do is I'm going to take some of these top ones out and just put them just like this in the free freezer here in our refrigerator and they'll use these in the next couple days and then I'm going to put a lid on to seal this nice and tight to prevent to keep it just to keep them fresh in the freezer a little longer. So now I'm going to show you two different types of sandwiches that we make without using any deli meat. So these are cold sandwiches and these are two sandwiches that our family has learned to love once they stopped expecting to always have deli meat in the refrigerator. The other thing of course that we haven't bought in a time is sliced cheese. Since we had two milk cows now we have consistently been making our own cheese and even that was a transition even though they all love the cheese that I make from our raw milk it is different than if you were used to having the sliced cheese on your sandwich. It was an adjustment so but these are the two things that we have settled on in for cold sandwiches on those days when cold sandwiches are needed. So this is the ham that I ground and this is the chicken that I opened a jar and drained it and all we're going to do is make ham salad and chicken salad out of these two meats. So I am going to be using some homemade mayonnaise and some store-bought mayonnaise and the reason I'm doing this is because my family is still getting accustomed to the homemade mayonnaise and I'm still kind of working on some of the spices and flavors to put in to help them adjust. The biggest key is to not go cold turkey and switch from this what they were used to to this. It just does not work for my family. So normally what I do in this stage is I go I use most of this and a little bit of this and then gradually over time I switch over to where I'm using mostly homemade and a tiny bit of this and then after a while we can use just homemade mayonnaise. But right now I'm still in the stage where they are questioning my motives when I use only homemade mayonnaise and they don't really care if I tell them that there's bad seed oils and things in this one. That doesn't matter to them. The only thing that my young family is concerned about is their taste buds. If it doesn't taste good, it probably isn't good for me. Seems to be their motto but that's okay. That is just a maturity thing and I am I have learned to just take it slowly and eventually I will get them weaned off of this and onto this. It just takes time and I have to do it slowly. So chicken is a little easier to chew and especially canned chicken so I don't usually worry about cutting this up too hard but I do try to cut up the pieces if I have if I find pieces that are too big. So both of these salads are just made with mayonnaise and pickles and you're just going to stir in mayonnaise until the desired consistency is reached and then you're going to taste it and you can add some more salt. You can add onion powder or garlic powder. You can add curry to chicken or mustard. So one of the things that we love in our ham salad and chicken salad sandwiches is chopped pickles. This adds a little bit of sweetness and these are a sweet dill pickle but hamburger pickles work as well and this is just my handy little chopper. We also find that the pickles add a little bit of a crunch factor so there's that texture thing that we love. So now that we've got our ham salad and our chicken salad ready we are going to put it on some sourdough bread and some of the family likes to put some more mayonnaise on their bread before they put their salad on but some of us are okay without mayonnaise and then for the boys Mitchell and Hadassah make their own sandwiches. For the boys I do something like this and I fold it in half kind of like this and then we will wrap it up and this is their cold sandwich and we'll do just the same if they choose chicken salad and I'll keep this in the fridge for anywhere from seven to ten days and if we haven't used it up I will either put it in the freezer or I will use it as a dinner one night and we'll use it all up. That's what we use for cold sandwiches now that we have stopped buying deli meat and sliced cheese to keep in our refrigerator all the time. We use our homegrown chicken and our homegrown pork and make cold sandwiches that way. Sometimes if I make a roast I will use the beef that's left over from that roast and shred it and add some mayonnaise to that and then it's like a cold beef sandwich. That's how we do it. That brings us to the conclusion of today's video and I thank you so much for watching. I know that the competition on YouTube is fierce and I am competing for your attention against thousands of accounts that have better equipment than me and better editing software than I do and the fact that you're here watching our channel and our life is it's a great blessing to us. You could be distracted by any number of other channels but here you are just watching us do our life the way we do it and I hope that our channel is as big of a blessing to you as our viewers are to us.