Cannabis Infused Topicals, Aroma Wheels & How Amanda Breeze is Breaking Stereotypes

Margaret 00:00:06 Hello friends. Welcome to episode 273. And today we sit down with Amanda Breeze. Welcome to Bite Me, the show about edibles, where I help you take control of your high life. I'm your host and Certified Ganjier Margaret and I love helping cooks make safe and effective edibles at home. I'm so glad you're here. Friends, you are going to love today's interview. I'm glad you're listening today. If you're just joining for the first time, this is a great episode. Jump into. And if you've been here for a while, I know you're going to love this episode. Today's guest is Amanda Breeze, and she has been infused in cannabis culture for well over a decade. She's worn many hats over the years, from trimming Bud in the Emerald Triangle, co-hosting a podcast with her counterpart Ryan, formulating topical products, creating a cannabis scent wheel, making a cannabis travel tourism magazine. There's not much this innovator and educator can't do. We focus mostly on the science of scent and creating cannabis topicals in this particular episode.

Margaret 00:01:13 But let's be done with this introduction and get right into it. Please enjoy this fun and informative conversation with Amanda Breese. All right everyone, I am joined today by Amanda Breeze or with Amanda Breeze. And I'm really excited for this conversation because Amanda, you do so many cool things in the world. But for those who are listening, the listeners have Bite Me. Can you just tell them a little bit about yourself and Emerald Temple Living, which is your brand?

Amanda 00:01:47 Yes. Thank you. Hi, Marge. I'm Amanda Breeze. Thank you for that lovely introduction. what do I do? I do a little bit of everything. I'm kind of like a generalist in that I like to dabble in a lot of projects all the time, but I guess the umbrella that I use is sort of just like a cannabis innovator. So I just really like to come up with new ideas and fill in innovative gaps in the space. So I specialize in mostly smells. Smells is kind of my main area of expertise, and that has lended itself to all kinds of areas like topicals writing.

Amanda 00:02:25 I do a lot of writing, so I never talk about myself, so this is going to be a fun episode.

Margaret 00:02:32 You should probably talk about yourself more because you, like you said, you're an innovator, which I also think means you're also an educator. And it's not easy to come up with like, like innovative products in a space where there's I mean, we're in Canada, right? So there's been a lot of stuff happening in the last six years. So can you talk a little bit also about Emerald Temple living?

Amanda 00:02:53 Yes, of course, that was the question. that is, the umbrella that I use. That's where you can find my stuff. Emerald temple living.com. the business originally started sort of consulting in specifically topicals, because that's an area that I've spent years studying. so originally Emerald Temple was a topicals consulting business, and it started out quite well with my own line of products, which was being sold in a ton of different stores in Toronto. And then it evolved into more consulting work.

Amanda 00:03:26 So I've developed product lines for a handful of companies, and now it's sort of evolved into, focusing on, yeah, education. mostly again, around around smells. I think you have to pivot a lot when you work in a new industry. And so it's always about finding what people are most interested in and then helping them discover more interesting things about it.

Margaret 00:03:50 Right. And topicals is a really interesting subject. We're going to talk a bit about that some more, but I am curious, like your own personal journey with cannabis and like how that's influenced the work you're doing today.

Amanda 00:04:02 the law. The law, where I come from. Yeah.

Margaret 00:04:07 The mystery behind Amanda.

Amanda 00:04:09 It's it's not very mysterious, but it is kind of a strange tale. Yeah. it's where where to begin? About 15 years ago, I was hitchhiking around. I was a hitchhiker. I was a street musician. So I was just kind of wandering around North America, hitchhiking, riding freight trains and just on an adventure. And I ended up on the Oregon coast, for a big sort of family gathering family of of all of the street musicians.

Amanda 00:04:44 And a few hundred of us went out to Oregon to meet up for actually sad story of Friends Memorial. and while I was there, I heard a rumor through through the night that if you went to California. You could work on a weed farm, right? If this rumor surfaced. And so after this event. A bunch of people were headed down to California to try to find work. And I was like, you know what? I'm going to go. I've never been to a weed farm like I've, you know, always smoked, sold a little in school, that kind of thing. But, yeah. So I met these random kids and I was like, hey, do you guys have room for one more to go down to Cali? And they said, there's always room for one more. And I jumped in the van with them. Nine people, backpacks, musical instruments like 15 dogs, a handful of puppies. And we drove down to the Emerald Triangle and we hung out there, looking for work, because that was the rumor.

Amanda 00:05:47 If you just, like, hang out at the cafe, People come through and hire trimmers. And so we spent a few days hanging out in Hay Fork, which I now know is the Sketchiest town in all of the Emerald Triangle. Like, hands down sketchiest. so I actually had a really bad experience my first year working out there because, like, your life is in danger the whole time you're there. Really? Yes. It's extreme. It was very dangerous in the black market. Why?

Margaret 00:06:17 I mean, I've seen Murder Mountain. Is it because, like, for those who don't know about Murder Mountain, that documentary on Netflix about the Emerald Triangle and growers like what makes what made that hay fork so, so dangerous?

Amanda 00:06:32 So the Emerald Triangle is basically three counties that's pretty much at this time and even kind of now very lawless because it's mostly like uncharted nature. It's where the redwoods are. There's just like a lot of open spaces, to disappear. And then you add in all of these farmers who are growing cannabis, which is extremely illegal.

Amanda 00:06:58 And so they have their guns and they you have to be sneaky. And so the vibe is a little bit offputting. It's definitely dangerous. You know, my first job, I was blindfolded and put in a truck and drove up a mountain to go work on a weed farm, right. You know, stuff like that. That sounds so wild. But at the time it was like very normal. Like, of course you're going to blindfold me. Like, you don't want me to know where your grow is. It's harvest season. Like, the last thing these growers want is to get robbed. And Hay Fork in particular is, in my opinion, a little bit sketchier because it's mostly small grows. So people might have one, two, three acres. You can see your neighbors there also growing weed on one two, three acres. You can see there plants on this side. You can see their plans. And so it's not very hidden in some of those areas. And so the first grow I work for his his tactic for safety was to just shoot guns all night.

Amanda 00:08:00 As soon as the sun set he would just pop guns off all night. Really? Yeah. Just into.

Margaret 00:08:05 The air. Just to, like, scare people away.

Amanda 00:08:08 Yes, that is crazy. I mean, just.

Margaret 00:08:12 Hitchhiking around the US as well and hopping on trains and stuff like that's a pretty that is a pretty wild.

Amanda 00:08:19 Story because I mean, yeah.

Margaret 00:08:22 She's a woman. Did you ever feel unsafe doing, like, traveling like that?

Amanda 00:08:26 No, I never I never felt unsafe. I will say it was like, I know it's only been 15 years, but like the it was a different time. I would not do that today. I think like, places are a little bit more volatile these days. not saying it was a safe thing. And, I hope my mom doesn't tune into this podcast. No offense. My mom was mean. but. Yeah. No. And I will say that was, you know, the first year you don't know anyone. You're getting to know the area after that year, I, you know, I made a lot of friends.

Amanda 00:09:00 And so from then on, I actually ended up working with mostly families on nice, safe properties where they feed you good food and they make sure you're taking care of and it, you know, it changed as years followed to be much safer. but no, I think I think generally people are good. I think that, just the environment of growing cannabis has was always dangerous. You know, you're working in a trim shed with really nice people. One of my trim scenes was 15 people international, like a guy from Switzerland, a guy from Mexico, a guy from Panama, Puerto Rico. we had folks From Australia. a girl who was from, like, Spain. So it was like a whole international crew. And, you know, you get to learn about new places and meet new people. And it's actually very cool. Lots of Germans, lots of lots of, Quebec to go out to trim back in the day.

Margaret 00:09:58 And so you did this for like at least a year or longer.

Amanda 00:10:01 I was dreaming for like almost a decade.

Margaret 00:10:03 Oh, wow. Oh, shit. So you were in California, in the Humboldt or in the Emerald Triangle for, like, a decade?

Amanda 00:10:09 Yeah, I'm not in the Emerald Triangle the whole time. but the most of my work was there. And towards the sort of cusp of legalization in California and like legalization here in Canada, things changed. So the money changed and the work changed and the environment changed in some ways for good. Because, you know, it's not always fun when you hear helicopters. You know, I still want to hear a helicopter kind of kind of duck right in you. And you hear a lot of horror stories from a lot of farms. I never had a farm busted, but I know a lot of people who went through that experience, so I always have to nod, nod to the legacy side because I caught the tail end. Really, even even when I was there, the risk was low.

Margaret 00:10:57 Okay, so they weren't really concentrating on busting those farms at that point.

Amanda 00:11:01 There were. But, you know, there was ways around it. You know, people were signing into the medical, you know, similarly to how it unfolded here. People just shifted their business models a little bit. But yeah, that is the law. That is how I began in cannabis, was living my reckless 20s and on an adventure. That's amazing.

Margaret 00:11:22 Sure, if we have more time, you could probably tell me a whole bunch of stories. I was in Humboldt, California myself in 2021 and I stayed. I don't know if you know the Benbow Inn. Yeah, of.

Amanda 00:11:32 Course I.

Margaret 00:11:33 Stated that in and then I can't remember the name of the little town nearby that was like. It was like a ten minute drive where the dispensaries were. And, as a fresh faced Canadian, I was just like, oh, this is a little sketch. It did.

Amanda 00:11:47 Feel a little.

Margaret 00:11:48 Even then in 2021, it just had an edge to it, I guess.

Amanda 00:11:52 You know, it's it's a bit of the, the air because, you know, people are growing so many plants and that they are not supposed to be growing.

Amanda 00:12:01 So the air around there, I do remember one time, a friend asked me to come up for a couple of days to quick trim a bunch of pounds for him. You know, it was like 20, 30 minutes up the road. I worked mostly in the King Range area, so it was so beautiful. You drive through the redwoods and then up the mountain and you see the whole valley. It's so stunning. And he was like, yeah, just come up the mountain a little further. you're going to nothing has addresses because also it's the countries like the middle of nowhere on a mountain. So he's like, you're going to pass an electric pole and then ten minutes later you're going to pass another electric pole, and then you're going to see a mailbox that's made out of plywood, and it's the next driveway on your left. And I'm like, okay, there's no phone service, anything. So you're just like blind driving up this hill and you know, you see the light posts and you see the next one.

Amanda 00:12:52 And then I turn left to the gate. But the gate has like this bare metal bear on it, like a very distinct motif. But he had never mentioned the motif, which I felt like would be a very important detail, considering there's all these gates and like random driveways. and I remember parking in front of this gate for like 20 solid minutes just with my car running, trying to decide if I should walk in, and even driving back down the road, redoing the drive, coming back to the same gate and thinking this could be the day I die, this could I, I, I hope I'm at the right place. And because I had to jump the fence to get in and I'm walking up trying to make a lot of noise. I was the gate was locked. I was like, this gate should be unlocked. He knew I was coming. And so I'm making a lot of noise. Walking like hello, like walking up the hill trying to be really loud. Like I'm not a sneaker.

Amanda 00:13:48 Like I'm not trying to steal from you. And, and yeah, thankfully, that was his farm, but that's like, you're just. I'm just me. I'm not. I don't have any weapons. I'm just walking up a hill. But I'm like, this could be it, right? Like it's today, the day. And if you were.

Margaret 00:14:02 Intruding, like, I'm sure people wouldn't react well to that because these people are also doing this stuff to earn a living. And anything that puts that at risk is, I mean, obviously killing somebody is never a justification for doing living. But yeah, it's

Amanda 00:14:19 Probably people get weird up on the mountain and, you know, a few months later that property was robbed. Oh, really? Followed the grower home from the bar, right. And Friends and busted down his fence and stole all his shit.

Margaret 00:14:34 Oh that's crazy.

Amanda 00:14:36 So the risk is still. Yeah, that, you know. So, like. Anyway, I think the Murder Mountain documentary is actually quite accurate.

Amanda 00:14:43 Okay. And it features the towns that I lived in. So I also really like it because it's kind of nostalgic. These are some of the, these are some of the best years of my life. So like I know I'm still young, but I look back with like my heart, like I feel like I left my heart in California. It's still one of my absolute favorite places. The Emerald Triangle is just it's something special. So I feel very privileged to have witnessed it, but also really lucky to have survived it. Yeah.

Margaret 00:15:09 That's amazing because ten years in that, like doing that right in California, of course, is an experience that most people will never have. And obviously, I'm sure that's lent itself to all the work that you're doing now because you are co-hosting a podcast, The Smoking Spot, fantastic podcast that you do with your co-host Ryan. You are. You've launched an aroma wheel, which I hope we can talk about as well. You have a new book out. You're launching a travel magazine.

Margaret 00:15:37 Like you're doing all this really cool shit. And first of all, I want to celebrate all of that stuff because the world needs these things from people who have experience in this industry. And I'm sure it's not. It's like very personal as well. maybe just start. Why did you launch the aroma wheel? And I know you mentioned already that you're really into smells, so.

Amanda 00:15:58 Yes, I'm really into smells. Thank you, thank you. I feel like I don't celebrate things enough. You know, I'm always. My mom always says I'm like the wind. Like, before I finish something, I'm on to the next thing. So I've just. I feel like I never really take that moment to digest. And hearing it is. Thank you. Thank you. Well, you're very welcome. Yeah.

Margaret 00:16:20 You're doing a lot of cool stuff, so let's talk about it.

Amanda 00:16:23 Yes. Okay. So the aroma, the aroma oil is such a fun project. It's been two years that we've been working on it.

Amanda 00:16:31 me and my co-host with the podcast, Ryan Herron. And so the it kind of all lumps together, the podcast and the project. Actually, Ryan had reached out a couple years ago as he'd read some of my blogs and seen some of my work online, and he interviewed me for his podcast, and we had such a good time that he said, let's make it a three part series. So we evolve the project, and we did this three part series on smell, specifically focusing on cannabis, and then we had such a great time doing that. He said, let's just start our own podcast. So we started the podcast with, sort of an educational podcast for weed nerds. And, you know, we did a few episodes on Smell As that's like, you know, my area of expertise. And we realized that there were some serious gaps in education to help advance cannabis. So one of my favorite authors, his name's Avery Gilbert. He is a sensory scientist. and he dabbles in the cannabis space.

Amanda 00:17:35 He has a lot of really cool white papers, but he also wrote a book called The Nose Nose. And that book inspired a lot of the work I did the minute I read it. It's influenced everything since, so highly recommend Avery Gilbert's book, The Nose, Nose. And in his book he talks about the science of smell, and one of the things that he brings up quite a lot is how challenging it is to pinpoint aromatics outside of context. And so he did a study where he had participants smelling, I can't remember exactly the details. So I'm going to kind of paraphrase it, but they're smelling, let's say like a a citrus scent. And what he wanted them to do was then just come up with words to describe it. And he thought, oh, it's going to be so easy. There's going to be so many different words. And what he found was that people really struggled to come up with just simple descriptors on smell, and it evolved his research into realizing that, if you're holding a lemon and you smell a lemon, it's easy to think of things that are lemon like.

Amanda 00:18:37 But if you're holding a liquid that's unidentified and it smells like a lemon, it's an even greater challenge to identify that lemon smell. And so he started creating these lists to help his participants pinpoint aromatics that they were experiencing, because we actually work significantly better, even if the list is really, really diverse, it we're able to work better as humans to pinpoint specific aromatics. So Ryan and I decided to make the cannabis aroma oil because as two people who often write reviews, who often evaluate cannabis, we were experiencing the same struggle. Like, how do we pinpoint these aromatics? So we came up with the wheel, which is common in many luxury agricultural industries. So like wine and coffee, and it just made sense for us as smell people, as people trying to push the industry forward into the luxury market. you know, terroir, developing appellations. We really need to be specific with how we're describing things. And so, yeah, with that in mind, we created the Cannabis aroma wheel. it's a sensory tool for enthusiasts and sommeliers, cannabis sommeliers too, that uses, generic terms like earthy and sweet things that you see very commonly as descriptors of cannabis.

Amanda 00:19:59 And then those branched out into families. So, for example, in the fruity category we have like tropical. So it berry, it diverges into more specifics and then into the sentinel. So you're able to to pinpoint smells as you're smelling or X out smells like oh it definitely doesn't smell like this. So it's a tool and that's sort of where it started. We brought, an amazing graphic designer on the team, Victor Preds, and he helped us design the wheel so that it was actually really it's very aesthetic. he did a really good job at bringing all that info into something beautiful. and so we launched the first one last year in March, and then we're launching the new one this week. Oh, you have a.

Margaret 00:20:47 New one coming out.

Amanda 00:20:48 Oh, that's so exciting.

Margaret 00:20:49 That's very timely then for this conversation. Yeah.

Amanda 00:20:52 So timely. we're launching the new one. We, we're relaunching the website, intelligence project.com, and we're relaunching The wheel. It's the same number of sent notes, but what we've added is sent compounds that are commonly found in cannabis.

Amanda 00:21:10 So like thistles, aldehydes and just a little bit of a description of each of those so that people can, sort of broaden their understanding of the actual scientific compounds that are influencing the aromatics, because the wheel itself is sort of colloquial. There's like skunk spray and like tomato leaf and, you know, Windex. Right? The, the scent notes themselves are normal fun smells. Plum, apple.

Margaret 00:21:39 You are right that it is hard to like sometimes pick out those sets when you're smelling something. And so was this sort of like it? You mentioned it was for like, sommeliers, but would this be a handy tool for just anyone who likes to smell their weed and maybe pinpoint and describe it better? Because that description thing, I was in California and I did the Ganjier program. And of course, a lot of that is about we had to do like blind samples for the exam and all this kind of stuff, and they wanted to describe the cannabis in a way that wasn't just like, oh, it smells like lemons.

Margaret 00:22:11 Like having more nuanced and descriptive better descriptors can help somebody else imagine what they're smelling. But it's that's a real skill. That's very difficult to do, I find.

Amanda 00:22:25 Yes, but you can train your nose. That's the thing. The wheel, even if you're like a mediocre at smelling and you don't think you're very good at it, sometimes it's just this very common experience. Again, shout out to my man Avery Gilbert. He calls it tip of the nose. I'm sorry. I should be calling him Doctor Gilbert. Not like he's my friend. He's he's a professional scientist. I just I love him so much. His work. Oh, God. Okay. Fangirling over here. but he calls it the tip of the nose phenomenon. And it's when you recognize the smell, but you cannot find the words to describe it. Like, we know what a grape smells like. We know you can imagine the smell of grape right now as I'm discussing it. It's just so hard to think grape when you're holding a green leafy thing that doesn't like it's out of context because it's not a grape.

Amanda 00:23:15 And so it's just been scientifically proven that having a list makes it you able to discover the smells. So it's not I almost want to call it a cheat sheet, but it's not really cheating. It's it's a tool. It makes discovering smells easier. and I know in the beginning a lot of I haven't done the Ganjier program, but I've done, similar smaller classes. And a lot of times they focus on identifying the terpene, which I think is great and important, but it identifying terpenes doesn't really translate well to like, work or text. You know, a lot of what I've done is, you know, cannabis reviews, right? I've done reviews for a bunch of different brands, Leafly. And so what they want is something exciting. So I try to describe cannabis as if you're describing perfume, right? It's you're telling a story you would never see a perfume described as like, high in aldehydes like that. So why do you do that for a weed? No one wants that. They want the experience.

Amanda 00:24:20 But in cannabis, we can't talk about the experience. You can't tell people what to expect. Like it's sort of against the rules. So you have to describe the experience through the smell. And that's what creates a dynamic description. That's what brings people in to wanting to try the weed and it makes it more exciting. So the example I always use is like, the cold steel of the blade, you know, a breeze on a summer's day. It's describing an experience, but it's not saying like it's not talking about the high, which is a big part of cannabis. We just generally don't discuss in descriptions, and it just creates an opportunity for you to, to find new ways to discuss something beyond the word citrus.

Margaret 00:25:05 Right. Well, because if every if you just described everything as citrus, it was like half the strings out there. The cultivars would be citrus strains. And then that doesn't really tell you anything. And being able to describe them better evokes that emotion that you might attach with that particular cultivar.

Margaret 00:25:20 Because you mentioned the perfume industry. And I mean, they create these multimillion dollar commercials around these perfumes that they're putting out there because they are trying to evoke an experience with using that particular sound. Right. So it's sort of like the same idea, which is why I think a tool like this is super useful, whether you're like a professional sommelier or something like that, or just someone who enjoys, you know, cannabis and smelling things and that kind of stuff.

Amanda 00:25:47 So yeah, yeah, it's also really beautiful. The new version was designed to hang on a wall. The original version was designed to kind of like desktop use as you go. and the version we've done like a movie poster size and then an 11 by 17 just for a more affordable desktop option. We all live in small apartments, so maybe I printed the poster just to check the font size, and I literally don't put it. but yeah, I know. So it's it's also the new one's more aesthetic. So if you've ever been in a coffee shop and seen the coffee wheel, you know, that's the idea of people who go into coffee.

Amanda 00:26:20 I'm not a coffee expert, but I always look at the fricking wheel like I find these things interesting. yeah. And so it's designed to be hung, like, on a dispensary wall or in a social space where maybe people are consuming, for something to look at, something to explore and then also use. Yeah, it's very functional. So it's it's designed for everyone. It's, it's an entry level. But I use it I use it always when I'm writing. Yeah.

Margaret 00:26:47 Well it's a very, like nuanced thing and like you said, developing your palate. I wouldn't say I have, like, a super defined palate by any means, but. So I'll use whatever tools I need to help me along. I have no shame in that. And because it's super interesting, too. And I have a couple of books that I've read on the topic, but I'm definitely going to check out the one by Avery Gilbert, because I don't think I have read that one. And I love this stuff because it applies to cannabis in so many other things.

Margaret 00:27:13 Well, like you said, coffee or or cheeses or chocolate or wine, like all these things. So it applies everywhere besides cannabis too.

Amanda 00:27:22 Yes. And all of the items you named are luxury agricultural products. Again, like, it's, for right now, there's nothing that really defines a luxury cannabis product. You know, we have some things. Maybe the jar's a little nicer. Maybe it's a craft grown in on a small farm hand trim. You know, we have some things that separate mass production from something maybe a little bit more elevated. But what actually elevates a product to the luxury market is developing appellations and understanding of terroir in the way that we understand wine, for example. and so until we're all really kind of bringing cannabis into the luxury market, it's still just going to be an agricultural good. And what I mean by that is like, perfume and wine. It's a thing that grows in the soil. It has just 1 or 2 degrees of processing, and then it's the final product, you know, wine, the grapes are picked, it's fermented, it becomes this $1,000 bottle of wine or a $2 bottle of wine, depending on the flavor.

Amanda 00:28:24 And so it's the same with cannabis. It's like grown. It's one degree of processing and then it's sent to the consumer. And so, it's important to me to find those elevated products and mark it up.

Margaret 00:28:36 Yeah, yeah. And are you finding that difficult in the Canadian like, cannabis space? I have to admit, I'm not visiting a lot of dispensaries these days because I'm growing and I have friends that grow, and it's, just a nice way to get your weed. So.

Amanda 00:28:52 Same. Same way. Same. Yeah. I find it in the Canadian market, I think, here, especially in Ontario, our hands are very tied with the opaque packaging. I think places with deli style have a little bit more wiggle room, like Oregon, where you can see the buds, you can smell the buds. You know, it really forces companies to try harder for that bag appeal, which I think is a big part of purchasing cannabis. And then of course, the aromatics. so I think our hands are really tied here in a lot of ways.

Amanda 00:29:26 But also it's for example, in Ontario, I tried initiating a project where I had some clones from a grower that I really respect, and I was trying to grow them at a few different locations in what we consider wine country. hoping to see if there was any changes. Like, I was trying to do an experiment, right? I was hypothesizing, with wine that grows in this particular region is known to be a luxury product because of the terroir. Will the cannabis have the same effect? But this is like $1 million study. No one is going to fund this. So I did it in my usual DIY getter done kind of way, but we faced so many challenges with the lack of money that circulating right now. to help really push the industry forward.

Margaret 00:30:11 Right. Yeah, it is tricky, but I guess if we're just doing these DIY experiments, that's at least something in the interim until somebody wants to take on these types of projects. Because I know in California they are working on developing the appellations and talking about terroir and stuff like that.

Margaret 00:30:26 It just needs to sort of go further out. And I don't think it's reached us in Canada quite yet.

Amanda 00:30:32 Yes. And recently I was sent a picture of a jar that a friend bought at a dispensary from, like a craft grow in, know a family run farm. I feel like craft suggests small. They have 10,000 to 20,000 plants. So. But craft in the sense that they've really it's a generational farm. They've been doing it for 50 years. so they have that nice history there that we don't necessarily we haven't really tapped into because there wasn't that nice grandfathering into the legal industry that we saw in California, but they actually designated Humboldt as an appellation on the packaging, which I had never seen before. And I don't know if it's official, but I say go for it because I think Humboldt has earned that right. So, yeah, what they based it on, I don't know, I this is part of my list of this month to dig a little deeper into that particular farm and how they decided to include it on their packaging, but we are seeing some places do it.

Amanda 00:31:29 What I will say in the States is they're generally bolder when it comes to cannabis. When they see a gray area, they're like, cool, we'll go in it. Whereas here the gray areas, people wait till they're safe to go in and we're a little bit we play a little safer over here, right?

Margaret 00:31:47 Yeah, yeah. I mean that makes sense. It's a pretty new industry for us too. And California's been doing this for a while and nobody's like, oh, I just I scored this really great Ontario grown weed, but nobody really says that. But you'd be like, oh, I got this weed and Humboldt and people have that collective understanding around it. So.

Amanda 00:32:05 Exactly, exactly. Yeah.

Margaret 00:32:07 So it'll take some time. But switching gears a little bit, you also have recently released a book about cannabis topicals, tinctures and edibles, which of course, I'm very excited about because I love cannabis topicals. They are. I mean, I love edibles, too, hence a show about edibles.

Margaret 00:32:25 But I find topicals are great for so many people. They help so many people, and it's a really safe entry way for people to discover cannabis who may not otherwise even want to smoke it or consume it any other way. So can you talk about the book a little bit, sort of what's in it and also your background? Because I also know you have a lot of certificates and education around aromatherapy and topicals and all that stuff. So that was a multi-layered question for you to tackle.

Amanda 00:32:56 I applied for a job at Starbucks once, and they also ask multilayered questions to try to keep you up to see if you can remember the orders. Complicated? Well, I'm not trying.

Margaret 00:33:08 To do that.

Amanda 00:33:09 I did not get hired at Starbucks. No. Let's see if I can do it though. I did just write a book. so the book evolved from notes from a class that I used to teach. so we're going to jump around. I'm not, like, a linear person. I'm kind of like a I will said spectrum.

Amanda 00:33:30 We're going to say constellation. I'm a constellation thinker. so it's everything comes together. but when I moved back to Toronto, kind of along the the time that California was legalizing, I moved back here. I was looking for a job, and I had been dabbling in wild crafting, making my own topicals because, you know, working in Humboldt, you have just, like, so much access to weed that you can experiment. And so I took the opportunity to do a lot of experimenting while I was out there, making my first topical, which was Cannabis and tumor group, because I was experiencing like, repetitive stress injury from trimming, like, my wrist, you know, you're working 14 hours a day for months at a time, processing thousands and thousands of pounds. So my wrist was like a lot of folks were experiencing the same thing. And so I started making these cannabis topicals with tumor Group to help treat inflammation. And they worked. And it was very, very, very DIY. Like powdered tumor grew and like a gloopy oil.

Amanda 00:34:34 And I would just stir it and slather it on super thick on my wrist and then sleep with a sock on my hand. Like, because turmeric is so yellow, it gets on everything. Like it was such a sloppy little thing. But it worked. And that's how I started making topicals. Also brought in other oils. I love wild foraging. So I was making, you know, clover oils, and I was finding different plants on the Oregon coast and also starting to incorporate them into these weird oils that I was making and kind of concocting all these strange little things. But having so much cannabis, I was able to really experiment with my techniques, see which things worked better than others. I like to do really high concentrations, so we only had like half a teaspoon of the oil to like a whole batch. And it's still like 1000mg, right. I like to do these. Wow. We just had so much cannabis. Yeah. And this is back in the day where anything smaller than the tip of your thumb would be thrown in the garbage and literally dragged into the woods and dumped.

Amanda 00:35:35 Right? So, like, it's still good weed your thumb. That's a lot of weed. So yeah, we had lots of access. So anyway, I moved back to Toronto. I was looking for a job, and I saw that, a local apothecary was hiring a cleaner and I thought how fun! I would love to work in an apothecary. So I took the job and I became really good friends with the owner. My mentor Tracy, and I ended up working there until it closed last year in, in the summer. And and so that is where I learned to make topicals. Because Tracy is a natural health practitioner, she specializes in natural body care, topical formulation, and she's a certified aroma therapist and aromatherapy instructor. She's been doing it for. I don't want to age here, but a long time. And and so I was mentored one on one with Tracy for years. And I took her program, the Honors Natural Health Aromatherapy Certification program. And I just dived in and I my whole focus the whole time is always cannabis topicals.

Amanda 00:36:38 I love working in, I love working with the plant. And so yeah, I started teaching workshops at the shop and it was a full day workshop called Make Your Own Cannabis Medicine. Kind of a long winded story, but. Years of learning under Tracy. Years of developing products. I ran the production of her store, so I made the 50 to 100 products that she sold in her store, from toothpaste to deodorant to every kind of lotion to every kind of balm. And then I started teaching. And make your own class. I'm all over the place today. But, the first time I taught the workshop, it's a full day. So in the morning we would make an oil, and in the afternoon we would make all the products with this one oil. And I was trying to just impart how easy it is to make your own cannabis products, which is like a few simple ingredients. And I noticed that during the workshop, the the folks that were taking it were feverishly taking notes, and I felt like they weren't enjoying it because there were so many notes to take.

Amanda 00:37:34 And so I made a little take home sheet that then turned into a little zine that then expanded into a little booklet that then, you know, I took some time and it's now, I think, just under 100 pages. which is this book that I just put out called Cannabis in Your Kitchen, and it's essentially this full day workshop, plus six years of doing production in an apothecary all combined into one. So it pretty much covers everything you need, but in the most basic way possible, because it's all about accessibility, I think. Right. I heard I've heard many times people trying a topical and it not working for them, and they just cast it aside. Topicals don't work and I usually give them a sample of one of mine and I say, try this thing and it works. And it just sometimes takes time to develop products. Sometimes it's about subtlety of certain ingredients. and my number one seller is the turmeric oil.

Margaret 00:38:37 Is that because I was going to ask you about that? Because one of my kids has developed a sore wrist.

Margaret 00:38:43 She works at a bar. And as soon as you said that, I thought of her because I'm like, oh, I could make that for her. Is that recipe in the book?

Amanda 00:38:50 It is in the book. Okay? It is in the book. It's evolved. So, the nice thing about taking five years to study and practice topical formulation and actually producing body care for clients, right. Like hundreds of people come into the store to buy these products. So they have to be accurate. They have to be consistent is everything, especially when you're running a production kitchen. And so yes. So I evolved that greasy yellow staining mess plus sock, into a gorgeous balm. I do still warn it does come still with the warning that turmeric can stain, because it does contain quite a high level of turmeric. But now I use organic tuma grew. I make all the oils from scratch. and so it's a little bit more refined with a different proportions of beeswax and other oils. It makes it less of a traumatic yellow experience, but it is still quite, quite yellow.

Amanda 00:39:47 right. And it has, the one I included in the book is a simplified version. The one I sell on my website has about 30 different essential oils. Okay. Yes. It's like a blend. A pain relieving blend specifically designed for exactly what you're describing. Repetitive stress injuries, acute pain becoming chronic pain. but the one in the book. Here, let's flip to the page. It's, it's called the golden relief self. And it only includes four essential oils, so that's very doable. That's the idea. I want this to be doable because I had access to like a thousand essential oils when I'm designing products. But I think it would be wild to demand someone drop a grant just to put one drop of, you know, camomile.

Margaret 00:40:33 And that's what it usually ends up being too. Right? Like with essential oils usually are like you need you need five drops, but you had to go spend like depending on the oil, 30 bucks on this bottle of that you may or may not use.

Margaret 00:40:45 Again, I don't know. Although I do like essential oils myself. There is an apothecary in town that makes essential oils too, so that's usually where I like to go. But I am curious about like the generally speaking, the recipes in the book when it comes to topicals, are they would you say they're for like a beginner level or beginner to advance? Because I know I've made some topicals, you know, just even without infusing them before. And some of those body care products can get pretty complicated sometimes, depending on your level of skill.

Amanda 00:41:17 I also find sometimes when you Google like let's say body butter, it's just like they don't turn out. And I feel like people blame themselves. But as someone who formulates, I can look at this recipe and say, there's no freaking way this is going to come together. The ingredients are all wrong, right? Like, that's the thing about when you're just starting out and like, you know, being able to have access to so many different materials.

Amanda 00:41:40 I think NRA has sold over like 2000 ingredients to choose from. So the way I designed the book was to explain why we choose ingredients, then have a handful of my recipes, one of each category. So I have a recipe for a body oil. I have a recipe for a bomb. I have a recipe for, a lotion bar bath. Okay. And the idea is you can take my bath recipe, but by just flipping through some of my other recommendations, like, I don't even really know where to begin. But let's say, for example, there's a whole section on formulating topicals. So you decide right from the get, is this just a THC product or a THC and CBD product? I've included very simple instructions on how to do both. So it's designed that you create your own, but with really solid suggestions. So the next page is, some different enriching oils and their descriptions. Enriching oils are fantastic to add to products because they have all these values and therapeutic actions. But we only add a little bit to a carrier oil, which is generally a more affordable oil.

Amanda 00:42:47 So this is all about creating stuff really easily, really simply, and kind of mixing and matching to make your own. So in the enriching oils we have arnica, which if you dabble, you know, arnica is great for musculature and acute pain as well. calendula is another great one in turmeric. And then you could go to the, soothing body oil recipe. See that? I used calendula and arnica, but you, if you just have one, can just use the one. Right? Like right. With the essential oils, I've included a list of, I think 15 or 20 essential oils that are great to have. If you're building a library and you really want to invest in making topicals. But, again, you can mix and match with whatever you have. The proportions are there, so it's designed for beginners, but it has some more advanced recipes if you want to go the more advanced route. I mean, the lotion is three ingredients, so that's an easy intro to lotions and salves, because it's kind of the middle between a lotion and a balm would kind of be a lotion bar.

Amanda 00:43:52 super stable. Don't need any kitchen supplies, no beakers, no nothing. Whereas some of the other recipes, you might need a beaker, but I've included measurements, so if you don't have a beaker, you can still make it. so you don't have a teeny little one mil beaker. You can do 20 drops of essential oil. So I really tried. Like I said, this was a workshop for people who knew nothing but wanted to learn and then seeing what they were like. The essential oils section originally when I designed the workshop was maybe only five minutes, like quick introduction. Often it ended up being half an hour to an hour based on the questions. So I kind of just tried to take what I was teaching in real life and making and put it in a right little book. Yeah.

Margaret 00:44:40 I love that because it sounds like it's a real choose your own adventure, but with a lot of hand-holding so you can feel confident about your making and topicals. for anyone listening, it's, fall of 2024 and Christmas, I don't want to say the word is around the corner and nothing says I love you, like, homemade topical or something like that.

Margaret 00:45:01 Because people really appreciate that kind of stuff because they don't have time to do it themselves.

Amanda 00:45:05 So yes. Okay. So I will say for anyone who's dabbling, lotion bars are incredibly easy to make and require only three ingredients and some kind of silicone mold. And you just use equal parts of the three ingredients. So it's cocoa butter, beeswax, and any carrier oil. And a carrier oil is just like a base oil. Like olive oil, sunflower seed oil, avocado oil could be considered an enriching oil, but these are things you might just have in your cupboard. So cocoa butter, beeswax, equal parts a cute Christmas themed mold, a couple drops of whatever essential oils you have. Boom. Yeah.

Margaret 00:45:47 People appreciate that kind of stuff because I've made lots of topicals and stuff for people at Christmastime and they love it. So I am going to highly recommend people pick up this book because I'm going to be getting it. But I am curious if you've ever. So I have a couple more questions around that.

Margaret 00:46:01 Have you ever worked with Raw Cannabis Flower as far as doing infusions?

Amanda 00:46:08 Yeah like non de carboxylate.

Margaret 00:46:10 Yeah yeah.

Amanda 00:46:11 Yes yes I do I I've my actually my my turmeric topical I'm trying to remember what I call it on my website. Honestly I just I'm about the only thing like what do I even call it on my website. I think I call it joint pain salve. I think I it just gave it what it is. Name. it uses THC as its main cannabinoid ingredient. right. A lot of people do carboxylate because they want the active cannabis, I get that, I do that in quite a few infusions, but there is a place for non activated cannabis in topicals. And often they're very, very effective. It's just that it takes longer to make the oil because you have to do a cold infusion instead of a warm infusion. So when you think of making any kind of edible or cannabis product, you know, you do carboxylate it and then you heat it over low heat for 3 to 6 hours, put the cannabis in the oil, and then the oils infused the cannabinoids, dissolve the oil.

Amanda 00:47:14 That's how we make an infused oil. So when you're using the when you're wanting to work with the THC or CBD, a you have to do a cold infusion, which means you just take the flower trimmed and you put it in a jar and you cover it with oil and you set it somewhere dark and cool for 3 to 6 months.

Margaret 00:47:34 That's what I did. Although I don't think I did it for 3 to 6 months, I probably did it for less time than that, but I use it in a face oil now, and I put it on my face every morning and I'm always like, well, I don't know what it's necessarily doing, except I like to smell. So okay, because it's all very weedy.

Amanda 00:47:52 Even in its non activated state. It's first of all, cannabis is such an amazing skin soothing ingredient. It's really great for rejuvenating your skin. it's just a fantastic, enriching ingredient to any topical product. Skin loves cannabis. so I've also dabbled in cannabis. Hydra Sol skin loves cannabis.

Amanda 00:48:13 Hydra. Sol's cannabis. Floral water. Amazing. and again, that does not contain CBD or THC, but the skin loves it. So highly recommend any form now. It also, when used in a higher amount in a formulation, has amazing pain relieving and anti-inflammatory properties in its non carboxylate form. So again everyone's endocannabinoid system is different. So it's good to kind of try a few different things and see what works best for you. I think that's where people get a little thrown off of making topicals, is that it requires maybe a little bit of experimentation to see what works. But we're talking about an herb. And so another piece of this whole puzzle is that I am a certified herbalist. So I view cannabis as a one of many ingredients. That is a plant that has amazing effects on the body, and it should be combined with many other ingredients to enrich the formula and enrich the therapeutic value. So, it's not its own thing. And I think sometimes even talking about smell, we're always reinventing the wheel.

Amanda 00:49:19 You know, the turning therapy is Aromatherapy.

Margaret 00:49:22 Right. Yeah. It is essentially. Yeah.

Amanda 00:49:27 Essential oils, 95% turbines. They're it's turbine. It's the same thing we can call what we want. Doesn't bother me. I'll call it turbine therapy all day, but like it exists, there's been many studies on it. It has been studied for many years. And its effects on the body I we're always reinventing the wheel. So cannabis topicals, it's part of herbalism. It's part of holistic body care. It's part of holistic aromatherapy. that is that's my rant. That's what grinds my gears.

Margaret 00:49:56 And when you were making all the topicals in the apothecary, like, how did you test for the potency or did you? I mean, you must have had to test, like you said, because it would go on a label eventually.

Amanda 00:50:07 Yeah, for sure. So I definitely come from the legacy side. So these are not accurate by any means. I generally this is going to maybe be a little bit controversial.

Amanda 00:50:20 I've worked in cannabis for a really long time, and I've smoked weed that was tested, and I'm not saying I'm like a human tester, but I have a general idea of potency when it comes to cannabis. regardless, I try to use pretty standard formulas to bring it in. And again, if you look at cannabis as an enriching ingredient, we don't have to have exactly 102mg of THC in a jar, but in and around that volume does something to the body. And so I think it's okay, especially if you're like a home crafter. And this is why I don't sell my topicals in a dispensary. It's a different regulated environment. They want specificity. That's part of the regulation. I generally sell my products in body care shops. Right. but do you have recommendations in the book for home growers who are dabbling, which is Generally, you might think your weed is like 20% because it's fire, but generally home grown is like 10 to 15% THC, and it's okay to be a little bit under unless you're making edibles, in which case I recommend going on the higher end just to be safe.

Margaret 00:51:35 Right. Yes. Yeah, cause you're absolutely right. With the topicals. There's not the psychoactive effects, so it's not as important, I suppose, to be exact. Whereas if you're eating it, consuming it, that's a whole different ballgame. So that makes total sense.

Amanda 00:51:51 And then again it also depends on the product. So for example I've had a lot of people who use medicated topicals. Medicated meaning it's has more than 100mg has dosed milligrams of cannabinoids in it. And you know, they might think, oh, I need 100mg. But if it's a bath and they're soaking in it, they might only need 30, right? Like it's on what kind of topical we're using. Because a 30 milligram bath bomb is more than enough, even if you have very intense pain because you're soaking in it, you're really giving it that time to soak in. Whereas a topical, we have to look at the ingredients like, does it contain beeswax? Beeswax is going to have it moved into the skin much slower because it's covering the poor.

Amanda 00:52:32 So it's going to slow down. So sometimes a beeswax based product is good when you want it to take the time and slowly soak in, whereas a body oil is going to be more quickly absorbed into the skin. So there's some factors. But generally, you know, you can kind of figure it out as you go.

Margaret 00:52:50 Yeah, yeah, that's good advice. Now we are getting to the end of our time together, and I feel like there's still so much more to talk about because you're doing this amazing podcast with Ryan as well, of which I was a guest, not too long ago, earlier this year. But you have a lot of great guests on that show, and I think it's amazing that you two just happened to meet, like, by happenstance. do you have any exciting guests coming up or episodes that you have planned that you want to talk about, or a favorite guest that was on your show.

Amanda 00:53:19 Oh my gosh, the podcast. Yeah, we've taken a little mini hiatus, which we hate doing.

Amanda 00:53:23 We really hate doing it. but we needed to, focus on our employment, first of all, because we and creatives, regardless of the 3000 projects I'm working on, you still need a job. So we took a little break, which is great, for us to kind of regroup. But also we wanted to take our weekly scheduled. We meet every Wednesday. Every Wednesday, me and Ryan meet whether we're recording or not. And so we took that Wednesday time to rebuild our intelligence website over the past couple months. It is freaking gorgeous. It looks so professional. And Ryan did the whole thing, so like he did the whole website. If you need a website design call Ryan. He did I, I I'm speechless like it was beyond anything I could have even imagined. so he did such a good job. So we've been rebuilding the back end of kind of some of the projects that we do. So that was that's been great because now we're relaunching the wheels so that we always spend a few months rebuilding that and just kind of figuring out exactly what we want.

Amanda 00:54:26 You know, we've been very intentional with the projects that we've been putting out. So it's been quiet. Yeah, I miss recording, actually, so I'm hoping that we get back into it. we do have some guests coming up that are top secret, but we'll be really cool. And if you're interested in listening to the podcast, of course, we had Marge check out our episode with Bite Me. we did a great interview with David Jacob Kramer, who wrote Heads Together Weed in the Underground Press Syndicate. It's one of our not most listened to episodes, but one of my absolute favorites. Like, I think people are sleeping on it a little bit. okay. And then I don't.

Margaret 00:55:03 Think I've listened to that. Yeah.

Amanda 00:55:04 I number one episode of all time in Humboldt County, that was my number one favorite episode to record and our top listen to of all time. because I went back to my old farm. Not the scary one. The nice one. Yeah. I interviewed the grower and my friend Lauren, who also is the two growers that run the farm, and some soundscapes like crunch and gravel.

Amanda 00:55:26 You know, I tried to make it like on.

Margaret 00:55:29 What's that? the ASMR.

Amanda 00:55:33 Yeah. Just like I was trying to be, like, all those soundscapes, you know, I'm like, in the place doing the tapes and, and we talk a little bit because me and Lauren worked there together in the legacy days. So we swap some stories and, and talk about what it's like these days in Humboldt County and legalization. So if you're curious about that side of the story, that's a good place to check out.

Margaret 00:55:52 Nice little deep dive. And one last thing, also because, I mean, I've listened to I have listened to your podcast, and I definitely listen to some of the ones where you were traveling and recording or talking about your experiences while abroad, sometimes looking for we looking for a smoking spot. And some of those episodes are great too, which makes sense as to why you're also launching like this magazine next spring, it looks like, which appears like it has to do with cannabis tourism and cannabis travel.

Margaret 00:56:25 Do you want to talk about that for a minute? I mean, it's not coming out perfect, but.

Amanda 00:56:29 Yeah, no, absolutely. It's not coming up for a bit, but I'm in the throes of it. That's why I actually re tuning. You're probably here the point halfway through this episode where my brain turned back to topicals because it's been so focused on this tourism project the past couple of months, it's literally consumed all my waking hours. I last year up, I've been wanting to build a cannabis tourism magazine for probably like 2 or 3 years now, because my travel days are some of my favorite weed travel. working in Humboldt funded my music career. Let's. I've never called it a career. my muse. Time is a musician. And all those years, and I traveled non-stop. Completely nomadic, no home base. So I consider myself a professional traveler. on a budget. Because I will go anywhere with no money in my pocket and hope for the best. And that is, in fact, that's law for another day.

Amanda 00:57:20 Okay.

Margaret 00:57:21 That's that's our next episode together. Yeah. Look, that's.

Amanda 00:57:24 A whole different episode. But, I've been wanting to put together this cannabis travel magazine, because when I travel, I look for weed, I look for weed, I want to smoke it. I want to try the local flavor. And often finding weed is the easiest part. It's finding things to do in the culture. That tends to be the challenge. So I decided to put together this magazine. It's called Tripper and it's a cannabis travel magazine. Each issue is a different destination place. So issue one is YYZ, it's Ontario here, Toronto, and it's off beat adventures while you're high. So it features like what I believe to be the weirdest sculptures in the city to get high and look at. I have just confirmed one of Toronto's most notorious graffiti artists. He's going to be doing a feature on must see best artists and where they're up, which you never know. They might not be their street art, right? Yeah.

Amanda 00:58:18 You know, transitional. We have a piece on places where movies were filmed from the film Tripper. we have a piece on the best head shops in glass. Of course, I have the best dispensaries based on vibes in the whole city. so the idea is, if you are coming to Toronto, here's everything you need to know. So I applied for a grant to publish the magazine, and I fucken got it.

Margaret 00:58:45 Oh, nice. Congratulations.

Amanda 00:58:47 Yes. Oh my gosh, I got it. I'm very, very excited that it is going to be a print magazine. And so it's going to print in the next month. That's why I'm like losing my mind, doing a lot of writing for it and gathering. And then it will be probably launching in the spring. I want to give myself a window of time to plan the launch. so yeah, it will be launching in the spring. So anytime someone comes to Toronto, as of next year, you can go to trooper magazine.com and order your copy.

Amanda 00:59:17 Or you can hopefully we'll be selling it in some local businesses that are known for tourism. Yeah.

Margaret 00:59:24 So I think that's great too because like, I'm not I'm not in Toronto, I'm an hour and a half away. But people will sometimes still message me and be like, hey, what's cool to do in Toronto? from the perspective of a cannabis smoker or whatever? And I have a couple recommendations I can make because I've obviously been to Toronto, but I don't live there. So having a resource like this is amazing for people who want to come and enjoy the city while consuming cannabis, because that's one of the things I love about Toronto is going there and just smelling weed in the air, because you smell it everywhere. And I think that's awesome.

Amanda 00:59:57 And especially for international travelers, I get a lot of questions from people all over the world, like what it's like to to exist in this space. And, you know, I always say, like a lot of places, people hide it, whereas here it's very out in the open.

Amanda 01:00:12 so that's something that the magazine talks about is it's not about being discreet, it's just about respecting the space that you're in, like, oh, there's kids nearby. We're not going to smoke next to the kids. That obviously goes without saying, I think, but it's a little bit of common sense. But yeah, so that's that's part of the culture you won't find on a website or, you know, there's a little moments of cannabis culture that really only come from the locals. And that's what I'm trying to showcase. local artists, local music. And there's nothing about the CN tower like things you can Google. Google them. Like, you know, you just. Yeah, yeah. I don't need to empower.

Margaret 01:00:45 Is not even that exciting in a lot of ways. I mean, I guess if you're really high and trying to walk on the glass floor, which I can't do, by the way, I cannot do sober or. Hi. So you know that that can be a fun touristy thing to do, but there's so much more to see in Toronto as well.

Margaret 01:01:02 So.

Amanda 01:01:02 Exactly, exactly.

Margaret 01:01:04 Yeah, it's high on my list.

Amanda 01:01:05 That's coming out in Tripper magazine.com. is the website.

Margaret 01:01:09 I'll have to have you back again when it's going to be out because you have done a ton of obviously you've done a lot more traveling than I realize. But listening to your podcast, I realize that you've done a lot of traveling and looking for cannabis in different places. So just having you back to talk about that, what could be its own dedicated episode. But I have a couple more questions for you. before we part ways, one being what instrument do you play that I was just curious.

Amanda 01:01:33 I played right now guitar. Acoustic guitar.

Margaret 01:01:36 Okay, so when you were traveling around hitchhiking and stuff, you were playing guitar?

Amanda 01:01:40 Yeah, I was in a band. we're actually in the punk Rock Hall of Fame. our band is is quite notorious, even though we did everything we could to have people not really like our music. I know that we're not. We're like anti-capitalist, anarchist, right? Street musicians.

Amanda 01:01:55 So we were trying to embody that spirit. but the band is called the Rail Yard Ghosts. I'm still besties with all my band mates. We haven't played in a while, but we all did go to Europe last year just for funsies to meet up. And, again, I play acoustic guitar. I do have an accordion, but, I my toxic trait is thinking I'm immediately going to be good at anything I pick up, and then picking it up and realizing that I'm not that good. So the accordion was one of those. I'm like, of course I can play accordion. Never played accordion in my life.

Margaret 01:02:27 All right. And when you when you were talking about the railyard ghost and you went back to Europe, is that when you went to Oslo and was that. Yes, I think I remember you got in a wee bit of trouble with local law enforcement, if I recall. So anybody listening? You should only check out that episode because it was super interesting.

Amanda 01:02:47 Yes, that that was the I was in Oslo.

Amanda 01:02:50 I've actually lived in Oslo. I love Norway so, so much. They have the best Moroccan hash you can even imagine. but Croatia was where my friend Sarah got dinged, and we interviewed Sarah for the podcast on the Locked Up in Croatia episode, because she got in a lot of trouble for having one gram in a decriminalized country.

Margaret 01:03:12 Right. Yeah. So, I mean, you you have so many great episodes on that on that podcast that you and Ryan do, but also what would surprise people about you?

Amanda 01:03:23 Oh my God, literally everything. What did I not say that was surprising so far.

Margaret 01:03:28 That's true. It's probably that's a question I like to ask a lot of the guests that I have, but I it is true. Everything you do is pretty surprising. Yeah.

Amanda 01:03:37 I'm sorry, I, the law is so tied to the, the where I am today. Like, I really wouldn't be where I am today if I didn't meet hobos randomly and think, this is so cool, and follow them across the country and into the states, and, yeah, I guess that's probably the the thing that would surprise people the most is that, you know, before all of this, I was that guy on the corner with a cardboard sign, and I love I loved it like you, I loved it.

Amanda 01:04:08 I loved playing music on the street. I love being a street musician. Being a musician opens so many doors. But it's also made me so good at creative collaborations, because living and breathing and existing with your band mates for a year's day in and day out. Nine people in a minivan with dogs and everyone has a guitar like you. Learn to get along with people real fast, and just meeting new people. I think it's really influenced how I travel and and how I like to build community. You know, I, I like I like building community and working with people. And I think that's why I tackle so many of these projects to try to create opportunities to like, grow and build businesses with other entrepreneurs and innovators who don't have the million dollar funding behind us. You know, we're just we'll do people projects. Yeah. For the people. Yeah.

Margaret 01:05:08 I'm here for it because I love the concept of building community, too, because if you don't have community, then life is pretty damn lonely.

Margaret 01:05:15 And there's space for everybody in the cannabis space, too. And there's so many interesting people doing really interesting stuff. And I consider you one of those people who, like, I just love everything that you're doing. So I thank you for everything that you're doing because I think it's amazing and you really are an advocate for the plant and everything. Like breaking this, the stoner stereotype, that lazy stoner stereotype. Like you're just like, yeah, it's bullshit. And you're stomping all over it because there's, there's nothing lazy about anything that you're doing. Like, you are just hustling out there and putting out some really cool shit for people to to discover more about their own cannabis usage as well. So where can people find you? And I will be linking to all this stuff in the show notes as well, so people can find it, but tell us where we can find you.

Amanda 01:06:05 Yeah for sure. So my Instagram is at Emerald Dot temple Dot living. I am an activist, so I do often post a lot of, cannabis activism and other types of activism posts.

Amanda 01:06:17 But that's a great place to find me and also to reach out. I love answering questions, so if you guys ever have any questions about making your own topicals, smell any of the things we talked about today, any of the things you see on my socials, you're welcome to reach out. my website is Emerald Temple living.com, and you can find me and Ryan at the dot smoking spot. there's like a thousand links I could shout out, but those are probably the good ones to start.

Margaret 01:06:45 Yeah. That's awesome. And like I said, I'll link to those in the show notes so people can find you and reach out to you if they want. And just thank you so much for sharing your time with me today, Amanda. I really appreciate it.

Amanda 01:06:56 I love you, Marge, and I love that we're building this little community together. This is what we're talking about because we went to support another female business, not because they're female, because it was a cool project. And, you know, we support others, and then we meet other people that do the same thing.

Amanda 01:07:13 And now we're friends and yeah, it's yeah.

Margaret 01:07:15 Shout out to Kim Kana.

Amanda 01:07:16 Yeah, exactly.

Margaret 01:07:17 That time.

Amanda 01:07:18 That's really community building starts, right. Like people wonder how do you how do you meet people? And it's like, well, supporting other people's projects and seeing what's great to see exactly. Well, thank you so much.

Margaret 01:07:35 Amanda is breaking the stoner stereotype every single day and I find it really inspiring. Friends, as always, you can find links and the things we talked about in the show notes over on Bite Me podcast. Com and if you have a cannabis lover in your life, particularly someone who might be interested in the science of scent or in cannabis topicals, consider sharing this episode with them. Get out your phone right now and text in this episode, because it really does help spread awareness about Bite Me, the show about edibles, and of course, that further helps promote the work that Amanda is doing out there in the world too. And I really want Bite Me to be a place that is collaborative and a sense of community, if you will.

Margaret 01:08:16 And on that last note, before anybody says anything to me, yes, she called me Marge in the show because she didn't realize that I was going by Margaret now. And afterwards I informed her about my new lease on life. And of course, she was 100% supportive because Amanda is exactly how she sounds. She is badass. What can I say? So check out all the cool things that Amanda is doing. And until next week, my friends, I'm your host, Margaret. Stay. Hi.