Bite Me The Show About Edibles
Create your own tasty, healthy cannabis edibles and take control of your high life! Bite Me is a weekly show that helps home cooks make fun, safe and effective cannabis edibles. Listen as host Margaret walks you through an marijuana infused recipe that she has tested in her home kitchen or interviews with expert guests. New episodes every Thursday.
Bite Me The Show About Edibles
Cannabis Infused Topicals, Aroma Wheels & How Amanda Breeze is Breaking Stereotypes
Unlock the secrets to the ever-evolving world of cannabis with our fascinating guest, Amanda Breeze. Amanda takes us from her roots in the Emerald Triangle to her current role as a maverick in cannabis education, sharing stories and insights that redefine the industry. Discover how her passion for scent science led to the development of the Cannabis Aroma Wheel, a tool that adds a new dimension to cannabis evaluation by enhancing the language and understanding of its complex aromas.
Our conversation ventures into the luxurious side of cannabis, drawing parallels with wine and cheese to explore the potential of cannabis as a high-end product. Amanda shares her expertise in creating cannabis topicals, revealing the meticulous art of formulation and her commitment to merging quality with accessibility. Her DIY guides empower individuals to experiment with topicals, offering a hands-on approach to understanding cannabis's therapeutic properties.
We also embark on a journey through cannabis tourism with Amanda's latest project, the Tripper magazine, which chronicles Toronto's vibrant cannabis culture. Amanda's relentless drive to redefine the stoner stereotype is evident through her diverse ventures, from crafting best-selling topicals to curating a cannabis travel guide. This episode promises to leave you inspired by Amanda's groundbreaking work in the cannabis industry, pushing boundaries and challenging perceptions every step of the way. Find links to her work and podcast in the full show notes on bitepodcast.com.
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Hello friends, welcome to episode 273. And today we sit down with Amanda Breeze. Welcome to Bite Me, the show about edibles where I help you take control of your high life. I'm your host and certified gonger, margaret, and I love helping cooks make safe and effective edibles at home. I'm so glad you're here, friends, you are going to love today's interview. I'm glad you're listening today. If you're just joining for the first time, this is a great episode to jump into, and if you've been here for a while, I know you're going to love this episode.
Speaker 2:Today's guest is Amanda Breeze, and she has been infused in cannabis culture for well over a decade. She's worn many hats over the years, from trimming bud in the Emerald Triangle, co-hosting a podcast with her counterpart Ryan, formulating topical products, creating a cannabis scent wheel, making a cannabis travel tourism magazine. There's not much this innovator and educator can't do. We focus mostly on the science of scent and creating cannabis topicals in this particular episode, but let's be done with this introduction and get right into it. Please enjoy this fun and informative conversation with Amanda Breeze. With Amanda Breeze, all right, everyone, I am joined today by Amanda Breeze or with Amanda Breeze, and I'm really excited for this conversation because, amanda, you do so many cool things in the world. But for those who are listening, the listeners of Bite Me, can you just tell them a little bit about yourself and Emerald Temple Living, which is your brand?
Speaker 3:Yes, thank you, hi, Marge. I'm Amanda Breeze. Thank you for that lovely introduction. What do I do? I do a little bit of everything. I'm kind of like a generalist in that I like to dabble in a lot of projects all the time, but I guess the umbrella that I use is sort of just like a cannabis innovator. So I just really like to dabble in a lot of projects all the time, but I guess the umbrella that I use is sort of just like a cannabis innovator, so I just really like to come up with new ideas and fill in innovative gaps in the space. So I specialize in mostly smells. Smells is kind of my main area of expertise, and that has lended itself to all kinds of areas like topicals, writing. I do a lot of writing, so I never talk about myself. So this is going to be a fun episode.
Speaker 2:You should probably talk about yourself more, because you, like you said, you're an innovator, which I also think means you're also an educator, and it's not easy to come up with like, like, innovative products in a space where there's I mean, we're in Canada, right? So there's been a lot of stuff happening in the last six years, so can you talk a little bit also about Emerald Temple Living?
Speaker 3:Yes, of course that was the question. That is the umbrella that I use. That's where you can find my stuff. Emeraldtemplelivingcom. The business originally started sort of consulting in specifically topicals because that's an area that I've spent years studying. So originally Emerald Temple was a topicals consulting business and it started out quite well with my own line of products which was being sold in a ton of different stores in Toronto, and then it evolved into more consulting work. So I've developed product lines for a handful of companies and now it's sort of evolved into focusing on, yeah, education, mostly, again, around smells. I think you have to pivot a lot when you work in a new industry, and so it's always about finding what people are most interested in and then helping them discover more interesting things about it.
Speaker 2:Right and topicals is a really interesting subject. We're going to talk a bit about that some more, but I am curious to like your own personal journey with cannabis and like how that's influenced the work you're doing today.
Speaker 3:The lore, the lore of where Amanda Breeze come from.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the mystery behind Amanda.
Speaker 3:It's not very mysterious, but it is kind of a strange tale. It's where where to begin? About 15 years ago I was hitchhiking around. I was a hitchhiker, I was a street musician. So I was just kind of wandering around North America hitchhiking, riding freight trains and just on an adventure. And I ended up on the Oregon coast for a big sort of family gathering family of all the street musicians and a few hundred of us went out to Oregon to meet up for actually sad story a friend's memorial.
Speaker 3:Um, and while I was there I heard a rumor through through the night that if you went to California you could work on a weed farm. Right, this rumor surfaced and so after event, a bunch of people were headed down to California to try to find work and I was like you know what I'm going to go? I've never been to a weed farm Like I've. You know, always smoked, sold a little in school, that kind of thing. But yeah, so I met these random kids and I was like hey, do you guys have room for one more to go down to Cali? And they said there's always room for one more.
Speaker 3:And I jumped in the van with them Nine people, backpacks, musical instruments, like 15 dogs, a handful of puppies, and we drove down to the Emerald Triangle and we hung out there looking for work because that was the rumor. If you just like, hang out at the cafe, people come through and hire trimmers. And so we spent a few days hanging out in Hayfork, which I now know is the sketchiest town in all of the Emerald Triangle, like hands down sketchiest, the whole of the Emerald Triangle like hands down sketchiest. So I actually had a really bad experience my first year working out there because, like your life is in danger the whole time you're there. Yes, it's extreme. It was very dangerous in the black market?
Speaker 2:I mean, I've seen Murder Mountain. Is it because like for those who don't know about murder mountain, that documentary on netflix about the emerald triangle and growers, like what makes, what made that hay fork so, so dangerous?
Speaker 3:so the emerald triangle is basically three counties. That's pretty much at this time, and even kind of now, very lawless, because it's mostly like uncharted nature. It's where the redwoods are, there's just like a lot of open spaces to disappear. And then you add in all of these farmers who are growing cannabis, which is extremely illegal, and so they have their guns and they you have to be sneaky, and so the vibe is a little bit off-putting. It's definitely dangerous.
Speaker 3:You know my first job. I was blindfolded and put in a truck and drove up a mountain to go work on a weed farm. Right, you know stuff like that. That sounds so wild, but at the time it was like very normal, like, of course you're going to blindfold me, like you don't want me to know where your grow is. It's harvest season, like the last thing these growers want is to get robbed. And hay fork in particular is, I, in my opinion, a little bit sketchier because it's mostly small grows, so people might have one, two, three acres. You can see your neighbors. They're also growing weed on one, two, three acres. You can see your neighbors, they're also growing weed on one, two, three acres. You can see their plants on this side. You can see their plants, and so it's not very hidden in some of those areas. And so the first girl I worked for his. His tactic for safety was to just shoot guns all night. As soon as the sun set, he would just pop guns off all night. Really.
Speaker 2:Yes, just into the air, just to like scare people away. Yes, that is crazy. I mean just like we're hitchhiking around the US as well and hopping on trains and stuff, like that's a pretty, that is a pretty wild story because I mean as a woman, did you ever feel unsafe doing like traveling, like that?
Speaker 3:no, I never. I never felt unsafe. I will say it was like. I know it's only been 15 years, but like the, it was a different time. I would not do that today.
Speaker 3:I think, like places are a little bit more volatile these days. Um, not saying it was a safe thing and I hope my mom doesn't tune into this podcast no offense, but I hope my mom isn't listening in but yeah, no, and I will say that was the first year you don't know anyone. You're getting to know the area. After that year I made a lot of friends and so from then on I actually ended up working with mostly families on nice, safe properties where they feed you good food and they make sure you're taken care of. And you know it changed as years followed to be much safer. But no, I think I think generally people are good.
Speaker 3:I think that just the environment of growing cannabis has was always dangerous. You know you're working in a trim shed with really nice people. One of my trim scenes was 15 people international, like a guy from Switzerland, a guy from Mexico, a guy from Panama, Puerto Rico. Um, we had folks from Australia, uh, a girl who was from like Spain, so it was like a whole international crew and you know you get to learn about new places and meet new people and it's actually very cool. Lots of Germans, lots of Quebec walk, go out to trim back.
Speaker 2:And so you did this for like at least a year or longer. I was trimming for like almost a decade. Oh wow, oh shit. So you're in California, in the Humboldt or in the Emerald Triangle, for like a decade.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I'm not in the Emerald Triangle the whole time, but the most of my work was there and towards the sort of cusp of legalization in California and legalization here in Canada. Things changed, so the money changed and the work changed. The environment changed in some ways for good, because you know it's not always fun when you hear helicopters. You know I still want to hear a helicopter kind of kind of duck, and you hear a lot, a lot of horror stories from a lot of farms. I never had a farm busted but I know a lot of people who went through that experience.
Speaker 3:So, I always have to nod to the legacy side because I caught the tail end. Really, Even when I was there, the risk was low.
Speaker 2:Okay, so they weren't really concentrating on busting those farms at that point.
Speaker 3:There were, but you know there was ways around it. You know people were signing into the medical. You know, similarly to how it unfolded here, People shifted their business models a little bit, but yeah, that is the lore, that is how I began and cannabis was living my reckless twenties and on an adventure that's amazing.
Speaker 2:I'm sure if we have more time you could probably tell me a whole bunch of stories. I was in Humboldt, california, myself in 2021. And I stayed I don't know if you know the Benbow Inn. I stayed at that inn and then I can't remember the name of the little town nearby. That was like it was like a 10 minute drive where the dispensaries were and as a fresh faced Canadian, I was just like, oh, this is a little sketch. Even then, in 2021, it just had an edge to it, I guess.
Speaker 3:You know it's, it's a bit of the air, because you know people are growing so many plants and that they are not supposed to be growing, so the air around there. I do remember one time a friend asked me to come up for a couple of days to quick trim a bunch of pounds for him. You know he was like 20, 30 minutes up the road. I worked mostly in the King range area, so it was so beautiful. You drive through the red woods and then up the mountain and you see the whole Valley. It's so stunning.
Speaker 3:And he was like, yeah, just come up the mountain a little further, you're going to nothing has addresses, because also it's the country is like the middle of nowhere on a mountain.
Speaker 3:So he's like you're going to pass an electric pole and then 10 minutes later you're going to pass another electric pole and then you're going to see a mailbox that's made out of plywood and it's the next driveway on your left and I'm like, okay, there's no phone service, anything.
Speaker 3:So you're just like blind driving up this hill and you know, you see the light post, you see the next one, and then I turn left to the gate but the gate has like this bear, metal bear on it like a very distinct motif, but he had never mentioned the motif, which I felt like would be a very important detail, considering there's all these gates and like random driveways, uh, and I remember parking in front of this gate for like 20 solid minutes just with my car running, trying to decide if I should walk in, and even driving back down the road, redo, redoing the drive, coming back to the same gate and thinking this could be the day I die, this could. I hope I'm at the right place and because I had to jump the fence to get in and I'm trying to make a lot of noise.
Speaker 3:The gate was locked. I was like this gate should be unlocked. He knew I was coming and so I'm making a lot of noise, like hello, like walking up the hill trying to be really loud, like I'm not a sneaker, like I'm not trying to steal from you and yeah, thankfully that was his farm, but that's like, you're just, I'm just me, I'm not, I don't have any weapons, I'm just walking up a hill. But I'm like this could be it Right, it right.
Speaker 2:Like it was today, the day and if you were intruding like, I'm sure people wouldn't react well to that, because these people are also doing this stuff to earn a living and anything that puts that at risk is well, I mean, obviously, killing somebody's never a justification for earning a living, but yeah, it's uh probably people get weird up on the mountain and you know, a few months later that property was robbed.
Speaker 3:Oh really, followed the grower home from the bar right and busted down his fence and stole all his shit oh, that's crazy so the risk is still, yeah, that you know.
Speaker 3:So, like, anyway, I think the murder mountain documentary is actually quite accurate. Okay, it features the towns that I lived in. So I also like it because it's kind of nostalgic. These are some of the. These are some of the best years of my life. So, like, I know I'm still young, but I look back with, like, my heart, like I feel like I left my heart in California. It's still one of my absolute favorite places.
Speaker 2:The Emerald Triangle is just, it's something special, so I feel very privileged to have witnessed it, but also really lucky to have survived it yeah, that's amazing because 10 years in that, like doing that right in California, of course, is an experience that most people will never have, and obviously I'm sure that's lent itself to all the work that you're doing now, because you are co-hosting a podcast, the Smoking Spot fantastic podcast that you do with your co-host Ryan. You've launched an aroma wheel, which I hope we can talk about as well. You have a new book out. You're launching a travel magazine, like you're doing all this really cool shit and, first of all, all I want to celebrate all of that stuff, because the world needs these things from people who have experience in this industry, and I'm sure it's not. It's like very personal as well. Um, maybe just start. Why did you launch the aroma wheel? And I know you mentioned already that you're really into smells, so, yes, yes, I'm really into smells, thank you, thank you.
Speaker 3:I feel like I don't celebrate things enough. You know, I'm always. My mom always says I'm like the wind, like before I finish something I'm on to the next thing. So I've just I feel like I never really take that moment to digest and hearing it is, thank you.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, you're very welcome. Yeah, you're doing a lot of cool stuff, so let's talk about it.
Speaker 3:Yes, okay, so the Aroma Wheel is such a fun project. It's been two years that we've been working on it, me and my co-host of the podcast, ryan Herron, and so it kind of all lumps together the podcast and the project actually. And so the it kind of all lumps together, the podcast and the project actually. Ryan had reached out a couple years ago as he'd read some of my blogs and seen some of my work online and he interviewed me for his podcast and we had such a good time that he said let's make it a three-part series. So we evolved the project and we did this three part series on smell, specifically focusing on cannabis, and then we had such a great time doing that, he said let's just start our own podcast. So we started the podcast with sort of an educational podcast for weed nerds and you know we did a few episodes on smell, as that's, like you know, my area of expertise on smell, as that's, like you know, my area of expertise, and we realized that there were some serious gaps in education to help advance cannabis. So one of my favorite authors his name's Avery Gilbert. He is a sensory scientist and he dabbles in the cannabis space. He has a lot of really cool white papers, but he also wrote a book called the Nose Knows, and that book inspired a lot of the work I did the minute I read it. It's influenced everything since. So highly recommend Avery Gilbert's book, the Nose Knows. And in his book he talks about the science of smell, and one of the things that he brings up quite a lot is how challenging it is to pinpoint aromatics outside of context. And so he did a study where he had participants smelling I can't remember exactly the details so I'm going to kind of paraphrase it but smelling, let's say, like a citrus scent and what he wanted them to do was then just come up with words to describe it. And he thought, oh, it's going to be so easy, there's going to be so many different words, and what he found was that people really struggled to come up with just simple descriptors on smell. And it evolved his research into realizing that if you're holding a lemon and you smell a lemon, it's easy to think of things that are lemon-like, but if you're holding a liquid that's unidentified and it smells like a lemon, it's easy to think of things that are lemon-like, but if you're holding a liquid that's unidentified and it smells like a lemon. It's an even greater challenge to identify that lemon smell, and so he started creating these lists to help his participants pinpoint aromatics that they were experiencing, because we actually work significantly better. Even if the list is really really diverse, we're able to work better as humans to pinpoint specific aromatics.
Speaker 3:So Ryan and I decided to make the Cannabis Aroma Wheel because, as two people who often write reviews, who often evaluate cannabis, we were experiencing the same struggle Like how do we pinpoint these aromatics? So we came up with the wheel, which is common in many luxury agricultural industries, so like wine and coffee, and it just made sense for us, as smell people, as people trying to push the industry forward into the luxury markets you know, terroir, developing Appalachians we really need to be specific with how we're describing things, and so, yeah, with that in mind, we created the Cannabis Aroma Wheel. It's a sensory tool for enthusiasts and sommeliers cannabis sommeliers that uses generic terms like earthy and sweet things that you see very commonly as descriptors of cannabis, and then those branch out into families. So, for example, in the fruity category we have like tropical, so it berry. It diverges into more specifics and then into the scent notes so you're able to to pinpoint smells as you're smelling, or x out smells like oh, it definitely doesn't smell like this. So it's a tool and that's sort of where it started.
Speaker 3:We brought an amazing graphic designer on the team, victor Paredes, and he helped us design the wheel so that it was actually really it's very aesthetic. He did a really good job at bringing all that info into something beautiful, aesthetic um. He did a really good job at bringing all that info into something beautiful um. And so we launched the first one last year in march, and then we're launching the new one this week oh, you have a new one coming out.
Speaker 2:Oh, that's so exciting. That's very timely then, for this yeah so timely.
Speaker 3:um, we're launching the new one, we're relaunching the website scentelligenceprojectcom and we're relaunching the wheel. It's the same number of scent notes, but what we've added is scent compounds that are commonly found in cannabis, so like thiols, aldehydes, and just a little bit of a description of each of those so that people can sort of broaden their understanding of the actual scientific compounds that are influencing the aromatics. Because the wheel itself is sort of colloquial. There's like skunk spray and like tomato leaf and you know Windex, right. The scent notes themselves are normal fun smells plum apple.
Speaker 2:You are right that it is hard to like sometimes pick out those. That's when you're smelling something, and so was this sort of like it. You mentioned it was for like sommeliers, but would this be a handy tool for just anyone who likes to smell their weed and maybe pinpoint and describe it better? Because that description thing I was in California and I did the gangier program and of course a lot of that is about we had to do like blind samples for the exam and all this kind of stuff and they wanted to describe the cannabis in a way that wasn't just like oh, it smells like lemons, like having more nuanced and better descriptors can help somebody else imagine what they're smelling, but that's a real skill. That's very difficult to do, I find.
Speaker 3:Yes, but you can train your nose. That's the thing, the wheel. Even if you're like a mediocre at smelling and you don't think you're very good at it sometimes, it's just this. Very common experience Again, shout out to my man, avery Gilbert. He calls it tip of the nose. I'm sorry, I should be. Very common experience Again, shout out to my man, avery Gilbert. He calls it tip of the nose. I'm sorry, I should be calling him Dr Gilbert, not like he's my friend, he's a professional scientist. I just I love him so much His work, oh God. Okay, it's fangirling over here, but he calls it the tip of the nose phenomenon.
Speaker 3:And it's when you recognize the smell but you cannot find the words to describe it Like. We know what a grape smells like. We know you can imagine the smell of grape right now as I'm discussing it. It's just so hard to think grape when you're holding a green leafy thing that doesn't like it's out of context because it's not a grape, and so it's just been scientifically proven that having a list makes it you able to discover the smells. So it's not. I almost want to call it a cheat sheet, but it's not really cheating, it's. It's a tool. It makes discovering smells easier, and I know in the beginning a lot of I haven't done the Gondier program but I've done similar smaller classes, and a lot of times they focus on identifying the terpene, which I think is great and important, but it identifying terpenes doesn't really translate well to like work or text. You know a lot of what I've done is you know cannabis reviews Right? I've done reviews for a bunch of different brands Leafly, and so what they want is something exciting.
Speaker 3:So I try to describe cannabis as if you're describing perfume right. It's, you're telling a story. You would never see a perfume described as like high in aldehydes. Why do we do that? For weed, no one wants that. They want the experience. No one wants that for weed, no one wants that. They want the experience. But in cannabis we can't talk about the experience. You can't tell people what to expect, like it's sort of against the rules. So you have to describe the experience through the smell and that's what creates a dynamic description. That's what brings people in to wanting to try the weed and it makes it more exciting. So the example I always use is like um, the cold steel of a blade, you know a breeze on a summer's day. It's describing an experience, but it's not saying like, it's not talking about the high, which is a big part of cannabis we just generally don't discuss in descriptions and it just creates an opportunity for you to to find new ways to discuss something beyond the word citrus.
Speaker 2:Right? Well, because if you just described everything as citrus, like half the strains out there, the cultivars would be citrus strains, and then that doesn't really tell you anything and being able to describe them better evokes that emotion that you might attach with that particular cultivar. Because you mentioned the perfume industry, and I mean they create these multi-million dollar commercials around these perfumes that they're putting out there, because they are trying to evoke an experience with using that particular scent, right? So it's sort of like the same idea, which is why I think a tool like this is super useful, whether you're like a professional sommelier or something like that, or just someone who enjoys, you know, cannabis and smelling things and that kind of stuff. So, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3:It's also really beautiful. The new version was designed to hang on a wall. The original version was designed to kind of like desktop use, as you go, and the new version we've done like a movie poster size and then an 11 by 17, just for a more affordable desktop option. Uh, we all live in small apartments so maybe I printed poster just to check the font size and I like literally don't put it, um, but yeah, no, so it's it's also the new one's more aesthetic. So if you've ever been in a coffee shop and seen the coffee wheel, you know that's the idea people who go into coffee I'm not a coffee expert, but I always look at the freaking wheel like I find these things interesting. Um, yeah, and so it's designed to be hung like on a dispensary wall or in a social space where maybe people are consuming. Um, for something to look at, something to explore and then also use. Yeah, it's very functional. It's it's designed for everyone. It's it's an entry level, but I use it. I use it always when I'm writing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, it's a very um like nuanced thing and, like you said, developing your palette. I don't want to say I have like a super defined palette by any means, but so I'll use whatever tools I need to help me along. I have no shame in that, because it's super interesting too, and I have a couple of books that I've read on the topic, but I'm definitely going to check out the one by Avery Gilbert, because I don't think I have read that one, and I love this stuff because it applies to cannabis and so many other things. Well, like you said, coffee or cheeses or chocolate or wine, like all these things, so it applies everywhere besides cannabis too.
Speaker 3:Yes, and all of the items you named are luxury agricultural products. Again, like it's for right now, there's nothing that really defines a luxury cannabis product. You know, we have some things, maybe the jars a little nicer, maybe it's a craft grown on a small farm, hand trim. We have some things that separate mass production from something maybe a little bit more elevated. But what actually elevates a product to the luxury market is developing appellations and understanding of terroir, in the way that we understand wine, for example.
Speaker 3:And so until we're all really kind of bringing cannabis into the luxury market, it's still just going to be an agricultural good, and what I mean by that is like perfume and wine. It's a thing that grows in the soil. It has just one or two degrees of processing and then it's the final product. You know wine the grapes are picked, picked, it's fermented, it becomes this thousand dollar bottle of wine or two dollar bottle of wine, depending on the flavor, and so it's the same with cannabis. It's like ground it's one degree of processing and then it's sent to the consumer, and so, um, it's important to me to find those elevated products and mark it up.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, and are you finding that difficult in the canadian? Like cannabis, I have to admit I'm not visiting a lot of dispensaries these days because I'm growing and I have friends that grow and it's just a nice way to get your weed.
Speaker 3:Same same I find in the Canadian market. I think here, especially in Ontario, our hands are very tied with the opaque packaging. I think places with deli style have a little bit more wiggle room, like Oregon, where you can see the buds, you can smell the buds. It really forces companies to try harder for that bag appeal, which I think is a big part of purchasing cannabis and then, of course, the aromatics. So I think our hands are really tied here in a lot of ways. But also it's, for example, in Ontario I tried initiating a project where I had some clones from a grower that I really respect and I was trying to grow them at a few different locations in what we consider wine country.
Speaker 3:I'm hoping to see if there was any changes. Like I was trying to do an experiment, right, I was hypothesizing oh, if wine that grows in this particular region is known to be a luxury product because of the terroir, will the cannabis have the same effect? But this is like a million dollar study. No one is going to fund this. So I did it in my usual DIY, get her done kind of way. But we face so many challenges with the lack of money that's circulating right now to help really push the industry forward.
Speaker 2:Right. Yeah, it is tricky, but I guess if we're just doing these DIY experiments, that's at least something in the interim until somebody wants to take on these types of projects, because I know in California they are working on developing the Appalachians and talking about terroir and stuff like that. It just needs to sort of go further out, and I don't think it's reached us in Canada quite yet.
Speaker 3:Yes, and recently I was sent a picture of a jar that a friend bought at a dispensary from like a craft grow in cal. No, a family-run farm, I feel like. Craft suggests small. They have 10 000 to 20 000 plants, so but craft in the sense that they really it's a generational farm, they've been doing it for 50 years. Um, so they have that nice history there that we don't necessarily, we haven't really tapped into because there wasn't that nice grandfathering into the legal industry that we saw in california. But they actually designated humble as an appellation on the packaging, which I had never seen before and I don't know if it's a full. But I say go for it because I think humble has earned that right yeah what they sit on.
Speaker 3:I don't know I this is part of my list of this month to dig a little deeper into that particular farm and how they decided to include it on their packaging, but we are seeing some places do it. What I will say in the States is they're generally bolder when it comes to cannabis. When they see a gray area they're like cool, we'll go in it, whereas here the gray areas people wait till they're safe to go in. We play a little safer over here.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, I mean that makes sense. It's a pretty new industry for us too, and California has been doing this for a while and nobody's like, oh, I scored this really great Ontario grown weed, but nobody really says that. But you'd be like, oh, I scored this really great Ontario grown weed, but nobody really says that. But you'd be like, oh, I got this weed in Humboldt and people have that collective understanding around it. So it'll take some time.
Speaker 2:But switching gears a little bit, you also have recently released a book about cannabis topicals, tinctures and edibles, which of course I'm very excited about because I love cannabis topicals they are and edibles, which of course I'm very excited about because I love cannabis topicals. I mean, I love edibles too, hence a show about edibles. But I find topicals are great for so many people, they help so many people and it's a really safe entryway for people to discover cannabis who may not otherwise even want to smoke it or consume it any other way. So can you talk about the book a little bit, sort of what's in it, and also your background, because I also know you have a lot of certificates and education around aromatherapy and topicals and all that stuff. So that was a multi-layered question for you.
Speaker 3:I applied for a job at Starbucks once and they also ask multi-layered questions to try to pick you up, to see if you can remember the orders Complicated. Oh well, I'm not trying to do that.
Speaker 3:I did not get hired at Starbucks. No, I can do it, though. I did just write a book. So the book evolved from notes from a class that I used to teach. So we're going to jump around. I'm not like a linear person, I'm kind of like a I almost said spectrum. We're going to say constellation, I'm a constellation, so it's, everything comes together.
Speaker 3:But when I moved back to Toronto, kind of along the time that California was legalizing, I moved back here, toronto kind of along the time that California was legalizing. I moved back here, was looking for a job and I had been dabbling in wildcrafting, making my own topicals, because, you know, working in Humble you have just like so much access to weed that you can experiment. And so I took the opportunity to do a lot of experimenting while I was out there making my first topical, which was cannabis and turmeric root, because I was experiencing like repetitive stress, injury from trimming, like my wrist. You know you're working 14 hours a day for months at a time processing 1000s and 1000s of pounds, so my wrist was like a lot of folks were experiencing the same thing. And so I started making these cannabis topicals with turmeric root to help treat inflammation and they worked and it was very, very, very DIY, like powdered turmeric root and like a gloopy oil and I would just stir it and slather it on super thick on my wrist and then sleep with a sock on my hand, like because turmeric is so yellow, it gets on everything Like it was such a floppy little thing, but it worked and that's how I started making topicals. So brought in other oils.
Speaker 3:I love wild foraging so I was making, you know, clover oils and I was finding different plants on the Oregon coast and also starting to incorporate them into these weird oils that I was making and kind of concocting all these strange little things. But having so much cannabis, I was able to really experiment with my technique, see which things worked better than others. I like to do really high concentrations, so we only add like half a teaspoon of the oil to like a whole batch and it's still like a thousand milligrams, right, I like to do these. We just had so much cannabis and this is back in the day where anything smaller than the tip of your thumb would be thrown in the garbage and literally dragged into the woods and dumped Right. So like that's still good, weed your thumb, that's a lot of weed, so lots of access. So, anyway, I moved back to toronto.
Speaker 3:I was looking for a job and I saw that, um, a local apothecary was hiring a cleaner and I thought how fun, I would love to work in an apothecary. So I took the job and, uh, I became really good friends with the owner, my mentor, tracy, and I ended up working there until it closed last year in the summer, and so that is where I learned to make topicals, because Tracy is a natural health practitioner. She specializes in natural body care, topical formulation and she's a certified aromatherapist and aromatherapy instructor. She's been doing it for. And she's a certified aromatherapist and aromatherapy instructor. She's been doing it for I don't want to age her, but a long time. And so I was mentored one-on-one with Tracy for years and I took her program, the Anaris Natural Health Aromatherapy Certification Program, and I just dived in and my whole focus the whole time is always cannabis topicals.
Speaker 3:I love working with the plant and so, yeah, I started teaching workshops at the shop and it was a full day workshop called make your own cannabis medicine kind of a long-winded story. But years of learning under Tracy, years of developing products. I ran the production of her store, so I made the 50 to a 100 products that she sold in her store, from toothpaste to deodorant, to every kind of lotion, to every kind of balm. And then I started teaching a make your own class. I'm all over the place today, but the first time I taught the workshop it's a full day, so in the morning we would make an oil and in the afternoon we would make all the products with this one oil.
Speaker 3:And I was trying to just impart how easy it is to make your own cannabis products with just like a few simple ingredients. And I noticed that during the workshop the folks that were taking it were feverishly taking notes and I felt like they weren't enjoying it because there were so many notes to take. And so I made a little take-home sheet that then turned into a little zine, that then expanded into a little booklet that then, you know, I took some time and it's now, I think, just under 100 pages, which is this book that I just put out, called Cannabis in your Kitchen. And it's essentially this full-day workshop plus six years of doing production in an apothecary, all combined into one. So it pretty much covers everything you need, but in the most basic way possible, because it's all about accessibility.
Speaker 3:I think I heard I've heard many times people trying a topical and it not working for them and they just cast it aside. Topicals don't work and I usually give them a sample of one of mine and I say, try this thing and it works. And it just sometimes takes time to develop products. Sometimes it's about subtlety of certain ingredients and my number one seller is the turmeric oil.
Speaker 2:Is that because I was going to ask you about that because one of my kids has developed a sore wrist. She works at a bar and as soon as you said that, I thought of her because I'm like, oh, I could make that for her. Is that recipe in the book? It is in the book, okay.
Speaker 3:It is in the book, it's evolved. So the nice thing about taking five years to study and practice topical formulation and actually producing body care for clients, right Like? Hundreds of people come into the store to buy these products. So they have to be accurate, they have to be consistent, is everything, especially when you're running a production kitchen. And so, yes, so I evolved that greasy yellow staining mess plus sock into a gorgeous balm.
Speaker 3:I do still warn it does come still with the warning that turmeric can stain, because it does contain quite a high level of turmeric. But now I use organic turmeric roux. I make all the oils from scratch and so it's a little bit more refined with, uh, different proportions of beeswax and other oils. It makes it less of a traumatic yellow experience, but it is still quite, quite yellow, um, and it has uh. The one I included in the book is a simplified version. The one I sell on my website has about 30 different essential oils. Okay, yes, it's like a blend, a pain relieving blend specifically designed for exactly what you're describing Repetitive stress, injuries, acute pain becoming chronic pain. But the one in the book here let's flip to the page it's. It's called the golden relief self and it only includes four essential oils.
Speaker 3:So, that's the idea. I want this to be doable because I had access to like a thousand essential oils when I'm designing products, but I think it would be wild to demand someone drop a grand just to put one drop of, you know, chamomile and that's what it usually ends up being too right, like with essential oils.
Speaker 2:Usually you're like you need. You need five drops, but you had to go spend, like on the oil, 30 bucks on this bottle of that. You may or may not use again, I don't know, although I do like essential oils myself. There is an apothecary in town that makes essential oils too, so that's usually where I like to go. But I am curious about, like the generally speaking, the recipes in the book when it comes to topicals. Are they, would you say they're for like a beginner level or beginner to advanced? Because I know I've made some topicals, you know, just even without infusing them before, and some of those body care products can get pretty complicated sometimes, depending on your level of skill.
Speaker 3:I also find sometimes when you Google like, let's say, body butter, it's just like they don't turn out and I feel like people blame themselves. But as someone who formulates, I can look at this recipe and say there's no freaking way this is going to come together. The ingredients are all wrong, right, like that's the thing about when you're just starting out and, like you know, being able to have access to so many different materials. I think Anera has sold over like 2000 ingredients to choose from. So the way I designed the book was to explain why we choose ingredients, then have a handful of my recipes, one of each category. So I have a recipe for a body oil, I have a recipe for a balm, I have a recipe for a lotion bar bath Okay, and the idea is you can take my bath recipe. But by just flipping through some of my other recommendations, like I don't even really know where to begin. But let's say, for example, there's a whole section on formulating topicals. So you decide right from the get is this just a THC product or a THC and CBD product? I've included very simple instructions on how to do both, so it's designed that you create your own, but with really solid suggestions.
Speaker 3:So the next page is some different enriching oils and their descriptions. Enriching oils are fantastic to add to products because they have all these values and therapeutic actions. But we only add a little bit to a carrier oil, which is generally a more affordable oil. So this is all about creating stuff really easily, really simply, and kind of mixing and matching to make your own. So in the enriching oils we have Arnica, which if you dabble, you know Arnica is great for musculature and acute pain as well. Calendula is another great one, and turmeric, and then you could go to the soothing body oil recipe. See that I used calendula and arnica, but you, if you just have one, can just use the one right Like right. And with the essential oils I've included a list of I think, 15 or 20 essential oils that are great to have if you're building a library and you really want to invest in making topicals. But again, you can mix and match with whatever you have. The proportions are there.
Speaker 3:So it's designed for beginners but it has some more advanced recipes if you want to go the more advanced route. I mean the lotion is three ingredients, so that's an easy intro to lotions and salves, because it's kind of the middle between a lotion and a balm would kind of be a lotion bar, super soft table. Don't need any kitchen supplies, no beakers, no, nothing. Whereas some of the other recipes you might need a beaker, but I've included measurements. So if you don't have a beaker you can still make it. So if you don't have a teeny little one mil beaker, you can do 20 drops of essential oil. So I really tried. Like I said, this was a workshop for people who knew nothing but wanted to learn and then seeing what they were like the essential oil section. Originally when I designed the workshop was maybe only five minutes, like quick introduction. Often it ended up being half an hour to an hour, based on the questions. So I kind of just tried to take what I was teaching in real life and making and put it in a little book.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I love that because it sounds like it's a real choose your own adventure, but with a lot of handholding so you can feel confident about your making. And topicals uh, for anyone listening, it's uh, fall of 2024 and christmas. I don't want to say the word is around the corner and nothing says I love you, like a homemade topical or something like that. Because people really appreciate that kind of stuff because they don't have time to do it themselves.
Speaker 3:So yes, okay. So I would say for anyone who's dabbling um, lotion bars are incredibly easy to make and require only three ingredients and some kind of silicone mold, and you just use equal parts of the three ingredients. So it's cocoa butter, beeswax and carrier oil, and a carrier oil is just like a base oil, like olive oil, sunflower seed oil, avocado oil could be considered an enriching oil, but these are things you might just have in your cupboard. So cocoa butter, beeswax, equal parts, a cute Christmas themed mold, a couple drops of whatever essential oils you have, boom.
Speaker 2:Yeah, people appreciate that kind of stuff because I've made lots of topicals and stuff for people at Christmas time and they love it. So I am going to highly recommend people pick up this book because I'm going to be getting it. But I am curious if you've ever. So I have a couple more questions around that. Have you ever worked with raw cannabis flower? As far as doing infusions, yeah, like non decarboxylated.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, yes, yes, I do. I I my actually my my turmeric topical. I'm trying to remember what I call it on my website. Honestly, I've just been I'm working with so many things Like, what do I even call it on my website? Um, I think I call it joint pain salve. I think I just gave it what it is name.
Speaker 3:It uses THCA as its main cannabinoid ingredients. Right, a lot of people decarboxylate because they want the active cannabis. I get that. I do that in quite a few infusions. But there is a place for non-activated cannabis in topicals and often they're very, very effective. It's just that it takes longer to make the oil because you have to do a cold infusion instead of a warm infusion. So when you think of making any kind of edible or cannabis product, you know you decarboxylate it and then you heat it over low heat for three to six hours, put the cannabis in the oil and then the oil's infused. The cannabinoids dissolve oil. That's how we make an infused oil. So when you're using the, when you're wanting to work with the THCA or CBDA, you have to do a cold infusion, which means you just take the flower trimmed and you put it in a jar and you cover it with oil and you set it somewhere dark and cool for three to six months.
Speaker 2:That's what I did, although I don't think I did it for three to six months. I probably did it for less time than that, but I use it in a face oil now and I put it on my face every morning and I'm always like, well, I don't know what it's necessarily doing, except I like the smell. So it smells very weedy.
Speaker 3:Well, even in its non-activated state. First of all, cannabis is such an amazing skin soothing ingredient. It's really great for rejuvenating your skin. It's just a fantastic enriching ingredient to any topical product. It's just a fantastic enriching ingredient to any topical product. Skin loves cannabis, so I've also dabbled in cannabis hydrosol. Skin loves cannabis. Hydrosols, cannabis floral water Amazing.
Speaker 3:And again, that does not contain CBD or THC, but the skin loves it, so highly recommend any form. Now it also, when used in a higher amount in a formulation, has amazing pain relieving and anti-inflammatory properties in its non decarboxylated form. So again, everyone's endocannabinoid system is different, so it's good to kind of try a few different things and see what works best for you. I think that's where people get a little thrown off of making topicals is that it requires maybe a little bit of experimentation to see what works. But we're talking about an herb, and so another piece of this whole puzzle is that I am a certified herbalist, so I view cannabis as one of many ingredients. That is, a plant that has amazing effects on the body and it should be combined with many other ingredients to enrich the formula and enrich the therapeutic value. So it's not its own thing and I think sometimes even talking about smell. We're always reinventing the wheel. You know, the terpene therapy is aromatherapy.
Speaker 2:Right, yeah, it is, it's essentially the same thing. Essential oils Right, yeah, it is, it's essentially the same thing.
Speaker 3:Essential oils 95% terpenes. It's terpene, it's the same thing. We can call it what we want. It doesn't bother me I'll call it terpene therapy all day but it exists. There's been many studies on it, it has been studied for many years and its effects on the body. We're always reinventing the wheel. So cannabis topicals it's part of herbalism, it's part of holistic body care, it's part of holistic aromatherapy. That's my rant. That's what grinds my gears.
Speaker 2:And when you were making all the topicals in the apothecary, how did you test for the potency, or did you? I mean, you must have had to test, like you said, because it would go on a label eventually.
Speaker 3:Yeah for sure. So I definitely come from the legacy side, so these are not accurate by any means. I generally this is going to maybe be a little bit controversial I've worked in cannabis for a really long time and I've smoked weed that was tested and I'm not saying I'm like a human tester, but I have a general idea of potency when it comes to cannabis. Regardless, I try to use pretty standard formulas to bring it in. And again, if you look at cannabis as an enriching ingredient, we don't have to have exactly 102 milligrams of THC in a jar, but in and around that volume does something to the body and so I think it's OK, especially if you're like a home crafter, and this is why I don't sell my topicals in a dispensary.
Speaker 3:It's a different regulated environment. They want specificity. That's part of the regulation. I generally sell my products in body care shops, right? Different regulated environment. They want specificity. That's part of the regulation. I generally sell my products in body care shops, right? You have recommendations in the book for home growers who are dabbling, which is generally. You might think your weed is like 20% because it's fire, but generally homegrown is like 10 to 15% THC and it's okay to be a little bit under, unless you're making edibles, in which case I recommend going on the higher end, just to be safe, right.
Speaker 2:Yes, yeah, because you're absolutely right with the topicals. There's not the psychoactive effects, so it's not as important, I suppose, to be exact, whereas if you're eating it, consuming it, that's a whole different ballgame. So that makes total sense.
Speaker 3:And then again it also depends on the product. So, for example, I've had a lot of people who use medicated topicals. Medicated meaning it's has more than 100 milligrams as dosed milligrams of cannabinoids in it. And you know they might think, oh, I need 100 milligrams, but if it's a bath and they're soaking in it they might only need 30. Right, like it doesn't matter what kind of topical we're using, because a 30 milligram bath bomb is more than enough. Even if you have very intense pain because you're soaking in it.
Speaker 3:You're really giving it that time to soak in, whereas a topical we have to look at the ingredients, like does it contain beeswax? Topical we have to look at the ingredients Like does it contain beeswax? Beeswax is going to have it move into the skin much slower because it's covering the pores, so it's going to slow down. So sometimes a beeswax based product is good when you want it to take the time and slowly soak in, whereas a body oil is going to be more quickly absorbed into the skin. So there's some factors, but generally, you know, you can kind of figure it out as you go.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, that's good advice. Now we are getting to the end of our time together and I feel like there's still so much more to talk about, because you're doing this amazing podcast with Ryan as well, of which I was a guest, uh, not too long ago, earlier this year, but you have a lot of great guests on that show and I think it's amazing that you two just happened to meet, like by happenstance. Do you have any exciting guests coming up or episodes that you have planned that you want to talk about, or a favorite guest that was on your show?
Speaker 3:Oh my gosh, the podcast. Yeah, we've taken a little mini hiatus, which we hate doing. We really hate doing it. But we needed to focus on our employment, first of all because, being creative regardless of the 3000 projects I'm working on you still need a job. So we took a little break, which is great for us to kind of regroup. But also we wanted to take our weekly scheduled.
Speaker 3:We meet every Wednesday. Every Wednesday, me and Ryan meet, whether we're recording or not, and so we took that Wednesday time to rebuild our Scentelligence website over the past couple months. It is freaking gorgeous. It looks so professional and Ryan did the whole thing, so like he did the whole website. If you need a website design, call Ryan. He did I. I I'm speechless, like it was beyond anything I could have even imagined. Call ryan, he did I I I'm speechless like it was beyond anything I could have even imagined. Um, so he did such a good job.
Speaker 3:So we've been rebuilding the back end of kind of some of the projects that we do. Uh, so that was. That's been great, because now we're relaunching the wheel. So the wheel. We spent a few months rebuilding that and just kind of figuring out exactly what we want. You know, we've been very intentional with the projects that we've been putting out, so it's been quiet. Yeah, I miss recording actually, so I'm hoping that we get back into it. We do have some guests coming up that are top secret, but we'll be really.
Speaker 3:And if you're interested in listening to the podcast, of course we had Marge check out our episode with Bite Me. We did a great interview with David Jacob Kramer who wrote Heads Together Weed in the Underground Press Syndicate. It's one of our not most listened to episodes but one of my absolute favorites. Like, I think people are sleeping on it a little bit. Okay, I don't think I've listened to that. Yeah, number one episode of all time in Humboldt County. That was my number one favorite episode to record and our top listen to of all time. Um, because I went back to my old farm not the scary one, the nice one, the grower and my friend Lauren, who also is the two growers that run the farm, and some soundscapes like crunching gravel. You know, I tried to make it like on what's that?
Speaker 2:uh, the asmr? Yeah, I was trying to call them sound tapes.
Speaker 3:You know, I'm like in the place and uh and we talk a little bit because me and lauren worked there together in the legacy days so we swapped some stories and and talk about what it's like these days in humble county in legalization. So if you're curious about that side of the story, that's a good place to check out.
Speaker 2:Nice little deep dive. And one last thing, also, because I mean I've listened. I have listened to your podcast and I definitely listened to some of the ones where you were traveling and recording or talking about your experiences while abroad, sometimes looking for weed, looking for a smoking spot, and some of those episodes are great too, which makes sense as to why you're also launching, like this magazine next spring it looks like which appears like it has to do with cannabis tourism, cannabis travel. Do you want to talk about that for a minute? I mean it's not coming out, yeah, no absolutely.
Speaker 3:It's not coming up for a bit, but I'm in the throes of it. That's why I actually read tuning. You're probably here, the point halfway through this episode where my brain turned back to topicals. Um, because it's been so focused on this tourism project the past couple of months it's literally consumed all my waking hours. Um, I last year couple months it's literally consumed all my waking hours. I last year. I've been wanting to build a cannabis tourism magazine for probably like two or three years now, because my travel days are some of my favorite. Weed travel working in Humboldt funded my music career let's I've never called it a career my music, I'm a musician and all those years and I traveled nonstop, completely nomadic, no home base. So I consider myself a professional traveler on a budget because I will go anywhere with no money in my pocket and hope for the best, and that is a fact. That's lore for another day, okay.
Speaker 2:That's for next episode together.
Speaker 3:Yeah that's lore for a whole different episode. But I've been wanting to put together this cannabis travel magazine because when I travel, I look for weed. I look for weed, I want to smoke it, I want to try the local flavor and often finding weed is the easiest part. It's finding things to do in the culture that tends to be the challenge. So I decided to put together this magazine. It's called Tripper and it's a cannabis travel magazine. Each issue is a different destination place, so issue one is YYZ. It's Ontario, here, toronto, and it's offbeat adventures while you're high. So it features like what I believe to be the weirdest sculptures in the city to get high and look at.
Speaker 3:I have just confirmed one of Toronto's most notorious graffiti artists. He's going to be doing a feature on must see best artists and where they're up, which, if you've been here from now, they might not be there. Street art right, you know transitional. We have a piece on places where movies were filmed from the film tripper. We have a piece on the best head shops and glass. Of course, I have the best dispensaries based on vibes in the whole city. So the idea is, if you are coming to Toronto, here's everything you need to know. So I applied for a grant to publish the magazine and I fucking got it.
Speaker 2:Oh nice Congratulations, yes.
Speaker 3:Oh, nice Congratulations. Yes, oh my gosh, I'm very, very excited that it is going to be a print magazine and so it's going to print in the next month. That's why I'm like losing my mind, uh, doing a lot of writing for it and gathering, and then it will be probably launching in the spring. I want to give myself a window of time to plan a launch. So yeah, it will be launching in the spring. So anytime someone comes to Toronto as of next year, you can go to trippermagazinecom and order your copy, or you can hopefully we'll be selling it in some local cities.
Speaker 3:That are known for tourism.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I think that's great too, because I'm not in Toronto. I'm an hour and a half away, but people will sometimes still message me and be like, hey, what's cool to do in Toronto? Um, from the perspective of a cannabis smoker or whatever. And I have a couple recommendations I can make, cause I've obviously been to Toronto but I don't live there, so having a resource like this is amazing for people who want to come and enjoy the city while consuming cannabis, cause that's one of the things I love about Toronto is going there and just smelling weed in the air, because you smell it everywhere.
Speaker 3:I think that's awesome, absolutely, and especially for international travelers. I get a lot of questions from people all over the world like what it's like to to exist in this space. And you know, I always say, like a lot of places people hide it, whereas here it's very out in the open. So that's something that the magazine talks about is it's not about being discreet, it's just about respecting the space that you're in, like oh, there's kids nearby. We're not going to smoke next to the kids. That obviously goes without saying, I think. But a little bit of common sense.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:So that's part of the culture you won't find on a website or, you know, there's little moments of cannabis culture that really only come from the locals, and that's what I'm trying to showcase Local artists, local music, and there's nothing about the CN Tower like things. You can Google, google them Like you know. You just Google it's 2014.
Speaker 2:I don't need to.
Speaker 3:The CN Tower is not even that exciting in a lot of ways.
Speaker 2:I mean, I guess, if you're really high and trying to walk on the glass floor which I can't do, by the way, I cannot do sober or high so you know that that can be a fun touristy thing to do, but there's so much more to see in Toronto as well, so, exactly, exactly yeah, that's on my list.
Speaker 3:That's coming out to me.
Speaker 2:Trippermagazinecom um is the website we'll have to have you back again when it's gonna be out, because you have done a ton of. Obviously you've done a lot more traveling than I realized, but listening to your podcast I realized that you've done a lot of traveling and looking for cannabis in different places. So just having you back to talk about that what could be its own dedicated episode. But I have a couple more questions for you, um, before we part ways, one being what instrument do you play that? I was just curious.
Speaker 2:I I play right now guitar acoustic guitar okay so when you were traveling around hitchhiking and stuff, you were playing guitar yeah, I was in a band.
Speaker 3:Um, we're actually in the punk rock hall of fame. Uh, our band is is quite notorious, even though we did everything we could to have people not really like our music. I know we're like anti-capitalist anarchists, right Street musicians, so we were trying to embody that spirit, but the band is called the Rail Yard Ghosts. I'm still besties with all my bandmates. We haven't played in a while, but we all did go to Europe last year just for funsies to meet up. And again, I play acoustic guitar. I do have an accordion, but my toxic trait is thinking I'm immediately going to be good at anything I pick up and then realizing that I'm not that good. So the accordion was one of those I'm like. Of course I can play accordion. Never played accordion in my life, right?
Speaker 2:And when you, when you were talking about the rail yard ghost and you went back to Europe, is that when you went to Oslo? And was that? Yes, I think I remember you got in a wee bit of trouble with local law enforcement, if I recall. So anybody listening, you should definitely check out that episode because it was super interesting. Yes, call so anybody listening.
Speaker 3:you should definitely check out that episode because it was super interesting. Yes, that was the crow. I was in Oslo. I've actually lived in Oslo. I love Norway so, so much. They have the best Moroccan hash you can even imagine. But Croatia was where my friend Sarah got dinged, and we interviewed Sarah for the podcast on the Locked Up in Croatia episode because she got in a lot of trouble for having one gram in a decriminalized country. Right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I mean you have so many great episodes on that podcast that you and Ryan do, but also, what would surprise people about you?
Speaker 3:Oh my God, literally everything. What did I not say? That was surprising so far.
Speaker 2:That's true, it's probably. It's a question I like to ask a lot of the guests that I have, but it is true. Everything you do is pretty surprising.
Speaker 3:The lore is so tied to the where I am today, like I really wouldn't be where I am today if I didn't meet hobos randomly and think this is so cool and follow them across the country and into the States. And yeah, I guess that's probably the thing that would surprise people the most is that, you know, before all of this, I was that guy on the corner with a cardboard sign and I loved it. Like you, I loved it. I loved playing music on the street. I love being a street musician.
Speaker 3:Being a musician opens so many doors, but it's also made me so good at creative collaborations, because living and breathing and existing with your bandmates for years, day in, day out nine people in a minivan with dogs and everyone has a guitar Like you learn to get along with people real fast and just meeting new people. I think it's really influenced how I travel and and how I like to build community. You know I'm I like. I like building community and working with people and I think that's why I tackle so many of these projects to try to create opportunities to like grow and build businesses with other entrepreneurs and innovators who don't have the million dollar funding behind us. You know, people projects, yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'm here for it because I love the concept of building community too, because if you don't have community, then life is pretty damn lonely and there's space for everybody in the cannabis space too, and there's so many interesting people doing really interesting stuff. And I consider you one of those people who, like I, just love everything that you're doing. So I thank you for everything that you're doing, because I think it's amazing and you really are an advocate for the plant and every like breaking this, the stoner stereotype, that lazy stoner stereotype like you're just like um, yeah, it's bullshit and you're stomping all over it because there's there's nothing lazy about anything that you're doing. Like, you are just hustling out there and putting out some really cool shit for people to discover more about their own cannabis usage as well. So where can people find you? And I will be linking to all this stuff in their show notes as well, so people can find it. But tell us where we can find you.
Speaker 3:Yeah, for sure. So my Instagram is at emeraldtempleliving. I am an activist so I do often post a lot of cannabis activism and other types of activism posts, but that's a great place to find me and also to reach out. I love answering questions. So if you guys ever have any questions about making your own topicals smell, any of the things we talked about today, any of the things you see on my socials, you're welcome to reach out. My website is EmeraldTempleLivingcom and you can find me and Ryan at the dot smoking spots. There's like 1000 links I could shout out. Those are probably the good ones to start.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's awesome and, like I said, I'll link to those in the show notes so people can find you and reach out to you if they want. And just thank you so much for sharing your time with me today, amanda. I really appreciate it.
Speaker 3:I love you, marge, and I love that we're building this little community together. This is what we're talking about, because we went to support another female business not because they're female, because it was a cool project and you know, we support others and then we meet other people that do the same thing and now we're friends and yeah, yeah, shout out to camp canna yeah, exactly, that's literally. Community building starts right, like people wonder how do you, how do you meet people? And it's like well, supporting other people's projects and seeing what's good too, exactly.
Speaker 2:Well, thank you so much.
Speaker 2:Amanda is breaking the stoner stereotype every single day and I find it really inspiring, friends, as always.
Speaker 2:You can find links and the things we talked about in the show notes over on bitemepodcastcom, and if you have a cannabis lover in your life, particularly someone who might be interested in the science of scent or in cannabis topicals, consider sharing this episode with them. Get out your phone right now and text them this episode, because it really does help spread awareness about Bite Me, the Show about edibles, and, of course, that further helps promote the work that Amanda is doing out there in the world too, and I really want Bite Me to be a place that is collaborative and a sense of community, if you will. And on that last note, before anybody says anything to me, yes, she called me Marge in the show because she didn't realize that I was going by Margaret now, and afterwards I informed her about my new lease on life and of course, she was a hundred percent supportive, because Amanda is exactly how she sounds. She is badass. What can I say? So check out all the cool things that Amanda's doing and until next week, my friends, I'm your host, margaret, stay high.
