A little taste of ... something
COLORADO
Pot dispensaries may be proliferating on Main Streets across the West, but a new sign that weed is going mainstream can be seen in Durango, a college town in southern Colorado that attracts lots of hikers, climbers and mountain bikers. Just turn on Durango’s public-access television channel, and you can watch pot-inspired recipes come to life on a new cooking show catchily called Cannabis Cuisine. It’s aimed at medical-marijuana card holders who “prefer to eat their medication rather than smoke it,” reports the Durango Herald. But the recipes demonstrated on camera by Ian Curie, a chef who works at Steamworks Brewing, aren’t for mere kitchen dabblers. The debut show included Southwestern specialties such as jalapeño popper appetizers with marijuana bud ground into the cream cheese, a main course of pineapple-chipotle double-roasted pig “that had been sitting in a marijuana marinade for 12 hours,” and a chocolate chile tart dessert topped with “Gooey Ganja Mango Sauce.” Curie, who says just about any recipe can incorporate marijuana — “especially ones that use butter, oil or flour” — obtained his medical marijuana card for a slipped disc because he couldn’t handle the side effects of oxycodone or other prescribed painkillers. “I was done with having my skin itch,” he says. Cannabis Cuisine is the first show of its kind in Colorado but not the first in the region: California inaugurated a program called Cannabis Planet, which includes a cooking segment.
THE WEST
In other food news, there’s a restaurant in Phoenix called Mini Mercado Oaxaca that specializes in a dish that’s not even on the menu, reports the Arizona Republic. It’s available only in the summer, and people in the know — mainly people from Oaxaca in Mexico — have to ask, “Do you have chapulines today?” If chapulines are in season, what you get is a plate “full of little fried things” that you sprinkle in a tortilla and flavor with salt, lemon and maybe some salsa. “Mmmm. These grasshoppers sure taste good,” says writer Daniel Gonzalez. And, he adds, they don’t taste a bit like chicken. From Willamette Week Online in Oregon, we learned about a great part-time chocolate-tasting job in Portland. Well, actually, a one-day job. To become part of Oregon State University’s “Sensory and Consumer Group,” wannabe participants first had to complete a questionnaire: “Hint: Answer yes to question No. 1 — ‘Do you like and frequently eat chocolate?’ ”
