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Well, isn’t this just perfect? I went through hell and high water to make this cannabis grilled cheese in time for national grilled cheese day and I missed it by a mile. But hey… I’m so late on it that it’s just in time for 4/20! So… perfect!
Butwhen I say I went through hell and high water, I mean it.
I drove to two different bakeries to find an amazing organic sourdough bread, made a big batch of pothead pesto, shot video of the whole damned thing, forgot to calculate the dosage, ate half of one, and got super crazy ridiculously messed up from all of that hash butter.
I guess I went through highon hash butter…Buh dum chhhh.
A Cannabis Grilled Cheese Sandwich
And… you know, that story is just so typical for me lately. Not the whole getting high on hash butter part, but this whole food porn chaos thing.
It has taken over my entire life in the past couple of months/years and it’s got me all over the place.
If you’ve ever read one of my diatribes, you probably know that I’m going to go on a rant about the food photography industry here in a minute, so if you’re just looking for the cannabis infused grilled cheese action, just keep on scrolling.
If you’d like to hear why I have come to believe that food blogging is like the Hunger Games, keep on reading.
Actually, now that I think about it, the Hunger Games would be an excellent name for a food blog… Ammiright?!
So… confession time… In my house, at the time of the cannabis grilled cheese fiasco, wehad not enjoyeda hot un-photographed meal in months.
Over the course ofthe past couple of years, I’ve become completely uninspired when it comes to cooking and have really only done it when I had to for work.
And because I was doing this (recipe development, food porn and writing) for other people for a living, our diets were constantly changing from vegan to high fat with bacon, to vegan paleo, to sugar free to whatthefuckever and it was starting to take its toll, physically and mentally.
So when I saw a grilled cheese on Pinterest, and that led me down a rabbit hole of 23402923450 different grilled cheeses on pinterest, the thought of making a cannabis infused grilled cheese lodged itself deep into my brain and I thought… “Hell yes! That’ll be the best Friday ever.”
Instead of being the best Friday ever, it turned into a day of driving to three different places to find pretty ingredients, styling and lighting, and taking video for three hours. Then I was so hungry I ate half of a cold grilled cheese, and started editing two photos before completely tripping balls.
It was not. fun. All I wanted was an amazing cannabis infused grilled cheese sandwich, and that turned into another day of tediously moving utensils around and taking pictures like this one for you to look at as proof that I made it and it was good and that you should make it too.
And it probably would have been good. Shit. It would have been incredible if it would have been hot and cheesy.
It would have been amazing if I wouldn’t have been so hungry by the time I finally got to take a bite that I ate too much of it without calculating the dosage of my hash butter first. It probably would have been the bestFriday ever. But I won’t lie to you. It wasn’t.
A Case Against Food Porn
So when I got super crazy ridiculously messed up onthis marijuana grilled cheese, and I was melting into the floor in the hallway, and I couldn’t move, I had a vision. And I instantly realized… this food porn stuff sucks. It was as if I had come out of a coma. Stuck there, on the floor next to my fridge, a fog lifted and I could see it all so clearly.
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The next day, I quit all of my food porn jobs and I got ready to say goodbye to Wake & Bake forever… but I’ll get to that in a minute.
First, I want to put some of my hash infused epiphany out there about the food photography/blogging/recipe development industry just for you to think about a little bit if you feel like it. Again, if you don’t feel like it, just keep scrolling until you get to the recipe and don’t think about anything except how awesome it would be to make cannabis infused grilled cheese.
I Quit
These are the three main reasons why I decided to quit doing the whole food porn thing (at least for other people… for right now):
First, food porn creates an unrealistic standard of perfection when it comes to food. If you’ve never seen a standard food porn setup, prepare to be totally underwhelmed. Because this photo… was taken on a card table with a bunch of foam boards clipped up around it. Which is admittedly not that big of a deal, but it subconsciously sets you up for a standard of beauty in food aesthetics and in your own home life that doesn’t exist. And it’s so damn inauthentic.
I used to be so anti-this. I would only shoot on my real dishes on my real table or outside and in real lighting. Eventually, after a few clients lightly heckled my styling, I got all butt hurt and tried to do what I could to make it more professional. So now, my food porn setup has gone totally faux. See that wood that all of the grilled cheese stuff is sitting on… that’s not even wood.It’s drawer liner stuck to a foam board. Surprise!This is what it’s like behind the curtain.
It’s Always“AHHMAZINGASDFLJASDGKAJSG!!!”
Second, I don’t know about you, but I’ve never hearda food blogger say… “You know what? This sucked. It failed. It had a weird crust. It tasted odd. Since it didn’t turn out right, I gingerly placeda tea towel next to it, sprinkled nuts and seeds around it and got it from its best angle. It didn’t really taste or look that great in real life. Actually, you know what? Fuck it… I actually completely photoshopped the whole damn thing.”
And even though I’ve never read those words, I’ve seen it. And you have too. And the fact that we sometimes can’t tell the difference between bullshit fluffed up in good lighting, and something that is replicable and is actually delicious kind of sucks.
You know what I mean on this one. You make something that someone else said was “AHHMAZINGASDFLJASDGKAJSG!!!” and it is actually not amazing at all. And you might blame yourself, but a lot of times it’s just someonenot wanting to waste their own time by scrapping a recipe. And you know what? I’ve done it. For example, I made paleo vegan pancakes for a client a couple of weeks ago that were just… edible. And you know what I said about them? “These are the best paleo vegan pancakes I’ve ever made!” And while that was technically true, the word “best” is used like it has context, when really I just wanted to be done for the day.
Again, who cares? Right? Well, I care. Because when you tell me that something is “amazdfajsldfjaafga!” I’m going to believe you and I’m going to spend my time and resources making it, and if I fail because you set me up for failure just so you could go watch Broad City and do yoga, then that really sucks. So I’m feeling really really sorry about that right now.
The Hunger Games
And finally… does this whole thing where we take millions of photos of carefully styled food every day remind anyone of some serious Hunger Games shit?
Stay with me on this one… because we’re definitely in The Capitol if we’re talking about lighting and bounce cards while our food gets cold and sometimes even completely inedible, while people in our own backyards are starving and totally malnourished. Does that bother anyone else?
I was once told by a client that I needed to sprinkle more food around my food, to overfill my jars and glasses until they were spilling over and to generally make it look like there was so much food that my bowls just couldn’t contain it all.
That sentiment is what bothers me most about this whole thing. Most of this stuff triggers the subconscious: the overfilled bowls, the styling, the lighting, the photoshop. And whether you’re aware of it or not, your mind has been shaped by our vast food porn culture that objectifies the one thing that we all need to survive but millions of us do not have access to: food.
And itreallyreally bothers me.
And, yes, I realize that it’s more than a little ironic and massively self righteous to be talking massive shit about food porn in between food porn photos on a food porn based blog. But it’s my damn blog and if I want to use it to share my stonerepiphaniessandwitched in between pictures of weed sandwiches, then that’s what’s up.
I personally feel like something has to give.I personally feel like we should spend this time and energy feeding people, not creating these ridiculously meticulously styled food lies for your viewing pleasure. And I personally hope this idea starts circulatingso everyone knows what bullshit the whole thing is.
I mean, after years of doing it, I definitely look at food porn differently. I hope after reading this that you do too.
While I love cooking and sharing how to do stuff with cannabis with all of you, I also don’t think I can keep on doing something that really gets under my skin in the way that intensive food porn does. So I’ve been thinking about how to reconcile the two and I haven’t really come up with anything yet.
And even though I quit all of my demanding food photography and video gigs, I just. can’t. quit. you Wake & Bake. I love you guys and I still love doing this way to much. I’m just going to scale back and change things up a bit.
This site has never hosted ads and has relied mainly on cannabis cookbook sales and a couple of affiliate linksto keep it going. From here on out, I’m including some ads to support the site, so I don’t have to take on a second (and third) food porn job to keep things growing here. Your clicks and support makes it possible to keep putting new content on Wake & Bake… so thank you!
Now that I’ve fully exhausted my argument against food porn, let’s get to this cannabis infused grilled cheese.
I made this recipe cannabis infused by using this hash butter, which, to be totally honest, is the easiest way I’ve found to infuse anything with cannabis. It’s really quick, and the decarboxylated hash just dissolves right into the fat so you don’t have to strain anything out or deal with a mess.
If you don’t have a Magical Butter(again being totally honest here) is definitely the easiest way to infuse oil and butter with trim or flower, and you do happen to have a gram or two of hash on hand, go and decarboxylate that stuff and make some really tasty and potent butter/oil. If you don’t have hash on hand or an MB2, you can use the crockpot method for making cannabis coconut oiland use that in place of the hash butter.
Check out the video to see how quick and easy it is to make cannabis infused grilled cheese (well, quick for you… not for me… that shit took for-ev-errr) and follow the step by step below. Appreciate its beauty for a moment. Eat it hot. Be grateful for your food.
Make hash butter or cannabis coconut oil. Calculate your THC dosage. Test if possible.- Preheat a ceramic pan (I use these) over medium heat. Smear:
Make 1 Tablespoon of regular butter on one side of the bread and
1 dose of cannabis infused hash oil or cannabis coconut oil on the other side of the bread
3. Place the bread, HASH BUTTER OR CANNABIS COCONUT OIL SIDE DOWNin the preheated pan until melted (this will help melt the cheese)… you can skip this step to preserve cannabinoids, terpenes and flavanoids.
4. Flip the bread so that it’s REGULAR BUTTER side down and layer on:
organicmozzarellacheese
organic pesto (you can use pothead pesto from Wake + Bake for an extra kick)
organic basil
organic tomatoes
organicparmesan
(or any grilled cheese ingredients that you’d like)
5. Cover the pan with a lid for a minute to help get the cheese melting.
6. Close the sandwich and fry until golden brown on one side. Flip and fry until golden brown on the other side.
7. Serve HOT 🙂
