Easy Coconut Almond Protein Balls

Marge (00:00:04) - Welcome back, friends. In this week's episode, we're doing coconut almond protein balls. Stay tuned. Welcome to Bite Me, the show about edibles where I help you take control of your life. I'm your host and certified gonger Marj and I love helping cooks make safe and effective edibles at home. I'm so glad you're here, and thank you for joining me today. Regardless of how long you've been listening to the show, you probably know that I often use olive oil in my cooking and in my infusions. When I discovered McEvoy Ranch olive Oil, I knew I needed to give them a try. I love everything about these oils and the company. The oils come from a family owned farm that's both female, founded and lead God to love that they produce these organic olive oils sustainably. At their Northern Californian ranch. They've justrillioneleased a delicious signature olive oil collection that includes organic blood, orange award winning Chai Spice and my favorite ginger tumeric oils. The collection brings together flavors from multiple cultures to create new ways to enjoy olive oil.

Marge (00:01:10) - With this in mind, they include cards with the samples, the detail, the tasting profiles, and ways to use the oils so you can try them with any meal or with your edibles and never lack fresh ideas. McEvoy Ranch is committed to creating the highest quality, healthy, fresh olive oils that will enhance your cooking in unexpected ways. Enjoy the unique flavors and the well known health benefits of olive oil by heading over to McEvoy Ranch and enter promo code. Bite Me 15 at checkout to receive 15% off your order today. All right. Welcome back, friends, to another week of all things edibles. And I just want to say thank you for being here. If you're just joining me today, welcome. I hope you enjoy the episode. And if you've been listening for a while, I so much appreciate your support and thank you for being here once again. Now, before we get into this week's recipe, of course, we have to talk about weed words. So let's start with Rainy day. Woman When I pick out a weird word, I really like to go to that big list on Wikipedia and see what stands out.

Marge (00:02:24) - A lot of these, a lot of these weed slang terms really kind of stand out to you sometimes and some of them don't make any sense at all. And I realized, I don't know why this one stood out to me because it's a beautiful summer day here. The temperature is perfect. There's a slight cool breeze. There's no rain in the forecast at all. And yet Rainy Day Woman is the one that stood out to me. And according to some of the descriptions here, Rainy Day Woman was being used as a slang term for a joint. And I don't know. I don't know if that evokes the idea of a joint. I'm going to go out for a rainy day. Woman. I'm going to I'm going to roll up a rainy day, woman. I'm going to share this rainy day. Woman. I don't know. Maybe it's a term that's best used on a gloomy day when you're going to be stepping out onto your front porch or your balcony or your treed spot or your. Escape room or whatever your hot box or whatever the case might be for you and you're going to enjoy Rainy Day Woman.

Marge (00:03:25) - And I guess this was inspired by a Bob Dylan song, which I'm not sure why I didn't realize that at the beginning, except I don't honestly listen to a whole ton of Bob Dylan. I haven't in a long time, but it's from a line in that song Everybody Must Get Stoned and an Instant Pot anthem. Apparently that came out in that song came out in 1966, and I guess time after Time magazine published an article confirming that Rainy Day Woman was being used as a slang term for a joint. In reference to the song's popularity, however, among cannabis users, Dylan told his audience at Royal Albert Hall, It's not a drug song, it's just vulgar. Still, if you multiply the numbers and the song's full title, Rainy Day, woman number 12 and 35, I'm not sure where they're getting those numbers from. You get. 420 So you tell us is what this article says. I don't know. Maybe Dylan didn't feel comfortable enough at the time to come out and just be like, Yeah, it's a drug song.

Marge (00:04:25) - Do you have a weed slang term that you really love? Because I would love to hear it and feature in the show. Send it to me. Send it to me. Next we have our things you can make with hemp. This started out as a segment that I was doing on cannabis facts, but I've been so fascinated by the fun things you can make with hemp because the the things are myriad and surprising all the time. And I've just been running with that for the last little while. And in this week's. Things you can make with hemp. You may be surprised that you can die in hemp. That's right. Hemp coffins are a thing. Apparently there's a company in Australia that makes coffins out of hemp. And though the designs are simple, they say that buyers like to decorate them for their loved ones. Unlike traditional coffins, hemp coffins will biodegrade and allow the body inside to gently return to the earth. And I really like that idea. As someone who has thought, you know, when I pass away one day, I think I'd rather just be cremated because all the fuss of having to buy an expensive casket or coffin or whatever seems ludicrous.

Marge (00:05:31) - Some of those things are so damn expensive, the pine box seems a little unceremonious, but the hemp coffin has a nicer ring to it. And. I kind of like the sound of that. I do recall someone like Neil. Neil deGrasse Tyson one time saying that when he passed away, he wanted his body to be returned to the earth so he could the energy of it could return to the earth and just do its thing in the ecosystem. And I really liked that idea. So these biodegradable hemp coffins, I mean, I'm sure they take quite a long time to break down, but they seem. They seem like such a great idea, especially for those who are little, you know, want to minimize their environmental impact. Michael Balderstone, president of Hemp Embassy in Nimbin, a small town in northern New South Wales where the caskets are designed, built and sold. People ring up in order them. I can make one in a day. They're beautiful. The coffins which are built with a 19 millimetre lightweight pressed hemp board from Germany and are lined with hemp rope handles are usually colourfully painted by artists in Nimbin.

Marge (00:06:41) - The town which hosted the 1973 Aquarius Festival, is Australia's answer to Woodstock. I'll be sure to link to this in the show notes. There's a little more details there, but it looks like they're an affordable alternative, that people really like them, that the company has been doing quite well and it makes for a less expensive funeral as well. If you want to celebrate the life of someone that you care about and the sustainable materials say they will biodegrade quickly. He says they're popular. Even my father quotes was very conservative, never got stoned, but said I wouldn't mind one of these hemp coffins. That's pretty cool. So you can live your life with hemp. You can die with hemp. And for this week's recipe. So I picked this recipe from the Oak Cookbook. I recently received a level two oil infuser and a digital cookbook came along with that and has lots of great recipes. And if you're looking for some inspiration, it's got some fun ones in there and they bake the recipes into categories like most cookbooks do.

Marge (00:07:47) - They have breakfast foods and main courses, drinks and snacks. And I'm going to a cottage for the family vacay at the time of this recording. It'll be in a couple of weeks, and I wanted to bring something tasty to enjoy when I needed a morning boost. So one of my daughters said that she would make breakfast every day with the caveat that she would only do so when she got up in the morning. I'm currently uncertain of how late of a riser she is when she doesn't have to be at work in the morning. I myself, like many people of my age, doesn't matter how late I stay up, I will get up at the same time every goddamn morning. And it's really annoying sometimes because I can't sleep in. Of course, I have mastered a brief afternoon power nap which gives me life, but I can stay up until 2 a.m., which is rare. I don't do that very often, but I could stay up super late and it doesn't matter. I'm waking up early the next morning so I could wake up early and sit around and wait for her to make something delicious and incredible.

Marge (00:08:41) - She's a fantastic cook and very I'm actually quite inspired by her because of the things that she puts together and she does that without She's just so creative in that way, in a way that I'm not. But I could get hangry waiting for her to wake up or I could just enjoy one of these coconut almond protein balls and enjoy my morning until she gets up and make something a little more substantial. But these are great for not just if you're going away for something like this, but if you need something quick for when you're on the go and they're chock full of healthy ingredients. And I didn't have to admit that I did add some ingredients of my own. What I will share with you what those were. You're supposed to put all the ingredients together in a blender and then mix it in the blender, put it in the fridge before forming into balls. But I found the nature of the thick goo that this creates made it way too difficult for even my Vitamix to slog through. And it kept burning out.

Marge (00:09:33) - So I didn't really burn out. It just overheats the motor in the blender and then it just shuts off and you can kind of smell. And that's going to happen. And the sound of it doesn't also sound good either. You can use gloves if you want. If you want to keep the the goo off your hands because it's going to get under your fingernails and stuff. But I always have gloves in the kitchen for when I'm handling spicy peppers in particular, and sometimes for weed because fun fact, you can be allergic to weed. And I definitely am. So if I'm handling a lot of trim or something like that off plants, I have to wear gloves. It's kind of sad. I can get hives and red and itchy and it's kind of crazy. I'm allergic to a lot of environmental things, allergens, which is really annoying. A lot of grasses. I'm a ragweed season sufferer, hay fever, all that fun stuff. Although funnily enough, it has not been that bad this year, knock on wood.

Marge (00:10:19) - But some years are pretty brutal, so I always have gloves on hand. If any of you have ever handled hot peppers and then touched your eyes even after washing your hands, what seems like five times, you know, you know, because I've done that before to even something like a jalapeno pepper, which isn't really even really that spicy. I've washed my hands and then somehow inversely touched my eyes. And then my eyes are stinging. I'm like, what the heck? That stuff. Oil is so hard to get off even when you're using a really good soap. So gloves are pretty useful thing to have in your kitchen for when you're handling stuff that you don't want to make sure it gets into your. Eyes or something like that. Now, these balls do require some pretty basic ingredients that are great to have on hand. Anyway, I had a lot of these on hand as it was. I did have to go out and pick up a few things, but these were things that are like sort of pantry staples that I like to have on hand anyway.

Marge (00:11:08) - So you may have a lot of this stuff and of course you can easily swap out things depending on depending on what you want to do or what you have on hand. That's the great thing about these types of recipes. So it calls for rolled oats infused coconut oil, which I made in the Levo, and I use a CBD infusion for this because I felt like if I'm bringing to the cottage and there's a bunch of people there, it's great to start the morning out with some CBD and that means anybody could enjoy them and didn't have to worry about get overconsuming or getting too high first thing in the day. But of course you can tell them however you see fit infused honey. Crunchy almond butter. You could also try peanut butter or perhaps other nut butters that you may prefer shredded unsweetened coconut chocolate chips or cacao nibs. I figured if I'm going to try and keep these healthier, I would go with the cow nibs. They add a really nice crunch and are actually really good for you. And I felt like the chocolate chips, it's kind of like you're taking something pretty healthy and then adding in a big shot of like unnecessary sugar and stuff.

Marge (00:12:12) - So the cacao nibs, which have a lot of really good minerals and stuff in them, are a great way to great way to go and really good to have on hand to for other things. And they also call for chia seeds and vanilla extract Chia seeds are really great for fiber too, which is good to have. And I forgot realized afterwards I was writing out the show notes that or when I was writing out the episode outline for this, I realized when I made this I forgot to add the vanilla extract, but I did add two scoops of vanilla whey protein for an added boost of protein because these are like coconut oil protein balls. And I felt like extra protein is always good because it's hard to get enough protein in a day sometimes. And of course, depending on what you might have on hand, you can leave out that protein altogether. You can substitute it for something else. It might change the flavor a little bit, but I felt like the vanilla would be a nice addition and because I forgot the vanilla extract, it kind of made up for that.

Marge (00:13:07) - Anyway, you also might find there you might want to add some dried fruit or something like that. I didn't do that. I wasn't going to do the crunchy almond butter because it crunchy almond butter is pretty expensive, but I love it. It is so good, but peanut butter is a lot cheaper. So if you want to go that route. But I decided to splurge a little bit, so they taste great. You can pack up a bunch, you can bring them easily with you when you need an energy boost. Plus you can infuse them a few different ways. So the recipe called for infused coconut oil and infused honey. Now it calls for a cup each. And depending on how strong your your infusion is, those that that's two cups of infused items. So you may want to consider if you want you can always add a ratio perhaps half cup of infused honey to half cup of regular honey if you choose. If you really want to add a powerful punch to these and add the full.

Marge (00:14:07) - Cup of each. Then you can make these pretty potent if you choose. But that's just if it's more your style. That's what I really like about this recipe, though, because there's lots of room to modify that to see to. There's lots of room to modify it to whatever you want to do or what your preference is. So I recommend you give them a try. Let me know what you think. They're pretty simple to make. Like I said, if you skip the blender, you don't have to do all that bullshit that I did. If you try this recipe and you like it, please let me know. I'd love to hear how you modified it to suit your needs or to suit whatever was in your pantry. If you know somebody who might enjoy this recipe, please share and you can talk to me via email or the podcast hotline. You'll find the links to that. I believe in the show notes and you can always stay up to date with the news events. Anything else that's going on with the newsletter, which does help keep this episode timeless and consider using the products and services on the Marge recommends page because that really does help support the show.

Marge (00:15:07) - I'm your host, Marge, and until next week, my friends stay high.