When people come for dinner at Sandy Moriarty’s house they know to bring sleeping bags.
That’s because Moriarty, a chef and author, cooks with medical marijuana, and her guests may be too high to go home.
She’s been known to add cannabis to just about any dish, from sweet lemon bars topped with powdered sugar to a stuffed turkey dinner she calls the Dizzy Bird.
“Its phenomenal,” she says about the turkey dish, which she coats and stuffs with cannabis-infused butter.
Moriarty has turned her skills into a small business, selling her lemon bars to a medical marijuana dispensary in San Francisco and teaching cooking classes at a marijuana trade school. Last month she published a cook book called “Aunt Sandy’s Medical Marijuana Cookbook.”
The legalization of medical marijuanain more than a dozen states has paved the way for a budding edible medical marijuanaindustry. Small businesses in Colorado and California are making treats, such as candy, ice creamand soda that are sold to dispensaries and then bought by patients. There’s even a medical marijuana takeout restaurant in Denver. (In Pictures: The Edible Marijuana Market.)
Schools have also popped up in medical marijuana states, teaching students how to grow the plant, use it in cooking and navigate the law. Med Grow Cannabis College in Southfield, Mich., Legal Cannabis Institute in San Diego and Oaksterdam University in San Francisco, where Moriarty teaches, all have cooking classes.
“There is definitely a niche in the industry for edibles,” says Nick Tennant, the founder of Med Grow Cannabis College in Michigan. “That niche market is developing. Patients like the candies, they like the brownies.”
