CANNABIS EDIBLES
Calgary team targets market
The recipe for John Michael MacNeil’s Double Chocolate Midnight Brownies is straightforward. It starts with a prepared reTreat Edibles dry mix that includes gluten-free flours, sugars, salt, baking soda, vanilla powder, chocolate and cocoa powder and cream of tartar. You add water, coconut oil and 60 milligrams of cannabis oil, then mix and bake for 16 minutes. It makes 12 squares. Simple.
But wait. What’s this about cannabis oil? This may be the first recipe printed in this paper that contains cannabis oil but it won’t be the last. With Canada rolling headlong toward cannabis legalization this year, it only stands to reason that value-added cannabis products will start to appear. It’s what we do with agriculture. Grow wheat and we’ll make flour that in turn makes bread. Raise peaches and we’ll make jams and fruit leather and chutneys. Cultivate cannabis and we’ll make ... exactly what? Cannabis edibles. With recipes. But how? And who?
For an executive MBA study group at the University of Calgary’s Haskayne School of Business, it was one of those ideas that started out as a fun project and quickly became an “ah-hah” moment.
Bake some brownies or cookies, one of the group said, the usual stoner treats, perhaps? A few laughs later and the group started to think more seriously. Maybe there’s more to cannabis edibles than munchie-driven goodies. Maybe there’s a reasonable way to deliver a specific dose of medical marijuana to a patient without them needing to smoke it. And maybe there’s a way to create tasty, recreational treats that consumers would engage with. Let’s call it reTreat Edibles.
A field trip was to do more, ahem, research. So in July of 2016 Brad Kossowan, Stefan Scott, Michael Armeneau and Stephen Tucker headed to Colorado, tasting candies, chocolates, syrups and teas. Products were abundant but variable in quality. So they returned to Calgary with a thought: “We need a chef.”
How about John Michael MacNeil, current executive chef of the Beltliner Diner, former executive chef of Teatro and The Belvedere and a culinary innovator with years of experience in molecular gastronomy. And a card-carrying medical marijuana permit holder. MacNeil jumped at the opportunity to turn his talents to the budding edible cannabis industry.
MacNeil surveyed the market and determined that his cannabis edibles would be both tasty and healthy. There would be no gluten, no GMOs, no dairy and no eggs. Leaning toward the tasty part of the equation, he developed a flour of rice, tapioca and potato starches and worked on recipes for rosemary-sea salt chocolate chip squares and peanut butter oat squares. Each would be prepared with a measure of cannabis oil added by the at-home cook.
The reTreat team, now working with Ball Retail for their packaging, whipped up a couple thousand batches of the mixes and took them to cannabis trade shows. They sold out immediately. Connections are now being built with dispensaries across Canada with the goal of wholesaling the mixes for July openings. The cannabis oil mix-ins will be sold separately.
The way the legislation currently stands is that prepared cannabis edibles will not be available until July 2019, so for the first year, reTreat will only be selling mixes. After that, the goal will be to offer a line of grab-and-go edibles that will be on retail shelves in your local pot shop along with the mixes. There might be a mint-cherry tart with a five mg dose of Romulan Diesel cannabis oil from Whistler MMCorp or a salted caramel square with a four mg dose of Argyle cannabis oil from Tweed. The possibilities are endless.
It’s a brave new world for cannabis producers and consumers, one that we’re just starting to see the thin edge of. Many more will follow.
Now if they can find a recipe for oil-infused Cheezies they’ll make a mint.
The local culinary event calendar kicks off 2018 with the 6th Annual Plate Swap at Model Milk on Jan. 17. Created to support Brown Bagging for Calgary Kids, the event has raised funds to help feed over 75,000 children in our city since its inception.
In this collegial chef event, five chefs will recreate each other’s specialties over the span of a five-course meal. Included in this year’s cross-country lineup are Justin Leboe (Model Milk and Pigeonhole) and Neil McCue ( Whitehall) of Calgary, Charlotte Langley (Scout Canning) of Toronto, Daniel Hadida and Eric Robertson (Pearl Morissette) of Jordan, Ont., and Jesse McCleery (Pilgrimme) of Galiano Island.
Presented by San Pellegrino, Plate Swap will be emceed by celebrity chef Matty Matheson. Tickets are $200 each and include the five dishes and wine pairings and are available at modelmilk.ca and 403-265-7343.