John Bartram’s Garden Punch

Marge Madden 0:09

In this episode, we're doing john Barb's garden punch, not your garden variety garden punch but something far more interesting, and of course infused Welcome to bite me the show about edibles where I help you take control of your high life. And who am I, I'm your host Marge. And I just want to say thank you for being here and listening, I've been doing this show since June 2019, it's hard to believe I'm already on episode 56. Where does the time go really. So, I'm grateful that you're listening today and I hope you get something out of this podcast episode and I think you're really going to enjoy it. But before we get to the main recipe today What have I been up to what have I been making because I've been puttering around in my kitchen quite a bit lately, maybe because there's just so much good stuff to cook into infuse, and I've been making pickles. I've been making hot sauce, fresh bread. And I also try something else new that you might be interested in and these, these things I've been making are actually not infused contrary to what many of you might be thinking, I don't infuse everything with cannabis I make in my kitchen. I do infuse a lot, but not everything in the pickles will not be infused or that could be interesting, nor is this hot sauce that I'm making. But I am making some infused, olive oil, and this is a pretty simple recipe basically you take two cups of good olive oil, and you take some fresh herbs, as fresh as you can get I picked some up at the market last week I had some bazel. You put it in a mason jar. The fresh herbs after you've cleaned them thoroughly and you want to leave off any of the bruised or wilted leaves that don't look nice. You put it in a mason jar. Pour the two cups of olive oil overtop of it, and then you let it sit in a windowsill for four to six weeks you give it a gentle surf every day if you think of it. A gentle little shake and taste off for about four weeks, and then you have a basil infused olive oil that you can use over the wintertime, where, where I am the only basil I can buy is in a plastic container at the grocery store. And if I'm being completely honest half the time I buy those things for a recipe. I'll use some of the bazel or whatever herb that in it that I've purchased, and then I ended up probably composting the rest of it when I pull it out and it's nothing but a black mass inside the plastic. So, this might eliminate some of that hopefully, but it just sounds like such a nice idea and I think I'm gonna try and pick up some rosemary. Maybe some time and try it with some of those as well, because again it's just so simple, you just let it sit and you don't really have to pay much attention to it, put it somewhere where you won't forget about it. Of course you can remember to give it a nice little gentle shake every day but there you go there's a little something fun you can try if you're so inclined, and you're really wanting to capture the essence of all these beautiful Herbes that are coming out right now. And that are growing in people's gardens, not the markets and fresh at the grocery store, it's a really great time to be trying to do some of these little side projects that literally take no time at all. And that is one of my mantras. Keep it simple, folks. Another thing that I'm thinking of doing. And this is something I decided to do the other night I think I was pretty high and I came to the conclusion that you know what I wear black to work all the time. We have to wear shirt for the dispensary. So that obviously customers know who the staff is when they come in but they're black black shirts and then I typically wear black pants because we have to wear dark bottoms. And so right now, it tends to be a lot of black I've wear black all day at work and you I thought would be really nice. What if I decided to dress up for the podcast. That's right. From now on, I'm dressing up whenever I'm recording this, you can just imagine me sitting here in a nice dress or my, my finest, maybe not my finest I'm certainly not wearing heels I'm sitting here in bare feet, as we speak, but I thought it would be nice to to dress up for this podcast so well I need to actually really No, no of course not because I'm not going to YouTube this anytime soon. There's something quite nice about. So hiding behind a microphone, I suppose, but you can just imagine I'm wearing a really nice dress or a nice sweater with a dressy pair of pants or something like that just to make it feel a little more formal a little bit more like you know I'm sitting down I'm taking this seriously for you guys and for me as well, but I just thought it'd be something fun to do that I'm going to dress up for this podcast, even though nobody can see what I'm wearing. That is my plan. So, whether that helps you enjoy the podcast any more than it does now. I don't know, you can always email me and let me know if you're so inclined, but I'm doing it for me I'm doing it for you guys. So maybe you'll notice a difference today, I noticed a difference in my, my demeanor my tone of voice, all these things I'm just

taking it to the next level. I feel like now that I'm on the countdown towards 100 episodes, I got to change a few things up a little bit don't tie and let's start with the behind the scenes stuff that may or may not make any difference as far as the end product goes, but that's okay sometimes you got to do some, sometimes you have to do things for yourself, Am I right, anyway, let's get into john Barton's garden punch. If you listen to last week's episode you have perhaps made the Medicaid a rich simple syrup. There was the sugar version and the honey version, I have since made both, and you may or may not recall that the first attempt at my Medicaid rich simple syrup turned into a hard crusty mess. And I recovered half of that batch and then kind of gave up, but I did recover it and now I have sort of burnt sugar hard candies that I can enjoy, at least they'll keep for a while. When I'm really desperate for an edible I can always crunch on one of those. So, the second batch actually turned out quite fine. I've used it in several recipes from this book, and that's the one reason why I chose the Richmond Medicaid rich simple syrup because it lends itself well to so many of the recipes in this book and this book I'm talking about. If you didn't catch last week's episode cannabis cocktails, mocktails and tonics. The Art of spirited drinks and buzzworthy libations written by Warren Bobrow, otherwise known as the cocktail whisperer, I don't know if I mentioned that last week or not, but he is known in many circles as the cocktail whisper, because this guy has an immense amount of knowledge and experience when it comes to making craft cocktails and it definitely shows in this particular book where they are all infused with cannabis. So I made the medicated rich simple syrup, and I use it to make john Barton Barton punch. And this punch was fantastic. So, I'm going to give you give you the preamble that he writes in the box that you can know what he's going for with this particular, this particular cocktail. You may have tried a garden variety garden punch before, but I guarantee you've never had anything like this unorthodox take on the classic midafternoon refresher, named after the self taught 18th century American botanist. This herb garden punch is made with gin, fresh grapefruit juice and a bouquet of fragrant herb, and it's spiked with the cannabis infused simple syrup that's best made with the tiva strains such as Exodus, with its sense of flies Dubois, that is tiny intensely flavored strawberries and crushed stones. Exodus works beautifully with the botanicals and gin, and those gravelly crushed stone crushed stone aromatics act as the bedrock that underlies and connects the punches flavor. Choose a very very dry sparkling rosae here, you'll want to add color and flavor. Not extra sugar. And there are a nutshell, is this garden punch. And if that doesn't intrigue you enough to make this, then I don't know what well, you really got to try it the one nice thing about this particular garden punch is this is not a single glass cocktail. This is a punch that you can make in a punch bowl and serve to a group of people. So, what I ended up doing is I made this my husband and I were going away to a cottage. A few hours away, actually, and I made a batch of this and brought it with me and the nice thing is is you can easily assemble most of this quite quickly ahead of time. And then just bring some of the extra components to finish it up when you get to your destination. So, I'm probably going to be making this for when I go away on a family vacation soon we always like to rent a cottage every year and just sort of unplug for a week and spend time with the family, and I'm definitely bringing this along with me again because, like I said, it is good for a group. And there's going to be, I believe six of us six or seven of us I think just six. And it's just something nice to bring on this little bit of a family. Family getaway that we're all going to need because it's been a pretty stressful year for everyone. So this is going to be a really nice one to take away because essentially what you're doing is you're putting the. So you take, so Okay, I'll start from the beginning. Basically what you need are fresh herbs, it calls for a cup of assorted freshly snipped Herbes. So if you can get them as fresh as you can. That's always the best if you have them growing in your garden which I've really kicked myself for not getting around to doing this year because I hadn't intended to and never did. If you haven't from your garden that's probably the best. I picked them up from the farmers market, and then use them later that day so that's pretty fresh too. If you have to get them from the grocery store. Then,

you know, they may not be quite as fresh as from your garden or market but it's going to do it will work and it will be just fine, so don't stress out about that. He calls for Herbes such as time, Rosemary sage and fennel fronds and you can use an assortment of these, you don't have to use just one, although I'm sure you could. What I happened to have was sage and oregano. That's what I was able to get my hands on so that's what I used was quite lovely. The Herbes just sort of impart that her basis scent it's subtle though it's not like fused meant you might notice it more or something like that because it's so strong, but this is very subtle especially with all the other ingredients going in, you're going to use your medicated rich simple syrup. Because I ended up turning the one into the candy or, it turned out hard as a rock I ended up having to use my infused honey for this one. Even though it calls for the Medicaid rich simple syrup made with sugar, and I hadn't even made the honey version from the book yet, but I was going away on this on this short couple days at a cottage and I want to bring it with me so I had to use my hat on hand so I use my regular infused honey. And it seemed to work just fine. So I'll be trying it next time when I bring it on the family vacation I'll be making it with a Medicaid rich simple syrup, seeing as I accidentally doubled the batch last time so I have plenty to use. And I'll have to compare notes and see if it makes much of a difference, but from my, from what I could tell the honey worked was quite lovely. So, don't stress about that if you haven't made the medicated rich simple syrup but you do have infused honey on hand I'm sure that would work just as well. If you haven't made the medicated rich syrup. Either way, and you're interested in trying that check out next week or last week's episode, the recipes in the show notes because Warren has graciously given me permission to share these recipes with you guys. Though I do highly recommend you do you get his book. And in any case, you will also need freshly squeezed pink grapefruit juice. I he calls for 1.9 liters, or two quarts. I did not freshly squeezed any pink grapefruit juice for this, I just bought some at the store, because, well, I'm a busy lady, and I am not about to sit there and freshly squeezed a bunch of grapefruits because I don't have time for that shit so you don't need to be there. I'm sure it'd be lovely if you had the time and inclination, or perhaps a juicer that would be great too if you had a juicer that you could do that. Sure. It'd be really nice but the store bought stuff worked just as well. It called for a bottle of gin, the dry sparkling rosae and 20 shakes of aromatic bitters. And I'm going to shout out to my friend Jillian who owns the bittersweet botanicals here in my hometown of Peterborough Ontario. I used her lovely lavender aromatic floral bitters in this one, I was maybe going to use the rose and cardamom bittersweet love letters that she makes. She handcrafts all these letters and they're lovely, but I didn't have enough. I'm actually almost out, so I probably need to get more from her but find some bitters if you can. I just get mine from Jillian because why wouldn't we get something super local and hyper fresh, but get your hands on whatever you can. It is a nice little, it's nice to add the aromatic bitters it just feels so I don't know it just like it finishes it off it's decadent, I'm not sure you notice the flavor a whole ton but like he says some of these things are just pulling all the flavors together. And what else as far as what to use for the weed, i he does call for sis tests of tiva strains such as Exodus. But even though I work in a dispensary I have not seen that strain in our dispensary yet, and I also have plenty enough decarb weed on hand right now that I didn't really want to be buying weed at the store just to decarb and and infuse it in this. So I'm using what I think pretty sure is a White Widow, which is not a diva at all, but it works just fine. So use what we that you have if you have the ability to use

a citybus strain, then by all means, I just don't have any and I sometimes you gotta use what you can get. You don't want to overcomplicate these things. I am growing sustiva strain right now so I'll be looking forward to trying out some of these specific strains in, in some of these recipes, but a lot of the times at the end of the day I find I don't necessarily think that it makes a huge difference. Once you've decarbed or remove some of the terpenes because the heat and like all this stuff. I don't think the strain matters, quite as much. I may be correcting myself on this after I grow so my own and start playing around with some new strains, but for now I'm not convinced that you notice a huge difference between citybond indika strains in some of these, some of these recipes, so don't stress out if you don't have that on hand. He also calls for one glass luxury ice Murray ecosphere. Now that's a real mouthful and I had no idea really what it was, I used regular ice. I went to the website to find out what the glass luxury ice burrito sphere was. I'm still not entirely sure. It just is the world's best ice brand local official ice may contain impurities that cloud the taste of fine spirits. Well, that may be true, but with a price tag of one I can tell 1000 bucks. That's a little bit too much luxury for me, so I had to skip that and I used good old regular ice, and perhaps some of the impurities in the water, might be clouding the flavor of the gin that I used or the nice dry sparkling rosae that I picked up from, from a lovely wine shop in my town but I'm gonna have to just live with that, and hope that I get buzzed enough that I'm not going to notice these impurities that are dampening the essence of this drink that I'm enjoying. So, if you can if I can forget about it so can you. I will link to the to that website, just so you can see what it's all about is kind of interesting. But, you know, if you want to check it out for yourself and see what it's all about maybe you can figure it out. Because like I said I'm not really sure I'm entirely clear on what exactly it is. But maybe I'll have to ask Warren about that. But at the end of the day. That's an easy one to skip. So, basically you put your Herbes in a fine mesh hemp or nylon bag that you're going to be immersing in the grapefruit juice in gin, along with a medicated rich simple syrup and then you stir it to combine. And then you let it sit overnight in this bowl I did mine in a big mason jar because I was going to be traveling with it and I was able to take it out of the I left it in the fridge overnight and then I put it right in a cooler for when we went up to the cottage and then I just brought the bitters. And the rosae with me, and then I mixed it when I was there so it was so right before I was ready to serve it I mixed up. And that worked out really well. The other thing with this is, I didn't make a full batch, a full batch takes

full bottle of 750 mil bottle of gin and two bottles of rosae. And what I ended up doing was just doing half of that so I still have I'm probably going to do the other half, I'm not a huge chitin drinker so having the gin on hand I was just planning to use it for the next batch to take to the family vacation. So I have that on hand, I'll just have to go out and get some more Herbes probably at that point and another bottle rosae but that's pretty easy to pick up so if you don't feel like you need to make an entire batch you can always make it smaller and that worked quite well for me. So don't stress out about that either well who's stressing these days right Are we all stressing them out really sure but that's why we need this john Bartram carbon punch so we can relax in the evening like a mid afternoon refresher sounds so nice. And I did enjoy it mid afternoon I had and I found too that following his instructions and made a very enjoyable relaxing punch that if you don't overdo it on drinking too much of it because of course you don't want to drink too much, but it is very relaxing and it wasn't too strong. And even with the gin and the rosae in it it was, it was, everything was all perfectly balanced clearly Warren knows what he's talking about when he's putting together these, these beverages. So, that is the recipe for this week. I hope you give that one a shot using some of the medicated syrups that you hopefully had a chance to make last week we are going to be doing one more recipe from this book, next week. And I'm pretty excited about that one too I'm always excited about this stuff so of course there's that. but what we're going to be doing is non alcoholic, so if you're not a drinker or some or sometimes you're just trying to avoid too much alcohol, then this is one for those folks out there who are trying to be booze free for the day or forever, whatever, because I thought it would be wonderful to have both. And if you have the ability to. What are you going to need you're gonna need some dried herb the papayas. Listen to my French it sounds pretty good I should be really brushing up more on that but haven't been. You're getting an apple cider vinegar. You're going to mead lemon zest, ice, which is pretty easy to make, just as s to lemon into an ice cube tray and freezer and there you go you have lemon zest ice which sounds really nice actually that would you know you could like water or or whatever for. Anyway, but I digress and you're going to want some sparkling water, two so if you can collect up those things for next week, then you'll be ready to go with next week's episode for another lovely recipe from this book. So try out the john Barnes garden punch, I think you're really gonna like it. Collect up the ingredients for perhaps next week's recipe is going to use both the medicated rich simple syrups that you made in the from this first. I feel like I should have mentioned before, this feels like a big bite miniseries we have going on here. That's what I should have called it the big bite mini series on the cannabis cocktails mocktails and tonics because this is sort of like multi part series are doing from this book. If you haven't had a chance to pick it up I do recommend it of course or maybe you can even find it at your local library if they're open or borrow from a friend or whatever but I think you'd really enjoy it. Now, before I close off for the week I am still looking for questions from people for a q&a podcast coming up. And if you have anything that you would like to know anything you want to ask but have been too shy up until this point now's the time to do it. I'm trying to put something together you guys. And it's going to be coming up in a few weeks so if you can shoot me your questions to bite me podcast at fast mail calm, by all means, I'd be happy to answer them on the show, or if you're so inclined, go to my website at bite me podcast.com and there's a tab you can click to leave a voicemail for me and I will actually get your question, and be able to hear your lovely voice, asking it how wonderful is that so you can try that as well. And I hope you take a minute to do that, that'd be great and it would probably help other people who may have the same question as you but we're also too shy to ask somebody got to ask. So in any case. That's it for this week you guys, I hope you're having a wonderful week. I hope you are staying safe and healthy. And of course, stay Hi my friends.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai