This Quick Sweet Potato Chili Is Infused Comfort Food

Margaret 00:00:06 What happens when you take a love of food, a passion for culture, and a deep knowledge of cannabis and you toss them all into one bowl? You get Bite Me! The podcast that explores the intersection of food, culture, science and cannabis and helps cooks make great edibles at home and for less money. I'm your host, Margaret Certified Ganjier, TCI Certified Cannabis Educator, and I believe your kitchen is the best dispensary you'll ever have. Together, we'll explore the stories, the science, and the sheer joy of making safe, effective, and unforgettable edibles at home. So preheat your oven and let's get ready for a great episode! This is today, episode 338, which is kind of wild to me, and we are going to be exploring a sweet potato and ground beef chili. And yes, it feels like it's been a hot minute since I've actually done a recipe on the show. But I did get some great feedback from the Forbidden sessions presentation that I released for the podcast last week, and if you haven't checked that out, I encourage you to do so.

Margaret 00:01:06 It's just my some of my thoughts on why I think edibles are still the way, and all the things that make homemade edibles amazing, and why we need to keep making them and protecting our home grow, right? So if you haven't listened to that, check it out. Now, before we get into today's episode, I just realized that there's a fan mail feature on the podcast player that you're probably listening to this. I mean, maybe you're listening to here or maybe over on the tubes, the YouTubes. But I realized a little while ago I missed a fan mail person, and it was just somebody saying that they were listening from Kansas City, Missouri. So sorry for missing that listener from Kansas City, Missouri. Thanks for reaching out. And did you know you can text me whatever podcast app that you're listening on? And there should be at the very top a fan mail thing, you just touch it or tap it and then you can send me a fan mail. Now do note I can't reply to these, so it's not that I don't want to, but that's just not a feature that is enabled.

Margaret 00:02:10 Yeah, I love getting the fan mail or emails or you can send a voice message as well. You can. There's all kinds of ways to get Ahold of me. I'm not hard to find. So please, by all means, reach out. And because we haven't done this in a while either, we're going to do a little trivia today. A little stoner trivia race to 420. I'm pulling a card out of the deck. What are we going to get today? Ooh, a politics question. Oh, this one's almost too easy. Just say no was a popular anti-drug slogan under what US presidents administration? Was it Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton or Jimmy Carter? And if you guessed Ronald Reagan, you would be correct. They started that whole just say No campaign. Which really sparked a lot of anti cannabis sentiment and really not that it wasn't already there, but anybody who grew up in that era, myself included, I remember some of those dare programs. We called them Dare programs up in Canada, and they would have assemblies led by local police officers.

Margaret 00:03:19 And I do recall several times my friends and I showing up at these really high on hashish, because that was what I was smoking mostly at the time, and we would giggle our way through the entire presentation about how we were all going to end up as degenerate drug addicts in the back alleys of our town if we continued to smoke that good, good. But here I am today, podcasting about it without fear of repercussion. Oh, how the tables have turned. Things have changed. It is slow. Sometimes it feels slow. But still, here we are. So just because that seemed a bit too easy. I'm going to pull another one just for fun. What? Musician. This is a music question. What? Musicians sings these lyrics? So let's get to the point. Let's roll another joint. Is it George Harrison, David Bowie or Tom petty? I feel like this is another easy one too, but that could also be because I've heard this song so many times on the local radio station.

Margaret 00:04:18 Shout out to the Wolf one on 1.5 in Peterborough. It's been around forever playing all your classic rock. And if you guessed Tom petty. So let's get to the point. Let's roll another joint. Okay, that was terrible. But there you go. Just to show you why I chose podcasting and not singing as a career. There you have it, folks. There's a little bit of stoner trivia for you. Now, let's get into today's recipe. Now, I know that this recipe is for us northerners because I know there's listeners out there. Shout out to the Southerners who are probably enjoying much better weather than I am currently. And you may not be interested in a chili, but this is what I've been eating lately. I find my eating habits are so seasonal in the wintertime, I want those warm, nourishing meals. I want the roasted stuff. I want the chilis, the soups, the stews, and then spring and summer. My tastes change pretty substantially. I'm looking for lighter fare the light salads, the grilled, grilled foods, things that don't require standing over a stove or hot oven.

Margaret 00:05:34 And so if you're living somewhere hot, this might this one might not appeal to you. But maybe if you live in a place where it's hot all the time, your, your, your tastes or your preferences are different because you would never eat these types of foods. Or maybe you don't. You tell me, why should I guess? Do you enjoy things like stews and chilies and roasted foods when you live in a hot place. As I sit here drinking a hot tea and I will say this episode is coming out early February and where I live in Canada, we have had a very cold winter, more snow and a lot more cold temperatures than I can recall in the last several years. We had a lot of snow last year as well, but we've had sustained very cold temperatures and honestly, I don't even mind it that much as a Canadian. I know a lot of people are listening. They're probably like, how do you handle -25 degree weather? And that's not even the coldest places in this country.

Margaret 00:06:29 But, you you adapt. I mean, when you have lived in this kind of climate your entire life, you have all the gear. First of all, you're just more accustomed to those cold temperatures. And I've been out quite a bit recently, you know, walking dogs and spending time. Because if you don't, you just never end up going outside. And the sun was really bright recently, but it was still bitterly cold and I was out with some people and walking, and I had the proper gear on, and I was actually really warm, except for my face. My face was so cold. And sometimes that's when you think you got to break out the balaclava, which is basically just a sock you put over your head with holes for your eyes and mouth or whatever the configuration might be, but then you look like you're about to rob a bank, and so you don't see a ton of people wearing those, and even when it is really cold. But that's my biggest complaint, is my face gets cold.

Margaret 00:07:20 I live in a place where the air hurts my face. As much as I want to dress for the weather, I don't always want to look like a bank robber. Sometimes you just pull your scarf up over your nose. And your eyeballs get cold. That's a thing too. Anyway, I that was a bit of a tangent, but I guess I was thinking about warm weather meals for when you come inside from being outside in the bitter cold. Thankfully, the weather has warmed up a little bit, if you will. It's a balmy minus six today, which is quite a bit better, but am I still thinking about this chili that I made recently? Yes I am. Why? Because it is delicious. I love making chillies, but sometimes it can be a little time consuming. And this one was actually quite simple, which is why I enjoyed it. This is definitely one that I'm going to be adding into my regular rotation, because it was so simple to put together. And I love easy because as we all know, if it's a weeknight, you don't want something that's going to be like a project on your stove.

Margaret 00:08:20 So what do you need to make this amazing chili? And why is it so good? Margaret. Well, I'm glad you asked. And I'm going to tell you because that is the whole purpose of the show. And a lot of people really do like the recipes. I get reminded all the time that folks like the recipes. So I got to go back to my roots, my friends, I do have some interviews coming up that I'm getting ready to book. I'm excited to release those, but we all got to eat. And in the meanwhile, I hope you enjoy this one. So you're going to need while you're cooking oil, of course, an onion. Salt. Black pepper. Your ground beef is preferably 90% lean. I had whatever was in the freezer, which was, I think, a medium ground beef. So that's what I used. Chili powder, cumin, cayenne pepper, tomato paste, a couple of sweet potatoes, a can of kidney beans with their liquid as another side.

Margaret 00:09:10 I rinsed the liquid because I just feel like I don't want to be farting all night, nor do I want to spend time with my dinner companion listening to them fart all night. So I've always heard that the the the bean juice is what can really ramp up the digestive singing, if you will. So I rinsed it and did not add it with the liquid, and the chili did not suffer for it. It also called for a bottle of dark beer such as Modelo Negra. And as delightful as that sounds, I did not have any beer in stock, and instead I used beef broth, which seemed to work just fine. If you have the beer on hand and you don't need to, you know, don't have to go out and get a single 12 ounce bottle of dark beer, then just know that the beef broth will work just as well. Actually still probably water too if you don't have that. The spices in this chili were really what made it stand out for me. It did have some heat.

Margaret 00:10:08 You could probably reduce the chili powder. I mean, it calls for four teaspoons. You know, it's quite a bit of chili powder, but you could reduce that if you don't want it as hot. Maybe cut out the cayenne pepper. Essentially you're going to heat your oil in a Dutch oven or a heavy bottomed pot. You add your onion, salt and black pepper as usual, like it seems to be the start of every single dish you've probably ever made. You're going to add your beef and the spices I just talked about, and you cook that until it's no longer pink. You stir in some tomato paste and then you add your sweet potatoes, beans, beer, water, broth, and then you simmer it for about 20 minutes until your sweet potatoes are tender. And that's it. Now, you might be asking, but, Margaret, how do you infuse this? Well, I'm glad you asked. I don't infuse the chili itself. I am going to infuse it by adding some olive oil to this one on my bowl as I serve.

Margaret 00:11:04 If you want to make this a weeknight dinner, that's what I would do. It does say to ladle the chili into the bulls. Serve hot and you can top it with sour cream, shredded cheese, and sliced scallions. I did none of that. I did not buy sour cream, nor did I have good shredded cheese or good cheese in stock and slice scaled it. Scallions. That would have been nice to have, but I did not have those either and I didn't go out and buy them. It tasted delicious without it, but those would be nice toppings to add. But I do like to put my like some of my infused olive oil in a dropper bottle, so that way I can do some more precision dosing if I know how well I because I always calculate how strong things are. And this way you can tailor each dish to the preferences of the people at the table. And because you're putting it into a chili that is rich and flavorful, it's going to mask the flavor really well.

Margaret 00:11:51 You're not going to really taste any greenery. That's the easiest way to do it. I mean, you definitely don't want to put it in, you know, do an infused oil to cook your your onions in because you're just going to degrade the cannabinoids in that oil. So using it as a finishing oil is your best bet here. And then you don't have to make an entire pot of infused chili either, because you can get into trouble with that. I do remember a long time ago, I may have mentioned this on the podcast a while back when my daughter had her restaurant. A lot of other people from other stores nearby would pop in for food or for smoothies, because they did a lot of smoothies as well. A woman popped in one day. She was a pretty regular customer, worked at another store in the downtown area, and I recall she was panicking a little bit because she was high and she was at work, and she realized that her roommate had made a pot of stew or chili or a soup or something like that.

Margaret 00:12:44 It was infused, and she didn't realize it when she had a bowl. Didn't realize it until she started to feel the effects while she was at work. So she came in to get some kind of high protein, you know, smoothie or something like that to help maybe mitigate the effects of the high that she was experiencing. When you do infuse an entire pot. You do have to worry that there is always that concern if someone may enjoy a bit too much. And the nice thing is to if you know, if you're using a finishing oil, that also means you can have seconds. So I know I've told I've talked about before about the cannabis lunch, that I went to a cannabis brunch where all the food was not infused, but the host had infused butters and sauces and condiments to go with the meal. And there was so much food I forget how many people were there. It was not a huge luncheon. It was like 15 people, maybe max, and there was so much food that she was like, here, take leftovers.

Margaret 00:13:37 Like we actually were able to take leftovers from this lunch that we went to. But it was so great because even while you were there, you could go up for seconds if you wanted. There was a there was desserts as well, and an infused caramel sauce. Everything was labeled. They were in little pots. Everything was labeled to how much, cannabis was in them by milligrams. So you knew according to your own, you could dose yourself knowing what you could tolerate. And then if you wanted to go up and have seconds, you were able to do that because none of the food itself was infused. And I thought that was such a great way to do it. Yes, cannabis affects everybody very differently and oftentimes without rhyme or reason. So, you know, being able to dose yourself accordingly. And if you're still working out what your dose is, I do recommend you take notes. someway, somehow I did create a journal over on Amazon. They bite me edibles Journal so you can, you know, start to figure out your tolerance or whatever.

Margaret 00:14:34 Take notes on your phone. Just keep track of your experiments because it's interesting, the things that you'll learn, the patterns that you discover. I myself, after coming off an entire month in January of no edibles, no cannabis, no booze either. my tolerance has gone down. I do find that my tolerance has been changing as I get older as well. And I've had discussions with this with experts on my show like Amanda Ryman. She confirmed my suspicions, and she is a smart lady with a PhD and does a lot of research and reads a lot of studies. And so if you're finding that your tolerance is changing as you get older, that's completely natural. A couple that with the tolerance break, and I am starting with five milligrams of THC for an edible. And I'm kind of working my way up there to find my my sweet spot. Again. One of the benefits of doing the tolerance break was just that it sort of reset my tolerance, which means I can get the same effects that I'm looking for with less cannabis, which in this economy, let me tell you, is great superpower.

Margaret 00:15:29 And if you have thought about doing a tolerance break, I, I did that tolerance break challenge in the Bite Me cannabis Club and went really well. I would do that challenge again, maybe next year. But in the meanwhile, if you don't want to wait, I did all the program guide that I created in the daily check ins I put into a book. Again over on Amazon. It's the fresh start complete 30 day Tolerance Break guide. I should have made it shorter because you have to pretty much search it directly in order to find it, but I'll link to it in the show notes. But that is if you want to do a tolerance break on your own terms. You don't want to wait to do a group one like in another year. Because again, sometimes the timing is everything. If you tried this recipe, let me know how you find it. I would love to connect with you over on the Bite Me cannabis clubs, so please check that out and consider joining us over there.

Margaret 00:16:18 We do weekly high table meetings, which have been a lot of fun, and I look forward to those every single week. And it is algorithm and ad free. So with that, my friends, I'm your host, Margaret. And until next time, stay curious and stay high.