The Joy of Making Cannabis Infused Honey Roasted Peanuts

Sweet, salty, and perfectly dosed, this one starts with a craving for spring and ends with a bowl of honey roasted peanuts that actually fit real-life snacking. We kick off with the joy of longer days, garden plans, and why growing cannabis outdoors can reset your relationship to patience and flavor. That seasonal shift pairs with a personal update on a parent’s cancer journey and how steady CBD and CBG support can sit alongside treatment, a reminder that thoughtful cannabinoids and thoughtful cooking share the same values: intention and care.

Transcript

Welcome And Show Focus

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What happens when you take a love of food, a passion for culture, a deep knowledge of cannabis, and you toss them all into one bowl? You get Bite Me, the podcast that explores the intersection of food, culture, science, and cannabis, and helps cooks make great edibles at home. I'm your host, Margaret, a certified Gangier, TCI certified cannabis educator, and I believe your kitchen is the best dispensary you'll ever have. Together we'll explore the stories, the science, and the sheer joy of making safe, effective, and unforgettable edibles at home. So preheat your oven and get ready for a great episode. Let's dive in. Welcome back, friends. Thank you for being here. I'm really happy that you are joining me today for this tasty episode. If you're joining us for the first time, welcome. This is a great one to be tuning into. And if you've been here for a while, I appreciate your support. Bite me, the show about edibles would not exist without listeners like you. And I would be sitting here talking to myself, and that would be a sad, sad thing. So before we get into today's episode, I just want to comment that as of late, at the time of this recording, the weather has been absolutely spectacular where I am, and it's really making me crave spring. Spring is just around the corner, and I know as a Canadian, this is likely a false spring. Yes, we have things like false spring, and that's when the weather gets beautiful. It's double-digit temperatures for the first time in months. The days are getting longer. That's not false, but the days are getting longer, which is so wonderful to see. The sun has been shining, and boy, does that put everybody in such a wonderful mood. Now, most experienced Canadians know that we are likely going to get colder temperatures and more snow before the actual real spring joins us, but it certainly gives us that taste where we start dreaming about patios and being outside without having to have coats on and what we're going to plant in our gardens and all the things that we can't do in the winter time. And as much as I sometimes hate winter, like a lot of Canadians, and there are lots of things I love about winter, but life is more difficult during the winter and it's darker and bleaker, and I personally want to hibernate through much of it. But there is something so invigorating about spring. Just something that if you live in a climate where it's warm all the time, you probably don't get to experience in the same way. If I'm incorrect about that, please let me know. But there is something so exciting about those first noticings of spring. I do see buds on the trees already. I've noticed chipmunks running around, which I've not seen a chipmunk in months because they must hibernate. Something you don't really think about until it happens. I've already seen a robin. So it is something to look forward to. I am definitely looking forward to growing some cannabis outdoors this year. I'm actually thinking of planting some vegetables as well. We shall see, but I've been thinking about it a lot because this time of year, this weather is uh just gets me excited. So I am curious what you may be thinking of growing this particular season if you're growing indoors or outdoors. I mean, obviously the advantage of growing indoors is that you can technically do it any time of the year. I personally love to grow outdoors in the summertime. Even though my climate here isn't what you would consider ideal, I do it anyway because I enjoy it. And of course, over in the Bite Me Cannabis Club, we are doing some events around growing upcoming. So that's kind of exciting. And I've been thinking about that again because spring, I've had my first taste of spring. It's almost I can look at the window right now as I'm recording this, and I see the blue sky, and I'm just itching to go outside for a walk, which is something I haven't really been able to do for much of the winter because it has been very cold and very snowy, and we've had more snow this year, I think, in recent history. I'd like to say it's been a record-setting year, but I don't actually have any stats to back that up. But we have gotten a lot of snow this year. Let's get into today's episode. Actually, before we do, I also wanted to mention that my father was diagnosed with lung cancer recently, and he is now through all his treatments that he was getting. So that's really exciting. I can hear him walking around upstairs right now. And he seemed to tolerate those treatments very well. And he is still taking his CBD and CBG every day, twice a day. I have to remind him a lot, but he's still taking that every day, and that seems to be helping. I'm feeling hopeful about that too. And I'm glad that his uh experience with overdosing with THC did not scare him away from that. We still laugh about him. Honey roasted peanuts for episode 342, Honey Roasted Peanuts. And you might be asking why honey roasted peanuts and why now? Well, it just so happens that if you listen to last week's episode, I did a whole episode on infusing liquid sugars, your honey syrups, agaves. And I think those are a really valuable infusion to have in your pantry. One, because they're very shelf-stable, they last a long time, but you do have to do them a little bit differently. I laid out one great way to do them that I enjoy. Now we did talk about it in the Bite Me Cannabis Club. That's what sort of inspired me to revisit this episode because the last time I did an infused honey episode was six years ago. But they are a great infusion to have. And I gave lots of ideas on how you could use them in that episode. So if you haven't listened to that one, by all means go check that one out first. But if you are experienced in making these types of infusions, then you're gonna want to check out this particular recipe for some inspiration. And I did honey roasted peanuts because I recently, it's kind of funny because I recently bought a bag of peanuts from the store. And I didn't look at the label very carefully, and I brought them home, and I opened the bag, and they were unsalted. And I don't know if you've ever had unsalted peanuts before, but they are pretty bland. They were dry roasted, unsalted peanuts, they were bland. I made some granola and some other things just as a snack, they were disappointing, I think that's the word. And the funny thing is, I had recently bought a jar of peanut butter and also didn't look at the label very carefully, and bought unsalted peanut butter. I I buy natural peanut butter, that's how I prefer it. But unsalted natural peanut butter, it's gonna be in my cupboard for a while. Let's just say that. I am somebody who loves peanut butter. I can eat it off the spoon, but this jar has lasted me longer than any other jar I've ever had, I've ever purchased, and maybe I should do that moving forward. It's handy to have when you want to make or bake something with it, but it's also disappointing. So when I saw this recipe for honey roasted peanuts, I thought, hey, here's a way to use one pound of raw blanched peanuts. I had used up the bag that I bought, so I went out and got another one. Never thought I'd see the day or be buying a second bag of unsalted peanuts. Now, the ones that I purchased were not raw blanched, they were dry roasted. So you could probably skip the first step of this recipe. You don't really need to do that one because the first step of the recipe, if you're buying raw blanched peanuts, and if you can find them, I probably could have if I'd gone to the bulk food store, but I bought them somewhere else, is you bake them in the oven until toasted and fragrant about 12 minutes. So you can probably skip that step if you're buying dry roasted like I did. But this recipe is pretty simple and it is delicious. What you need are some pretty basic ingredients. You need your peanuts, of course. You need sugar, salt, honey, which is where you're going to introduce your infusion point here, potato starch, vegetable oil, unsalted butter, and some vanilla extract. Now, most people will probably have all of these ingredients on hand, except maybe the potato starch. I don't know. I did actually have potato starch. I don't know why I have potato starch. It's not something I use very often, but I do have some. I'm sure you could look up and see an alternative that you could use, like maybe cornstarch or arrowroot powder or any other kind of starches that would work in its stead. If you don't have to roast your peanuts first, you can skip that's that step, but you do, oh, that's interesting. I missed a step when I did this. I'm just looking at it right now. And this, friends, is why you read through a recipe thoroughly before doing it. Because I was like, you should probably put them in for less time than I did, but I realize now that I didn't turn down the oven. I saw preheat to 350 and then remove from oven and set aside decreased every temperature to 300. I didn't do that. Anyway, thoroughly read a recipe through before you're going to make it. I've made the mistake of not doing that so many times. Anyway, I'd take your own advice, Margaret. So if you're roasting your peanuts, what you do in the meanwhile is you're going to stir together your sugar, two tablespoons of sugar, and a half teaspoon of salt in a little bowl. And then you're going to grease a rimmed baking sheet with cooking spray and set aside. I actually used parchment paper instead, and I didn't grease anything, and that seemed to work just fine. And then in a medium saucepan or saucier, if you want to get fancy, you're going to combine your honey, potato starch, oil, butter, vanilla extract, as well as the remaining sugar, which is a quarter cup. So these aren't, this is not a low sugar recipe. But I also do wonder if you could use some of those sugar substitutes if you're concerned about sugar intake, like some of the monk fruit sugar or something like that. Might be something worth looking into. I didn't do that, but there is a reason why I infuse stuff because it forces me not to over-indulge. So this recipe does call for a quarter cup of honey. And depending on how strong your honey is, how potent, you can of course always do a ratio of infused honey to non-infused honey, or maybe you used CBD to infuse your honey instead. There's more than one way to do this. So don't feel like you have to use your whole quarter cup if that's going to make the whole recipe too strong. Because if you do make it too strong, it's not really that much fun to eat. Like have to eat like one peanut. You want to be able to eat more than one peanut. So you cook all this stuff over medium heat, you stir it constantly, and then you until all the dry ingredients have dissolved and the mixture is smooth, and it just takes a couple of minutes. And then you take it off the heat and you stir in your peanuts and you make sure that they're all well coated with this honey mixture. Transfer them to your prepared baking sheet. You put them back in the oven for about 25 minutes at 300, not 350 like I did, because I did pull them out and like it's a little dark. I think it could have been, I could have put it in for less time. Well, I could have put it in for less temperature. In any case, they still tasted good. So I'm just like, but visually speaking, they didn't have that sort of lighter color that you usually think of when you think of honey roasted peanuts, but they like they still taste good. So you bake them, and then finally you transfer the peanuts to a large bowl and you let them cool and you kind of stir every few minutes. I didn't really do it every few minutes. I did it less than that, but you kind of want to mix them up because it helps break them up so they don't stick together too much and to prevent them from sticking to the bowl and to each other. I didn't really find that they stuck to the bowl or to each other too badly, but it does help. As they cool, they will harden and then you're breaking them up into smaller pieces so they don't you don't just have like big chunks of peanuts stuck together. Once they're cool, you can break up any remaining clumps and then you add that salt sugar mixture that I mentioned at the beginning to sort of coat them, and that helps them from sticking together and gives them that nice visual honey roasted peanut look that you see just like in the store, just like you buy in the store. Only you made it yourself and you infused it in the way that you wanted to. And all those things I think are wonderful because it was wasn't that difficult to make, it was fun to put together. I did find that for me, I think I calculated it about 12 milligrams per quarter cup of peanuts, which isn't very much. But honestly, I have such a sweet tooth that if I don't keep it to a minimum, I could eat uh honey roasted peanuts all day long. So this is one way to curb the sweet tooth while allowing myself to enjoy things in moderation. That is my thinking around this. These peanuts end up crunchy, encoded in a honey butter glaze, and finished with a light dusting of sugar and salt. You could also, because it does call for a tablespoon of unsalted butter, if you or the oil, because you're like making this mixture at a medium heat, at a low enough heat, because you're really just trying to mix all the ingredients together and melt the dry ingredients into the rest of them, you could use infused ingredients here. I think what you'll find is it might cast that cannabis taste onto the honey roasted peanuts. I haven't tried it myself because I found with the honey it was enough. But if you're looking to increase the dose and you're not too concerned necessarily about the flavor, then this might be an option for you as well. If you don't mind some of that green taste. I think that's it for this particular episode, my friends. I am looking at doing another sweet episode for you all just to give you some more inspiration. And also because I am working on a new section on the website. I already have one section finished. It's the cannabis drinks. I think it displays properly on most web browsers. I find sometimes it doesn't display properly on the browser that I happen to use, of course, which drives me crazy. But it seems to display properly on other browsers. I'm trying to make it so that you can search recipes easier based on prep time, main ingredients, and different things like that to make it easier to find what you're looking for. Because I do realize that the website's getting really big and it can be hard to find things. And you can search the website too. So if you if you have a specific ingredient or episode or topic that you're looking for, you can search the website and have results like that. But I am solely trying to update the recipe section. And so obviously, when people are looking for edibles, the first thing does tend to come to mind are the sweets, your brownies, your cookies, your honey roasted peanuts, that kind of thing. So that's the next section that I'll be working on. The first one I did was cannabis drinks. Check it out. I'll link it in the show notes. And if you have any feedback, please let me know because I'm trying to make it to be a user-friendly place to find what you're seeking. And so I'm also looking at this pistachio honey toffee recipe. That looks really good. If you have any suggestions of what you think I should make next, please let me know. I am always open to suggestion. A lot of the times the recipes take me where the wind blows kind of thing. What am I in the mood for, what is in season, what I'm feeling. Yeah, it's just kind of based on vibes. With that, my friends, if you enjoyed this episode, please share it with somebody that you think would also enjoy it. That is the best way to spread awareness about the show because this is a niche podcast, a niche category. And cannabis is still wrapped up in so much stigma out there. It is shocking. Until I started working in this space, you know, you don't really think about it that much. But because cannabis is not federally legal yet in the United States, it affects a lot of the platforms and services that I can use as a cannabis-based business here, even in Canada, even though I'm in a legal jurisdiction. I am not permitted to advertise and things like that on a lot of traditional platforms because I talk about cannabis, even though it's from the perspective of helping people make their own cannabis edibles at home for less money than you'd pay in a dispensary. That means that word of mouth and organic search is still the best way to tell others about by me, the show about edibles. So if you could do me that solid, get out your phone right now and text it to a friend that you think might enjoy this episode. And with that, my friends, I am your host, Margaret. Until next time, stay curious and stay high.