Chelsie Miles is always jotting down cooking ideas — if she can find a notebook or a scrap sheet of paper, that is.
Her current favorite recipe is peanut butter fudge, while her husband, Chris, is partial to her monkey bread. Hit with inspiration, she quickly rummages through a drawer in her Rogers kitchen to scribble a reminder about chicken chili on the back of an envelope.
The difference with Miles is her recipes all include cannabis. She is the CEO of CannaCook.com, a 4-month-old website devoted to cooking with medical marijuana.
Chris Miles, 34, created the website to provide a platform for medical marijuana cardholders in the state. He is COO of CannaCook.com and founded the sister site, Ark420.com. He got the idea for a cannabis-dedicated website after developing the website for the Acanza dispensary in Fayetteville.
The couple spent several thousand dollars starting the website and buying light and video equipment for their twice-weekly show. Chris Miles said the enterprise isn’t a money-maker, yet, and relies on advertisers to generate revenue.
Chris Miles said CannaCook.com has so far had 40,000 visitors in three months and has 6,000 followers; Ark420, a cannabis community website, has 15,000 monthly visitors and 4,000 followers.
“I saw a need for information for residents. We decided to take 2020 and put it into our passion,” Chris Miles said. “We’re trying to help people improve their quality of life. Luckily, we are in a position to take this year and do what we wanted as far as financially. We are taking this year to establish this and see where it goes.
“We have a lot of big plans for it.”
Chelsie Miles said she and her husband, both of whom have medical marijuana cards, want to be leaders in the community of users.
“The sky’s the limit,” she said. “There are other small [business] people we are working with that we are all coming up with together. Soon we will be able to be pioneers of the area.”
No Special Skills
Chelsie Miles said she has no fancy chef credentials and has never taken a cooking class. Her mom and grandmother were fervent cooks and she said she grew up watching them make meals.
She believes her lack of expertise makes her the perfect person to show others how to cook with cannabis. If she can do it, she joked, then anybody can.
“I am far from a chef, but that is something that I thought would be helpful to other people,” Miles said. “When people cook with cannabis it can be intimidating. It is intimidating when you see professional chefs doing it. It makes it seem impossible.
“My goal was to show people that literally anyone can do it. You don’t have to be a chef; you just have to be able to follow directions. I love cooking. To be able to do this and teach people different ways to use their medicine is a dream come true.”
The most intimidating part of cannabis cooking, the couple acknowledged, is the idea that a poor outing in the kitchen can ruin hundreds of dollars worth of medical marijuana. (An ounce of cannabis sold in Arkansas has averaged about $400 since the first legal dispensaries opened last year, but the price has started to come down slightly.) The other issue is controlling the dosage so that if someone bakes a cannabis cookie, the known amount of THC in the cookie is accurate.
“Sometimes it doesn’t turn out; I burn stuff,” Chelsie Miles said. “I made stir-fry the other night and it was awful. It happens. That is what I tell people. It is OK to mess up.
“We try everything first before we make a video and post it. I don’t want to post a video where it isn’t successful.”
The Mileses have made appearances at dispensaries for CannaCook.com and have a camping trip scheduled for later this month during which a group will camp and cook with cannabis together. That is what spurred her chicken chili note.
Sharing marijuana edibles is allowed under the constitutional amendment approved by Arkansas voters in 2016 as long as each person involved has a valid medical marijuana card.
Converting raw medical marijuana into edibles can be a money-saver for patients. In addition, consuming edibles is much easier for some patients than smoking. While marijuana prices vary by strain and location, it is much cheaper to buy in the raw, flower form.
“With the dosing limit in Arkansas, you’re not going to find an edible over 10 mg [of THC], and unfortunately for most patients, they’re not even going to feel it,” Chris Miles said. “They’ll have to eat half a bottle of gummies, or whatever they buy. In a shop you’re going to pay $150 for 30 ml of tincture when you can take that same $150 at home and make triple or quadruple that with the same ingredients they are using.”
Marijuana has to be decarboxylated — heated up to activate the psychoactive THC component — before it can be converted to, most commonly, butter or oil. Once in butter or oil form, it can be used to replace or augment traditional butter or oil in a recipe.
“Once you have butter or oil, you can use it for any kind of recipe you want,” Chelsie Miles said. “If I can get people to understand the basics and feel comfortable with the basics, then they’re going to come back for more recipes.”
CannaConvert
Chelsie Miles wasn’t a medical marijuana proponent until she saw the effects it had on her husband, who is a recovering heroin addict and alcoholic.
The two began dating after they graduated from high school in 2003, she from Rogers and he from Bentonville. The two broke up because of his substance abuse before reuniting and marrying almost three years ago.
Chris Miles said medical marijuana, which he uses daily, has helped him kick his addiction and other opiate medications.
“The difference I’ve seen when he uses cannabis is just crazy,” Chelsie Miles said. “That made me a big believer.
“When he first started, I was so against it. I thought, ‘Oh, he is just replacing [heroin] with something else.’”
Chris Miles said medical marijuana has been a miracle for him but he is cautious because of his past.
“If you’re using it in a fashion that is not productive, you’re using it in an addictive fashion,” Miles said. “I use it in a medicinal way every time I use it. I find it to be spiritually, mentally and physically healing.”
Chelsie Miles said she eventually wants to start a cooking-with-cannabis class.
“It’s a beautiful combination: I get to be creative, which is my main thing, I get to cook, which I love, and I get to help people, and I love doing that,” Miles said.
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