Mar 2, 2015

March Backers Update: Herb: Mastering the Art of Cooking with Cannabis

Hello Backers!

My name is Lucas Young and I co-founded The Stoner’s Cookbook way back in 2006 with my business partner Daniel Crothers.

I’ve taken on the role of bringing you Herb: Mastering the Art of Cooking with Cannabis and I have some exciting updates for you this month.

Firstly let me say how much we appreciate your support - it’s your backing that has made this book possible. It’s one of the first of its kind – a crowd-funded cannabis cookbook! It will not only contain 100 creative recipes and exquisite full colour photography, it will have one of the most comprehensive guides to dosing available in a cookbook. Our chefs have been working to determine a way to measure dosing that’s easy for even a novice cook to understand. It’s important to know how strong the effects of any cannabis-based meal are!

Speaking of chefs, let me introduce you to the two chefs who will be collaborating to bring you this revolutionary cookbook.

Melissa Parks

Melissa is a classically trained chef who has been cooking and baking professionally since 2000.  She attended Le Cordon Bleu and Johnson and Wales and obtained degrees in culinary arts, baking and pastry, and culinary nutrition.  She has worked in fine dining restaurants in Minneapolis’s theatre district, co-managed bakeries, developed products for General Mills in their New Meals/Research and development department, was a private chef for CEOs of companies in Boulder, a private chef for Grant Family Farms, created personalized wedding cakes and wedding cake displays, and now finds herself embarking on our journey of creating infused artisan edibles.

Laurie Wolf

A recent contributor to The Denver Post's new marijuana section and Cannabis Now, Laurie attended the Culinary Institute of America and worked as a chef, caterer, and food stylist in New York before moving to Portland in 2008, where she continues to work as a recipe-developer and medible specialist.
Her company Laurie & MaryJane is one of the premier medible companies in Oregon.

Book Production News

Firstly, let me apologize for the confusion some of you experienced after you backed Herb: Mastering the Art of Cooking with Cannabis. Crowd-funding for books is probably new to many of you, and many of you thought the book would be delivered as soon as the funding was complete.

The funding allowed us to commission our team and begin the development process, with the target of delivering the cookbook to you towards the end of this year.  Book production and publishing is a complex process involving many players – photographers, designers, layout artists, editors, authors, printers and so on.

Right now we are deep in the middle of preparing content and recipes and organizing food photography – developing a cookbook is a much more involved process than publishing an ordinary book – all of our recipes have to be prepared by our chefs, tested, documented and made robust enough that cooks of any level can handle the preparation. Then the recipes have to be styled, lit and photographed.

While all of this is happening I will be keeping you updated on progress and news, and you can always email me with specific questions.

My email address is:

lucas@thestonerscookbook.com

Backer Videos

To reward you for your patience - and to give you something “herbal” to do with your kitchens in the meantime - I’m delighted to be able to present you with the first of the videos promised as part of your backer’s package. There are in fact, not one, but THREE videos from one of our cookbook chefs, Melissa Parks.

As backers, you’ll be seeing these videos before anyone else on your own video page on The Stoner’s Cookbook website.

These are introductory videos on how to prepare cannabis for cooking and culminate in our first video recipe – we wanted to give you the first three all at once so you didn’t have to wait around to get to the good stuff – making your first cannabis edible!

Going forward, we’ll be aiming to release at least one video each week, and you’ll see them before the rest of the world.

Your first three videos are:

1. How to Decarboxylate Cannabis. In this video, chef and edibles expert Melissa Parks explains how to decarboxylate your cannabis before cooking with it. "Decarbing" cannabis releases the full psychoactive effect.
2. How to Make Cannabutter. Cannabutter - cannabis-infused butter - is easy to make and can be used in many recipes in place of butter. Chef Melissa Parks shows you how to prepare and store cannabutter for use in your recipes.
3. How to Make Cannabis-Infused Brownies.  Pot Brownies are the edible classic and in this video, Melissa shows you how to make 24 delicious, cannabis-infused brownies that will delight the taste buds and soothe the mind...

Your backer videos are available on this page:

http://www.thestonerscookbook.com/backer_videos.php

They should play on any computer or mobile device that’s up-to-date, but let me know if you encounter issues.

That’s all from me for this month – I’ll be back in April with more book news.

Kind Regards

Lucas Young

CTO

The Stoner’s Cookbook