Easy Feta Cheese Bites

Marge (00:00:07) - In this week's episode, we're doing a delightfully crispy honey feta bites. You're welcome. 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. Marge 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. Welcome back, my friends. Thank you for being here. This is going to be a great episode because I say that every goddamn week because I love doing this podcast, and there seem to be more and more of you joining along, joining on the fun, looking for inspiration for new things to make in the kitchen, and realizing how vast the potential is for edibles. And that really excites me. And I'm really happy that I'm somebody that can help with that inspiration, because I do love experimenting and seeing what I can infuse. And there's so many great chefs out there doing some fun recipes that I'm more than happy to take some of those fun recipes and make them even better by including cannabis, because that's my love.

Marge (00:01:12) - I love edibles, so that's why we're here. We're united under that one banner. Now, if this is your first time tuning in, welcome. I'm really glad that you found the show, and I hope you'll join us for many more episodes and check out some of the episodes in the back catalog. There's plenty there to explore I've done. At this point. Over 100 recipe based episodes, and I've interviewed over 40 people as well. And I have some great interviews coming up too that I'm really excited about. There's a couple that have taken me quite a long time to be able to book, but persistence pays off. And when people also realize that you're not just doing this for a few episodes, but you're in it to win it, then that also helps as well. So just the longevity of the show. I've been doing this for about four and a half years now, and if you're a long time listener, thank you so much for being here and for your support. It really is meaningful because without you, there would be no show.

Marge (00:02:16) - So before we get into this week's delightfully delicious recipe, we are going to do a little more stoner trivia. And this particular one, if you were happened to be one of those people that is keeping track of the point system, I know there's at least one of you out there that's doing that. This one is worth 30 points and it's in the movie category. This one actually might be a little bit easier. I knew the answer to this one, even though for all the previous questions I don't think I was, I would have guessed correctly if I didn't have the answer right in front of me. In this movie, Jack is convinced his future son in law, Greg Focker, is a stoner. Would that movie be Meet the Parents, The Heartbreak Kid, or Bad Grandpa? You're gonna have to stay tuned to the end of this episode to see if you got the answer correct. These honey feta bites. I've had this recipe bookmarked for a long time. I think. I originally found it on Instagram and I finally had the opportunity to make them.

Marge (00:03:19) - I had to screenshot the recipe, I think if I recall correctly and like work off work on it from my phone, which can be challenging sometimes because my phone dies pretty quickly now, I don't know if that's planned obsolescence or not. I am an iPhone user and I've had it for a few years, and the battery does seem to drain pretty quickly unless I have it on low power mode, which then means my screen goes dark very quickly and you're trying to work with the recipe. That can be really annoying, but if that wasn't first world pains, I don't know what would be these honey petabytes bookmarked for a long time. So often when I see these recipes, I see what's shared, often on a website or or on social media or other places. And I have the feeling that what you get when you do the home version created by myself or you or other home cooks, is going to look very different than the version created by the professional chef from whom is posting this recipe in this recipe was really no exception.

Marge (00:04:14) - It was created by Carolina Galen. I have covered some of her other recipes on this show before, because I think she is a wonderful cook and everything she makes, everything she touches, looks simple and beautiful. And so I have my doubts when I came to doing this particular recipe, because obviously I'm not a professional cook. I've never had professional training. I have worked as a line cook in a restaurant, in a vegan restaurant, but I was just bringing in my own home skills to work in that restaurant, and I'm not doing that anymore. But so I'm not a professional by any means in that stint as a line cook was. Pretty short lived. I mean, it was a couple of years, a few years, actually, and I was working there at that restaurant was actually my daughter's restaurant. It's, uh, that was a fun adventure. But she closed the restaurant. And in the last couple of years of her owning it, I was more of a fill in when there was staffing issues or like the time when everybody in the restaurant got Covid.

Marge (00:05:15) - My daughter and I had to run the whole place by ourselves. How my daughter didn't get Covid, I don't know, but she didn't. And so I came in to help her. She was front of house. I was back of house. It was a pretty stressful few days until some of the staff started feeling better coming back, but literally everybody got Covid and rather than close, I came in to help her out. So I'm not like not a good cook. Don't get me wrong, I do have some skills, but again, I'm not a professional. I don't know if any of you ever feel that way. I guess sometimes what I think of is those Pinterest fails. You know that meme where that's circulated on the internet in recent memory, where you know, you have that beautiful version you see on Pinterest and then you see the side by side version of the of the home job and usually looks a lot different and not nearly as beautiful. So I have my doubts about this particular one too.

Marge (00:06:03) - The nice thing about this recipe, which is why you're going to want to try it out for a variety of reasons, one of which is that the recipe requires relatively few ingredients butter, phyllo dough, feta cheese in the block form, not pre crumbled honey. I used a CBD honey, a CBD infused honey for this particular one, and there's optional toppings for the optional toppings. I used hemp hearts because the nutritional profile is so damn good, and I have a huge Java in my cupboard. And fun fact not only are Hemp Hearts a nutritional powerhouse, but half the carbs come from fiber, and fiber is a very important nutrient to get in your diet. Especially, I shouldn't say specially for everybody. I think, uh, I was going to put perimenopausal and menopausal women because I happen to be perimenopausal myself. It just happens to be in that age range. And it feels weird to say that because for so long periods and menopause and other women's health issues were made to feel kind of dirty and shameful.

Marge (00:07:04) - And thankfully, the world is changing and people can talk about it more openly without embarrassment. And it's just fucking biology. And so I have my own societal conditioning to overcome, but I'm going to own it. I'm saying it out loud. So yes, I'm trying to get a lot of fiber right now from natural food sources because it's good for me and you should too, man or woman, no matter what your age. Because I have also found now that I've recently been really trying to increase my fiber intake, that you feel more full and sated for longer so you can eat less and so you can eat a little less, you'll feel full longer. And the added bonus, which of course it helps you poop better. And that's a win as well. So anyway, that was a big direction away from the topic at hand, which is these delightful little petabytes. You could also increase the potency of these by using infused butter as well, but depending on your tolerance, that can make it also more difficult to figure out the potency in the end.

Marge (00:08:07) - And you'll you'll see why, as I get into how you put these together. And they're pretty simple, you need feta in the block form, as I mentioned earlier, because you're going to cut that block up into little bite sized squares. Then you're going to cut your phyllo dough into strips that are about 2 to 3 times the size of little feta feta pieces that you've cut up. And I found this part was a little bit tedious, not overly time consuming, but I cut a bunch, and then I would cut more because I filled the whole pan and had leftover feta and phyllo. So it did cut pretty easily with clean kitchen scissors. And you take a strip of the dough and you brush it with melted butter, and then you add another piece on top, and you brush it again, and then you put your little piece of feta onto the dough and wrap it up like a little present. And you put that on the parchment paper lined pan, and then you brush it again with a little bit more butter.

Marge (00:08:58) - And once you've filled your tray, so you're going to repeat this as many times as you have feta and phyllo to work with. And we'll fit on a pan or two. I only did one pan, but you can you can put a whole bunch of these. Obviously you can fill a whole pan with these because they don't take up a whole lot of space. And you pop in the oven at 350 for about half an hour, and you check it halfway through just to see how they're doing. And the fewer the first few little gift wrapped petabytes that I made were clumsy and definitely didn't look as nice as the last half, where I kind of created a flow and technique for doing the wrap. So they came together in a much more visibly agreeable way, if you will. And even the first ones, even though the first ones weren't so nice to look at, they obviously still tasted delicious. And so those were the first ones that I took that I ate. And after you get out of the oven, you drizzle them with honey and that's where you're going to also add your toppings if you want.

Marge (00:09:53) - Now. I used the hemp hearts. Like I mentioned earlier, she suggested pistachios is one of the possible ideas, and I think the pistachios would also be really nice, especially with this. You know, the bit of addition of salt, although the feta itself is pretty salty, so you don't really need anything super salty on the top of that. And as you can see, brushing it with the butter is another way to increase the potency. But again, because of the way you're using the butter in this recipe, it could be a more difficult to sort of calculate the potency of these using infused butter for this. Maybe there's other ways to increase the potency if you need, maybe even just using a higher potency. Now the the most important thing to note about these feta bites these lovely crispy little oh they were so good is that these are best enjoyed hot out of the oven. They'll stay warm for a bit. But I definitely had leftovers. And I ate them cold. And I nuked them in the microwave.

Marge (00:10:53) - But it just wasn't the same. Like the phyllo pastry just didn't sort of crisp up the same way that it did when they first came out of the oven, and I probably should have tried warming them up gently in the oven. Or, as my sister suggested, big shout out to my little sis for this one is pop them into an air fryer to bring out the crispiness of the phyllo dough. Again, I don't have an air fryer, so I wasn't able to test this out, but conceptually it seems like this would be a great way to warm these up again. But when I did them in the microwave, they just kind of went soggy. They just weren't as nice. Of course I ate them anyway, because if I went to all the trouble of making them and why wouldn't I? And I do have leftover phyllo and feta, so I think I might try making them again and just be mindful that because they aren't, unless you have a way like an air fryer or something like that, or the time that you want to warm them up in the oven, and I haven't tried that yet, so I can't really say how that would work with the phyllo.

Marge (00:11:50) - But if you don't have a method to warm them up but keep that in mind and maybe only make as many as you might need or might want to consume relatively quickly. Now, of course, the other great thing about this recipe is because you're using infused honey drizzled on top. Depending on who's going to be enjoying these with you, you can always use regular honey, and these suddenly become a treat for people who aren't imbibing. Again, I used CBD honey for this one. THC honey would also be wonderful because even though you're drizzling it and you're getting little of that precious infused honey on the plate, you can mop it up with some of the the phyllo and you're going to get every last drop. Believe me, these would be so nice if you're hosting, like, a little soiree and they would make such a lovely appetizer. And you can. Like I was just saying, you can easily adjust the recipe to suit how many people you're going to be serving and, um, how many people you're going to be serving and what their tolerance is as well.

Marge (00:12:52) - So such a lovely little recipe, and I'm really glad that I finally took the time to make it, because they were so good. And I think I might have to make these again on the coming weekend. How about you? What are you going to be making this weekend? Do you have anything planned? I love to hear what people are making in the kitchen, and it's so awesome when someone reaches out to me to let me know what they're trying to do. And always remember, there's tons of recipes on the website. You can go to the recipes page or just search, and there's lots of inspiration over there. So if you enjoyed this episode, please consider sharing it with somebody that you care about because nothing says I love you like good food and you can always let me know what you're doing in your kitchen. You can talk to me in the podcast hotline by email, DM me on Instagram. That's a social platform I tend to be most active on. You can stay up to date with news, events, questions for guests, giveaways.

Marge (00:13:50) - Haven't done a giveaway in a while, but maybe I should to keep help. Keep these episodes timeless. And of course, you know what won't get soggy? Are the products and services recommended on the men's page, and using the links over there helps to support the show at no extra charge to you. So it's a win win. Products and services that I recommend over. There are things that I use myself in my own home kitchen, and many of which I've been using for long before I even started this podcast. Of course, don't forget the Bite Me Cannabis Club. I've really started to put a few more events over there. I have workshops planned out for the next year, and I started a stoner storytime. Uh, early days for that yet. But we'll see how that goes. And I'm just trying to do some fun stuff over there too, so join if you haven't already. It's free for the first 100 members. So, friends, I'm your host, Marge. And until next time, stay high.