Marijuana Spiced Nuts are perfect for Holiday parties!

When you are invited to an all grown-ups Holiday party, it can be hard to narrow down what you should bring. Everyone brings wine....that is played out!
 How about a low dose edible that is tasty, AND gets everyone in the mood to celebrate??

Try this recipe for Spiced Nuts with just a hint of Cannabis oil!

And if you do bring these to share, always label your edibles, the last thing we need is someone getting dosed without their knowledge!

If you make this, or any of my recipes tag me in your instagram and let me know how it goes!!

@livviesmalls

• 2 1/2 cups mixed raw nuts such as pecans,
    walnuts and peanuts
• 2 Tbs. Marijuana Infused olive oil that measures arounf 40 to 60 mgs of THC
• 1 1/2 Tbs. chopped fresh rosemary
• 1 1/2 tsp. ground cumin
• 1 tsp. salt
• 1/2 cup Brown Sugar
• 1 tsp. freshly ground black pepper
• 1/4 tsp. old bay seasoning

Preheat an oven to 300°F.

Place the nuts in a bowl. In a small, heavy saucepan over medium-low heat, warm the olive oil. Add the rosemary and stir until aromatic, about 1 minute. Pour the seasoned oil over the nuts. Add the rest of the seasonings, and sugar and stir to coat the nuts evenly. Transfer the nuts to a baking pan.

Bake, stirring occasionally, until the nuts are toasted, about 20 minutes. Transfer to a plate and let cool completely.

Store the nuts in an airtight container at room temperature for up to 4 days. Makes about 2 1/2 cups.

High In The Sky - The Menu

Now lets talk about the food and drinks of "High In The Sky"...

 If you take your eyes off of the beautiful sunset and surroundings for one second you can probably see me making cocktails in the background of this picture. The drink that I'm making was to start our culinary Adventure by activating the endocannabinoid system. My intention with this cocktail, (That I called The Stoned Hemingway) was to get a nice dose of THC-A and CBD into the guest's system. I muddled mint leaves and cannabis fan leaves in with grapefruit juice, orange bitters, a little bit of vodka and a CBD simple syrup and soda water to make this drink. Everyone got one of these cocktails to start the meal, and to lay down the cannabanoid groundwork for everyone to have a good time. The Grapefruit and Mint flavors of the cocktail were to pair with the flavors of our Spearmint and GrapefruitSelect CBDpens so when you took a puff and sip, all of the flavors would co-mingle in harmony.

When it came to the food of High In The Sky I went with a vegan menu, and I wanted to give a nod to breakfast in every course, since my previous event was High Noon Brunch, this past April.  

So we started off with a First Course of a savory Root Vegetable "Pop Tart" that was filled with a maple, pecan chutney and delicata squash, I served that side by side with a roasted butternut squash soup that was topped with an olive oil that I had infused with sage and Cannabis (5 mgs of CO2 derived THC Distillate provided by the amazing people at Select Oil). 

Each plate was individually Dosed  after it was cooked. This was to ensure that none of the cannabinoids got cooked off so that I could account for all of them. This made for a more precise dose in every dish.  

This along with the @select_CBD pens that were on each place setting, made for a very balanced start for each guest at our little Cannabis adventure.
I wanted this event to be vegan so that everyone digested their dose a bit quicker and to showcase some of my favorite vegan recipes. 

One of the experimental measures that I took to make sure that everyone who attended this dinner was within the same age range. A lot of the studies that I read and lectures that I have audited have suggested that age range has more to do with absorption than weight or height. This also helped to almost guarantee that people would have commonalities to strike up conversation at each table.

The 2nd Course was beautiful and simple. Grilled, marinated asparagus with a vegan hollandaise sauce, topped with a micro green salad that was tossed in an Lemon and RSO vinaigrette. I compared the lemon notes in this vinaigrette to the terpene "limonene". This course had 4mgs of THC and 3mgs of CBD.

For the Hollondaise sauce I used Hot For Food's hollandaise sauce recipe and it was so perfect!

This recipe incorporated lots of lemon and nutritional yeast to give it a nice creamy but also acidic flavor which really tasted incredible with the grilled, marinated asparagus.

(Check out Hot For Food on Youtube for amazing vegan recipes and meal ideas!)

We then took a 20 minute "Intermission"so that guests could enjoy the incredible view from the Downtown Los Angeles rooftop with a Mango cocktail that was infused with 5 mgs of THC in a vanilla bean tincture made from THC Distillate.
Most cannabis users have dealt with anxiety or restless legs, so the intermission is a nice break for guests to stand up, stretch their legs, check their phone and not feel like they are just stuck in their seat.

The myrcene compounds found in mango can increase, strengthen and even lengthen the euphoric feeling of marijuana. So giving the guests a mango cocktail during this break was to increase the amount of terpenes that they were ingesting.

 Marijuana contains more than 100 terpene molecules that are responsible for affecting THC in the brain and giving highs their ebbs and flows. But marijuana contains the myrcene terpene more than any other kind. So, the mango juice, and cannabis in this cocktail worked together to carry over the high of each guest.

When guests returned to their tables we went right in to the Main Course, a 3 day Vegan Bolognese sauce made with heirloom tomatoes, soy and seitan, that was topped with grilled "Grits" or polenta and a creamy cashew mozzarella. This dish was dosed with about 5 mgs of decarbed flower under the vegan Mozzarella (made with Miyoko's Kitchen), the herbaceous flavor of the flower played really well with the fresh Oregano and Basil in the dish.

The point of this was to show guests that you do not HAVE to infuse flower into fat directly to absorb it.

Next I bridge the gap between the Main course and the dessert course with a seasonal cocktail that I call "Nug Nog", which consisted of 1 shot of home made Kalua that was infused with a cbd tincture, Soy Egg Nog, and some chocolate almond milk.

This drink was actually a shout out to one of my guests who asked me to make a vegan eggnog recipe for her on my instagram last year around the same time.

We finished out our meal with a layered dessert that consisted of a layer of Egg Nog cashew cheesecake, a layer of Chocolate and Coffee aquafaba creme and topped with a crunchy Speculoos crumble that consisted of 5 mgs of THC that was infused in vegan butter.
This was my first time working with Aquafaba and seeing the water from a can of beans whip up EXACTLY like egg whites made me feel more like a scientists than even converting percentages into milligrams could!

So the entire meal was around 30 mgs of THC and a LOT of CBD in layers so for guests the experience was more like wading into water more than waves crashing over you. 

I covered a lot of ground with this dinner, I got to speak with so many people about cannabis science, theories,  and food. 

So for me it was basically a dream date with a lot of amazing *cannabis enthusiasts. (Weed nerds**) 

I can not wait to show you guys what I have planned for Napa in January...

Stay tuned! 

All professional photos taken at High In The Sky were taken by Forest Casey. 

High In The Sky Dinner - Los Angeles, CA. 11/12/17

A little over a month ago I left a very toxic work environment in Cannabis, one where I was harassed by almost every man I worked with. I walked right out the door because management refused to give me and the women that I worked with a safe place to work. I went to the management to complain about harrassment and point out the need for an HR department. Their response was a demotion and asking me to take an unpaid leave of absence. Deciding that I can not make lateral moves, I left and started Cannabis Consulting and Educating full time.  I have been a chef for over 20 yrs, event planner for 10 and a Cannabis educator for almost 3 yrs. I had the experience, and I knew that I had a lot to share with the world, this was just catapulting me into doing that.

This past weekend I flew from Portland to LA to put on an Underground, Pop Up, Cannabis Dinner Party.

This is my life now.

I flew in with some clothes and notebooks, went directly in a Lyft to my partnering brand, Select Oil's office to pick up supplies, then I went shopping at the holy trinity ...Target, Ikea, Marshalls.

I didn't see the space even in pictures until the day before my event, so this felt like a blind date. I was trying to prepare for everything!  

I took a bunch of bags and some crazy ideas and turned them into a chic pop up restaurant. Honestly, I still can't believe I pulled it off.

The friends that I was staying with definitely thought I was a crazy bag lady for 3 days, they just saw me coming in and out of their garage  with bag after bag  and then furiously cooking in their kitchen.  

I knew that there were only two electrical outlets on the roof, so I would have to make heaters... Thank God for Pinterest!  I Ikea hacked some  space heaters, and they WORKED!! 

I hand selected each dish and piece of glassware for each course, and a variety of cozy elements to make an exposed roof top feel warm and intimate. 

I cooked a delicious 4 course vegan meal, infused the courses with Cannabis, made a kitchen happen (in a few places that it probably shouldn't have) all in the name of making this dream a reality. 

I was up at 6am every day designing details for my guests. From making sure that the arrival time was right at sunset so that guests what greeted by the warm pink glow of  the Los Angeles Sunset as soon as they stepped out onto that roof to how quickly they would digest their first cannabeverage.

When it came to working out the details of the guest list, out of the requests for tickets that I recieved I selected a group of people from varied back grounds, but all were within the same age range. This was a little bit of an experiment for me, because in the research that I have done, absorption has more to do with age range than weight or height. I wanted to make sure that everyone at this dinner would have a similar rate of absorption so they would all be on the same "ride" so to speak.

I went with a vegan menu was to speed up the rate of absorption. I also chose a Vegan menu because I would be catering this dinner at a remote location, so this would help to eliminate risk of foodborne illness. I also have so many wonderful vegan recipes that I really wanted to showcase.

It took A LOT of help and support from my friends, and community and a lot of risks and hard work on my part but I did it. High In The Sky was something that i HAD to do, not just out of necessity,  but  because I know that I have a lot of talent to share. With California being on the verge of recreational legality I knew that this was the place to go to share this information. The details of this event have been stuck in my head for so long now, like a song.... I just had to get it out!

I'm so glad that it finally became a reality on Sunday.