Fast & Simple LĒVO Chocolate Drops

Marge (00:00:06) - Welcome back, friends, to another installment of Bite Me, the show about edibles, where I bring you delicious edibles that you can make in no time flat. And this one is no exception. The Levo chocolate drop recipe. It's fun. It's easy. Stay tuned. Welcome to Bite Me, the show about edibles where I help you take control of your high life. I'm your host and certified Gonger 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, friends, to another episode. If you're just joining me today, welcome. Thank you so much for joining me. And if you've been listening for a while, thanks for sticking around. I appreciate you. Now this week, we've got something fun and simple. But of course, I'm going to start with a couple of things that have piqued my interest. Some good, some not so good. So let's get into it, shall we? First things first, of course, more things you can make with hemp.

Marge (00:01:08) - And I found a website CFA, cfa.org. The one that I chose for today was something in the home and office category because I'm sitting in my home office recording this particular episode and some of them were sort of home and offices, I mean I guess hemp towels and sheets and that sort of thing would be home. But the one that I wanted to focus on today, where is it here? Grow mats. Typical growing mats are produced using hemp treated materials. Hemp is a bio accumulator, meaning that it'll absorb whatever is grown in it. That being said, choosing plastic for growing a plant that is genuinely organic, meant to provide a number of health benefits can be counterproductive. Thankfully, and this is what I liked about this particular article, is they're actually including the brands of companies that are making some of these products and not just saying, Hey, this would be great, wouldn't it, if somebody made this kind of thing. But grass roots grow mats offer hemp mats that are plastic portfolio, petroleum and chemical free.

Marge (00:02:13) - No need to worry about harmful substances getting into your roots any more. And I thought that was great because there's a lot of home growers, hobby growers, people who just like to have, you know, exercise their green thumb. It's a great alternative to think that there is something out there that's hemp based that you can use instead of plastics. And a wonderful way to bring hemp into your life and in a practical way. Now, when I looked at these, I couldn't find them on Amazon. They didn't seem to be available, But I did find them on a website called Lea Valley. Lea Valley is a Canadian website and it is a place that tends to make like gardening tools and tools for your workshop and all kinds of things like that. They have some really cool stuff and their ethos to sourcing high quality products is well known. I've ordered lots of things from Lea Valley over the years. Mainly. Mainly, probably. Probably because growing up my parents would order things from Lea Valley all the time and would often have the catalogs kicking around the house and they would have a lot of fun stuff from things like their Christmas catalogs too.

Marge (00:03:27) - So I don't know. There must be some kind of equivalent in the States as well. But they offer these hemp fiber gro mats in packs of 40, and the description says it's an easy way to grow microgreens indoors year round. I never would have thought of that. These fibrous mats let even beginning gardeners produce a successful crop without a lot of mess and effort made in Canada from a natural, sustainably grown hemp fibers that retain water. Well, each mat provides a soil list growing medium for wide variety of short rotation crops such as arugula, broccoli, sprouts or wheatgrass simply place the mat in any suitably sized grow tray that has a raised pattern on the bottom for air circulation. Sprinkle seeds of your choice and then keep them moist to present to support germination and sustain them until they're ready to harvest. And the mats are fully biodegradable and compostable, which is wonderful to see. Now, this caught my interest because I have been somebody that sprouts seeds on a regular basis. I haven't done it for a little bit because I really need to go and pick up some more seeds.

Marge (00:04:35) - I really like doing the broccoli sprouts because they're super healthy for you, very concentrated, and there's a nutrition compound in it. I can't remember what it's called off Sephora's Sulforaphane Sephora Sephora thing. I can't exactly remember what it is, but I've heard it's highly nutritious and it's so cheap to make your own sprouts. Usually I do the jar method where I just put the seeds in the jar, let them soak for a bit and then you rinse them twice a day, turning the jar upside down and they'll have some kind of like screened cap on them so that some of the excess water can can drain out. And then in several days you'll have these amazing sprouts that you can put on salads or sandwiches or or whatever the case may be. So I've done a ton of broccoli sprouts often. I have done arugula as well, or like a sandwich mix, which is often a bunch of different sprouts together. But I do like the idea of this tray because then you can just come along and sort of snip off the sprouts when they're ready to go.

Marge (00:05:32) - But that's one way to incorporate hemp into your life. So I thought that was kind of a neat idea. And the next thing I wanted to bring up today. Being in the cannabis industry, even though I have a podcast and I have a few products, I mean, I do Bite Me Edibles Journal, which allows you to track your edibles consumption across a variety of different categories. I created a course a little while ago, which is just a digital online course for beginners making edibles. I have a few other things that I have done and recently the payment provider for the course that I'm doing. Decided that I was in violation of their terms and conditions. And even though I've argued with them back and forth and I feel like I'm just email them to waste their time at this point because I'm kind of pissed off about it. They have decided. However many months later. I created this course a while ago and started accepting payments through Stripe several months ago. And it's not even a course that is super active.

Marge (00:06:41) - I probably don't promote it enough because of things like this, because now, even though the course was only $20 and it wasn't generating a whole ton of revenue, Stripe has said I'm in violations of their terms and conditions. And it's because originally they said it was because I was in the marijuana business selling cannabis products dispensary like business, which of course I was very clear that I am not selling any kind of physical cannabis products of any kind whatsoever. It was an educational course to help, you know, home cooks make edibles. That didn't satisfy them. And they said after a thorough review, they said I was doing crowdfunding, a crowdfunding that became the next issue. And of course that fell under the financial services umbrella of of restricted businesses. And I argued, of course, that I am not crowdfunding anything and I am in no way offering any kind of financial services whatsoever. But of course that still wasn't good enough. And I am disappointed to say that after a ton of back and forth, I mean, I'm going to write something else just because I feel like I want to fuck with them a little bit.

Marge (00:07:51) - But they have banned my account, so I'm not sure how I'll collect payment for that course now, maybe through PayPal or something of the like. But it's super disappointing because I have been through this with Stripe already before. I think for the course actually like six months ago and they reinstated my account and this time they've done a quote unquote. If you were watching me record this right now, you would see me doing air quotes. But they have done a thorough review and decided that I'm in violation of their policies. And this kind of shit is so ridiculous and it makes me so mad because it wastes so much time. I'm a super small business and they've just decided for I don't know how it got flagged, but they just decided that. I'm not deemed worthy of their payment services, so I have to figure something else out. But again, such a time waster. I was using MailChimp a little while ago to to send out emails and, and I think I mentioned a seed bank a couple times and of course that got me flagged and they're always giving me problems.

Marge (00:08:55) - So eventually with them I switched companies and the one that I've been using lately has been actually refreshingly wonderful. So if any of you are in the business of sending out emails to to folks, I would highly recommend Miller Lite. Yes, it sounds like Miller Lite, but no mail or light. They have been wonderful and what a refreshing change. I can talk about weed and I'm not going to get flagged. I'm not going to get banned. I'm not going to have to go back through endless emails with customer support, trying to argue my position and say I'm not in violation of your terms and conditions. What a pain in the ass. I mean, it's totally legal in the jurisdiction in which I reside. And yet here I deal with this bullshit. So that's my story of the day. And it's been. It's been a bit of a week. So I decided to make some edibles that we're going to be fun and easy. And it's been a while since I've done anything chocolate related and now that I think about it.

Marge (00:09:52) - If I. What have I done? That was sweet lately. This one came was actually a card that came with some of the items that Livo sent me. And I actually kind of love recipe cards. You can actually find some of those on my website if you're so interested from some of the recipes they've done on this show. But the level chocolate drop. Recipe. And the reason this stood out because on the back of the card, they actually also have the Levo gummy recipe, which is a little more involved. And I've also tried their Levo gummy mix, which was far simpler, and I've done the Lorrain oils, gummy mix, the PAs, the Zen zingers, gummy mix, and there's lots of great gummy mixes out there that are far simpler than sometimes trying to put together gummies yourself. I mean, you can do it for sure, but a lot of these gummy mixes, as you throw the gummy mix into a pot, add some water, add a little bit of your infusion or whatever it is that you're using, and voila, you're done and not having to worry about.

Marge (00:10:55) - Combining ingredients and getting out thermometers and all those kind of things. So I do recommend them and usually the consistency is pretty good. But in any case, this chocolate drop recipe was basically as simple as, Are you ready for this? Chocolate. Your infusion. That's it. Voila. You're done. This might be a short episode this week because there's not really much more to it. You take a cup of melting chocolate or chocolate chips and two tablespoons of your level made infused butter or however you infused your butter and. You put them in a double boiler together, you melt it. And then you make sure it's well stirred and combined. And then you it says to use the droppers to fill the molds. I do not recommend that myself. And then you put the molds in the fridge and they harden up over a pretty short period of time. These are way faster to make than gummies, and then you pop them out and enjoy. It was that simple. So that's what I did. Now, I will say that I didn't use melting chocolate or chocolate chips.

Marge (00:12:01) - What I did end up getting was Baker's that baker's brand of of baker's chocolate that comes in the squares. I bought a box of that because that was what was what was available when I was out shopping for this, because I found my options limited. I was shopping at my local Walmart and the Walmart that is near me. I'm not I'm not really that crazy about their selection of anything, to be honest. I am there on a relatively regular basis because it's just so close to the house. But if I'm looking for something more specialty organic, a little healthier, or I just want a better selection of brands, usually Walmart is disappointing, at least the one that's next to my house. You may have a very different experience and the one that you are shopping at on a regular basis. But when it comes to chocolate, I had the choice of either the baker's or Hershey's. And I don't know, there's something about Hershey's. I remember when I had Madame Cannoli on the show and she talked a lot about tasting chocolate and using that as a vehicle to sort of understand your palate and to dive deeper into learning how to taste.

Marge (00:13:07) - And she is an expert in chocolate. And there are so many problems in the chocolate industry where the farmers at the end of the line who are growing the beans to produce the chocolate are. Not supported by these giant companies making millions, if not billions of dollars. And Hershey's, I believe, is probably one of the perpetrators of said shitty business practices where they don't support the people producing the goods that they are using. They just commoditize it, right. And so whenever possible, I prefer to buy organic or Fairtrade chocolate and or both if I can. Is it a few extra bucks? Yes, it is. But I like to think that the people who are growing the the coffee or the coffee, it applies to coffee as well. I try to buy organic Fairtrade coffee, too. I like to I like to support companies with my money that are supporting the farmers at the end of the line who are growing. The coffee or the chocolate or whatever the case might be that I'm enjoying at the end.

Marge (00:14:07) - And there's no reason why these companies can't support these farmers because they're making money hand over fist. So I wasn't crazy about my options. I'm not really sure about the Bakers brand. How? And bad they are in terms of paying their farmers. But I have a feeling it's probably I'll probably just be disappointed if I looked into it. But if you want to make these chocolate drops really good, the quality of the chocolate you use is important. So these ones I used to semi-sweet chocolate you could use, you can pretty much use anything that you like. Of course, the only thing you might not want to do is like a baker's chocolate that is going to be almost devoid of any sugar and therefore not sweet at all. And probably not the experience you're looking for. You want a little hint of sweetness. That's where the dark chocolate can come in and sweeten it up a tiny little bit because there might not be as much chocolate and much sugar, but there's going to be enough to make it taste good at least.

Marge (00:15:04) - But I got the Semi-Sweet and I just broke the bar because it comes in bars. I broke it up a little bit, threw it in the pot, and I went to get out my infused butter because I knew I had some in the fridge and I don't tend to use infused butter a lot. I use butter for many things, but for whatever reason I tend to lean the way of coconut oil or olive oil more often. And it looked like some of the infused butter that I had in the fridge, which was properly labeled and dated and had the potency on it. It was it looked like there was like a tiny little spot of mold starting on it. Like pretty small to see. You'd almost have to get out like a magnifying glass, to be sure. But that was enough to create some doubt for me to be like, I probably shouldn't use this, which really sucks. I hate it when that happens. I had used some of it already, so it wasn't a total waste, but I wasn't sure coconut oil was going to be the best choice for this particular recipes.

Marge (00:16:01) - So you know what else I had on hand that looked fine and I've had some of this non infused in my fridge for quite some time as well. It has a pretty decent shelf life when you keep it in the fridge infused duck fat. That is right. I used infused duck fat for this because I wanted something rich high in fat that would emulsify. Well with the chocolate and it worked like a charm. So if you don't have infused butter, you could always do something a little different, like infused duck fat. And did it impart much of a taste? I don't think so. The taste of the chocolate was strong enough that you're not really noticing any taste imparted by the duck fat, but it worked quite well. And because I had the potency of the of the duck fat again labeled on the container, I was able to calculate that for me, each chocolate drop was about, I think it worked at about seven milligrams of THC for each drop, which means I can enjoy more than one, which is my preference a lot of the times.

Marge (00:16:58) - Or sometimes I'm like, you know, I just want a little something to take some edge off, but I don't necessarily want to get really high. Maybe I'm thinking more Microdosing or just having those cannabinoids circulating in my body without a without a psychotropic effect. And sometimes I want to get lit, sometimes I want to get lit up. And so when you have it in increments that you can work with, that's a really nice way to be able to tell your dose to however you're feeling, what the circumstances are or what have you. It's always nice to be able to eat more and not less. So that's how it worked out. And. Yeah. So, I mean, if you're looking for a quick and easy edible, this is even easier than going to the store and buying your buying your chocolate, your muffin mix or your cookie mix, a cake mix, those kinds of things because literally you're just melting chocolate, adding your infusion. And actually what I did do because it does suggest using droppers.

Marge (00:17:53) - I hate using droppers to fill molds. I always find they're messy and clumsy and just not great. So what I ended up doing is putting it into a little glass, measuring cup with a spout, and I was able to pour it into the molds very easily from there. And it's so much easier than trying to suck stuff up into this dropper and then drop it into the molds. Just use a measuring cup with a spout so much easier. And it was a lot less messy. I mean, did I get a couple drops outside the mold? Sure I did. Do you know what my kitchen looks like after I'm using a dropper? It looks like chaos. It's never an easy and I guess a lot of the times that they recommend using droppers for doing things like. Gummies, but I just find it's not efficient at all. So that would be my one caveat as well for this recipe to two things actually, the quality of the chocolate is going to affect the quality of the taste. So the bigger chocolate I use was, okay, if you could go out and find a nicer chocolate of course, or good chocolate chips, then it's going to be even better.

Marge (00:18:59) - And two. Use a measuring cup to with the spout to fill the molds instead of the dropper. And if you do that, you're going to find this comes together super fast. I mean the actual melting of the chocolate and stuff and stirring that whole process maybe took ten minutes. You put them in the molds, the molds go in the fridge and they'll be ready probably in an hour or so. It doesn't take them long at all. And then you can pop them out, put them in some kind of container and enjoy whenever you are in need of some infused chocolate in your life. And who doesn't love a little infused chocolate. So I hope you give this one a try. Let me know how you found it and if you had any fun molds that you use. Because this is a good one for for using fun molds that you might find out there. And there are so many of them. If you have any other questions or feedback, then by all means hit me up. You can find me at Stay High, I Bite Me podcast or the podcast hotline.

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Marge (00:20:17) - And I'm your host, Marge, until I see my friends stay high.