Dan Pashman: Hey everyone, Dan here. It’s time for another Sporkful reheat. Now a couple things to tell you before this one starts. First off, this one contains some unbleeped profanity, and it’s about foods infused with cannabis. So if that’s not something you want to hear about, you might want to skip this one.

Dan Pashman: And we recorded this episode back in 2015, which was after Colorado legalized pot but before a lot of other states did. So what exactly legal and where, has changed since this episode came out. I also think cannabis-infused food has come a long way, the dosing and labeling is more precise. But things can still go off the rails, as they did in this episode from nearly a decade ago. 

Dan Pashman: As always, if there’s an episode you’d like us to pull out of the deep freezer, send us a note at hello@sporkful.com. Send us your first name, a location, and which episode you’d like us to reheat. Okay, enjoy the show.

Dan Pashman: Your day job and your side project are not unrelated.

Ronni: Mm-hmm. No, not at all.

Dan:  You are a baker at one of the top bakeries in New York City.

Ronni: Yes.

Dan Pashman: On the side, you have a little project you're working on.

Ronni: Exactly.

Dan Pashman: Tell us about it.

Ronni: On the side, I've been experimenting with marijuana and different ways to infuse marijuana into food without maybe getting so much of a marijuana taste, maybe upping the ante on what I'm making, not just cookies, something a little more exciting, something better. And basically, using the skills I learned as a pastry cook to have some fun.

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Dan Pashman: This is Ronni. That's not a real name because her side project is not exactly legal. As I said, by day, she works at one of the top bakeries in New York. And there are a lot of people like her. Right now, chefs across the country are getting ready for a culinary gold rush. A whole new dining experience that goes way beyond pot brownies. In Colorado, it's already here.

CLIP (NEWS ANCHOR): It's a Thursday night in downtown Denver, and we were invited to a marijuana food and wine pairing catering to young professionals. The food is sprinkled with marijuana, the wine infused with a strain called Killer Queen …

Dan Pashman: In the first year after legalization in Colorado, nearly three million edible marijuana products were sold in retail stores. Of course, cooking with cannabis is still underground in a lot of the country, but the food world's getting ready to take it mainstream. Cookbooks from major publishers are in the works, and seasoned chefs are leaving good restaurants for a new challenge and a big payday. 

Dan Pashman: But, ever the buzzkill, The New York Times points out two problems. First, it's hard to control how high people get when they eat marijuana. And second, it really doesn't taste that good. Today on The Sporkful, we're going to find out if that's true. I'll get help from Ronni the baker, and a few of my friends from Radiolab, including host Jad Abumrad, we'll tell you how it tastes.

CLIP (JAD ABUMRAD): Like I'm eating dirt ... a little bit? Just like ... just like ... just like an undertone of dirt? 

CLIP (RONNI): Yep. 

Dan Pashman: We'll tell you how it makes us feel. 

CLIP (JAD ABUMRAD): I'm feeling very ... I'm feeling very ... very relaxed. [LAUGHS] … 

Dan: And we'll discuss the aftermath 

CLIP (JAD ABUMRAD): Pashman, I hold you responsible for this.

Dan Pashman: Stick around. 

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Dan Pashman: From WNYC Studios, this is The Sporkful. It's not for foodies, it's for eaters. I'm Dan Pashman. Each week on our show, we obsess about food to learn more about people. I should say right here at the top, I've had some of the edibles they're making in Colorado. I had this little candy that looks just like a Tootsie Roll, and it's so incredibly powerful that I could only eat, like, a one millimeter sliver of it. And yeah, that makes for an effective drug delivery system, but it's a crummy eating experience. So that's where I was coming from when Ronni showed up with her spread. I was joined by some of my friends from Radiolab, Soren Wheeler, Ellen Horne, and host Jad Abumrad.

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Jad Abumrad: My one experience with edibles was maybe the worst day of my entire life where I ate probably twice as much as I should have, and it was an entire weekend of misery. I'm really interested in the buzz management. I like that whole idea. 

Ronni: Yes. 

Jad Abumrad: Right, because again, you know, I'm thinking about being 16 and you know, face down in the hammock. So I'm trying to avoid that.

Dan Pashman: Yeah. By the way, Jad, I told Ronni in advance that you and I are both well past our prime. 

Jad Abumrad: Oh, well ... [LAUGHING] We're well on the downward slope.

[LAUGHING]

Dan Pashman: I think that's the exact phrase I used. I was like, "Go easy on us. We're past our prime."

Ronni: I hope ... I mean, I believe I did go easy, especially because I have a whole spread prepared for you guys.

Soren Wheeler: This is my question is like, can you — so have you created it such that — I mean, I actually don't know what kinds of pastries that you have in there, but say there's a Danish, I would — like, when I come across a Danish to eat the whole thing.

Ronni: Right. [LAUGHS]

Soren Wheeler: And I don't want just one bite of a Danish, you know? So have you calibrated so that I can have the whole thing and not have gone …

Ronni: Yeah, that’s exactly what I tried to do.

Jad Abumrad: Wait, so have you, have you taken a dip of this spread and can you confirm through self-experimentation this is what we're about to ...

Ronni: So, all right, Dan, when you presented me with the opportunity to come on the show, I was like, I want to do something a little different than what I'm used to. So I haven't actually sat down and had this exact item …

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Jad Abumrad: Oh boy.

Ronni: Yeah.

Dan Pashman: [LAUGHS] So, we’re your guinea pigs?

Ronni: You're my guinea pigs.

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Dan Pashman: That probably should have been a warning sign. But we were just so fixated on trying to find that ideal experience. 

Dan Pashman: I think in the perfect edibles restaurant, you would walk in the door sober, and you would eat a whole meal, a full meal from beginning to end, eat and drink and be merry and do all the things I would do at a great restaurant, and for the dosage to be calibrated just right so that by middle of the meal, I'm high, which makes the rest of the meal taste — heightened sensation, better flavor for the rest of the meal and continue to be high for a reasonable period after the meal at a nice, pleasant level, and then fades away. But you would need that, a certain dosage arc (Jad Abumrad: Yeah. ) in order to make that meal possible.

Ronni: Yeah.

Jad Abumrad: I see. I think you might be ... I think you might be asking too much of the future perfect edible restaurant. 

Soren Wheeler: It might be a pipe dream, cause every person's gonna be different too.

Ronni: Right? So, Dan …

Dan Pashman: Most edibles are made by infusing marijuana into a fat, then cooking with that fat. It can be butter, oil, milk, fat, whatever. That's cause the active ingredients in cannabis are fat soluble. The first dish Ronni brought out was garlic bread brushed with weed-infused olive oil, which she wanted us to dip in a weed-infused balsamic vinaigrette.

[BITING INTO GARLIC BREAD]

Ronni: I feel like you could definitely dip ... dip heartily and eat two.

Soren Wheeler: Step it up, Dan.

Ronni: And eat two of them. [LAUGHS]

Jad Abumrad: Yeah, really, don't be a pussy, Dan.

Dan Pashman: Okay. All right, one more bite. 

Soren Wheeler: This tastes pretty good.

Ronni: Can you taste ... Are you getting any hints of the …

Dan Pashman: I don't taste weed, although there's oregano on here, right? 

Ronni: Well, no. Okay, it definitely takes on a different flavor than maybe the smell that you're used to. It ... You ...

Jad Abumrad: It has a kind of — what is that?

Ronni: Earthy ...

Jad Abumrad: Earthy, yes.

Ronni: Yes, definitely. 

Jad Abumrad: Like I'm eating dirt a little bit?

Ronni: Yeah, a little bit ...

Jad Abumrad: Just like, just like, just like an undertone of dirt? 

Ronni: Yep, it tastes like straight earthiness.

Dan Pashman: Should we try the next item on the menu?

Ronni: Yeah, okay. So I just brought, you know, things we can munch on. I tried to put weed into Cheez-Its, just so you can have like a ...

Dan Pashman: Oh man!

Jad Abumrad: Interesting.

Dan Pashman: You're gonna be so rich.

[LAUGHING]

Soren Wheeler: Is this the first time that you've ever tried making these? 

Ronni: Yes. Okay.

Dan Pashman: All right, I'm having a ... I'm having a Cheez-It.

Ronni: Yeah, have a bunch. Take them home.

Dan Pashman: Ronni kept pushing the food on us, but Soren started to get concerned.

Soren Wheeler: See, this all boils down to how much we trust her, because she's our buzz manager for the …

Dan Pashman: Right.

Soren Wheeler: You know? And she probably wants to see us get ridiculous.

Dan Pashman: Right.

Ronni: Guys, I'm 100 percent leaning more towards the idea of wondering, are you even going to get high by the amount that you're eating? I recommend more Cheez-Its. Guys, eat this! Well, I'm not going to eat it.

Dan Pashman: That was my third Cheez-It. And that one had a much stronger flavor of weed than the first two.

Ronni: Okay. Yes, because I didn't, you know, take a syringe and inject anything. I tossed them, you know, in an oil.

Dan Pashman: This is basically like weed roulette we're playing right now.

[LAUGHING]

[OVERTALKING]

Dan Pashman: At this point, I was starting to feel the effects. The next dish was zucchini pancakes, which were, mmm, just the right level of salty. I had one. Jad and Soren each had a couple. It was time for dessert. Mini banana cream pies.

Jad Abumrad: Those are ... Those are awesome. Those are ... Those are the kind that you buy at a ... at like a little county fair or something. I'm having trouble gauging here, cause you said a spoonful and now you're saying half.

Ronni: There is actually — you can calculate how much marijuana you put in per dosage. Something along the lines of each — there's 10 percent of THC per gram of marijuana. I could be wrong. I could be wrong. This is really bad. This is really bad. Let's go back. 

Dan Pashman: Well ...

[LAUGHING]

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Dan Pashman: I know. I know. Yes, you're right. Listening back to this from here in the present, it just seems so obvious. But it's really hard to see those red flags when the banana cream pie just tastes so good.

Soren Wheeler: Yeah, this is the danger zone one.

Dan Pashman: [LAUGHS] Totally.

Soren Wheeler: Of all the things that we've had so far, this one is the threat.

Jad Abumrad: This'll take me right back to 16 right here.

[LAUGHING]

Dan Pashman: At this point, Radiolab producer Ellen Horne chimed in. She had been snacking silently.

Ellen Horne: But that's exactly the problem I have with edibles. Like, I — you know, generally, would want — I'd want there to be a range of options on the market from like shots of tequila to a beer.

Ronni: Mm-hmm

Ellen Horne: And I'd want — you know, like when you go to a bar and can read the percentage alcohol on a beer, that's very helpful.

Ronni: Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Ellen Horne: I don't know ...

Ronni: No, I love that!

Ellen Horne: I think the exciting opportunity here is that there are ... that you could be thinking about the flavor.

Ronni: Yes. The idea, not of just taking a little bite and getting really messed up, but the idea of extending, you know, the art of food and pastry and over the course of time, slowly getting a nice, mild buzz going. That's a beautiful idea. I love that. I live in a very different world, like, that idea came from your world. I live in a world where everyone my age is like, yeah, I want to get really high right now.

Dan Pashman: Right. 

[LAUGHING]

Ronni: Sorry.

Dan Pashman: May I ask your age, Ronni?

Ronni: Yeah, I'm 26.

Soren Wheeler: There really is a tension here. It's an interesting tension about whether this is a delivery system or enjoyable in its own right. I mean, and I started out thinking, oh, what you're up to is a delivery system that is also enjoyable. But is it like … It's weird whether you would actually decide that weed itself as an ingredient would be part of what makes the taste enjoyable?

Ronni: Mm-hmm.

Dan Pashman: Right. Like is it ...

Soren Wheeler: I think that's what you were ...

Dan Pashman: Right. Your question, Soren, is basically like are we just dressing up the delivery system in extra nice clothes.

Soren Wheeler: Right. And managing the buzz and making it civilized and nice and okay for parents or people who have to finish podcasts, you know ...

[LAUGHING]

Soren Wheeler: Or are you somehow, like, interested in stepping into a world where it's like, I'm going to make that earthy, herby weed taste a part of what you want to get out of this piece of garlic bread.

Dan Pashman: Before we wrapped up, Ellen asked us each to take stock. Jad went first.

Jad Abumrad: I'm feeling, um, um ... I'm feeling very ... I'm feeling very ... very relaxed. [LAUGHS]

Ronni: Yeah.

Jad Abumrad: And happy.

Ronni: Okay.

Jad Abumrad: So thank you, this was really fun.

Ronni: I had a blast.

Dan Pashman: I love that, Jad, you came in here with certain trepidations and about halfway through you just put your foot on the pedal. [LAUGHS]

Ronni: You guys are awesome.

Soren Wheeler: Put his face into the banana cream pie.

Ellen Horne: How would you describe how you feel in alcohol terms or like, what's the — is this like one margarita? Is this …

Soren Wheeler: I mean, not to oversell it, but this to me feels about, like, on that particular very good evening in the backyard when I hit two and a half beers and it was just the right amount.

Ronni: Mm-hmm.

Dan Pashman: When I talked to this guy who wrote You Suck At Drinking, he lists different inebriation levels. It defines number three as being, like, the unicorn. Like it's the perfect level where you're really feeling it. You feel good, but you're totally in control. You're not inclined to do karaoke, you know? And he basically said like, but you're balanced on a knife's edge and you can't maintain it. So I feel like I have had a good number of drinks, but I'm like, you know, I'm not gonna be throwing up in a gutter anytime soon.

Soren Wheeler: I'm riding the unicorn.

Dan Pashman: [LAUGHS]

Ronni: Nice! [APPLAUDS] Amazing!

Soren Wheeler: I would ... You know, as a buzz manager, you've been a very, very good one.

Ronni: Thank you.

Dan Pashman: You complimented Ronni on being an excellent buzz manager, and I agree. But, call me in an hour. [LAUGHS] We're not off this train yet.

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Dan Pashman: When we come back, I'll tell you what happened to each of us after we went our separate ways. Stay with us.

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+++ BREAK +++

 

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Dan Pashman: Welcome back to The Sporkful, I’m Dan Pashman. In the next couple of months are jam packed with events all over the country and the world! Sporkful's going international and I want to see you. On September 14th, I'll be in London at The London Podcast Festival doing a live taping of The Sporkful with comedian Ed Gamble, who's also the co-host of the podcast Off Menu. Ed is hilarious, it's gonna be great. Then October, I'm going all over the place in honor of National Pasta Month. I’ll be in Brooklyn, teaming up with Edy’s Grocer for a one-night only dinner. I’ll be doing a virtual cooking class, so you can join from anywhere! I’ll also be in Las Vegas, Toronto, and Canandaigua, New York for book talks, classes, demos, and more. For details and tickets in all these events, check out Sporkful.com/events. That's Sporkful.com/events. Okay, back to the reheat.

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Dan Pashman: To recap, we finished eating. We all felt pretty good. We went our separate ways. And that's when things started to turn bad. Here's Jad:

Jad Abumrad: The room was spitting. I couldn't quite coordinate my movements. Getting to the cab, every time I blinked, I literally would forget where I was. [FLASH SOUND EFFECT]Like I was like, I couldn't — I didn't remember if I was in Manhattan or if I was in Brooklyn. What am I doing in this cab? [EERIE SOUND] The continuity that is the sort of the thread of life was gone and it stayed gone for like a whole day and a half. [EERIE SOUNDS]

Dan Pashman: I was in a cab home and my head just felt so heavy. I was feeling sort of carsick. Most of what I remember from the ride is like flashes, like a flashbulb went off and my brain captured an image. Going up 6th Avenue. [FLASH SOUND EFFECT] Flashbulb. Coming out of the Midtown Tunnel. Flashbulb. [FLASH SOUND EFFECT] Pulling into my driveway. [FLASH SOUND EFFECT] Flashbulb.

Dan Pashman: It was late. My wife was already sleeping. I went straight up to bed. I was trying to put on a T-shirt, and I couldn't figure out why it was so dark in the bedroom. The lights were off, but it's not usually so dark in there, like, I couldn't see anything. I was like, "Are my eyes open? I think they're open, but maybe they aren't." So I opened them as wide as possible, like, bugged them out. They were definitely open, but still, darkness.

Dan Pashman: Soren's experience was about as bad. Ellen’s was even worse.

Ellen Horne: By the time I got to New Jersey to take an Uber home, I didn't really know where I was and couldn't help the Uber driver find my house. And then I actually, like, woke up my husband at 4 a.m. Like, I think I need to go to the hospital. Like, I was in a really, like, very bad state and he was like ... He talked me down. He's like, here's ... I'm gonna get you some water, you're gonna be okay. You just need time.

Soren Wheeler: That was not a good experience. 

Jad Abumrad: No, that was a terrible experience. 

Soren Wheeler: It's funny now, but it was not a good experience. It's not an experience I haven't had before, it's one I have had before, and I find these things manageable, but it was not good, and we were supposedly being careful. I thought that we had stumbled across the holy grail of a nice meal that leaves you with a happy unicorn buzz.

Jad Abumrad: Hm.

Soren Wheeler: Maybe one of the things to take away here is that you get in there even with a certain sense of caution, but you've got some other people around ... and it's food! It's a horrible feedback loop.

Jad Abumrad: That's the problem, right? That's the problem. 

Soren Wheeler: It's this positive feedback loop, which is actually not at all positive, but it sends you into a spiral. And somebody else had a bite, and they wonder about how it tastes. Oh, I'll have another bite ... It just becomes this thing where you lose the connection between the thing that you're putting them in your mouth and the thing that you're actually putting in your mouth.

Jad Abumrad: See, that's the problem that I had, is it's like a ... It's like a problem of translation. You're translating pot into this thing, and I don't know how much is in there, I don't know what effect one bite is going to have. And so, the whole time we're sitting there wondering, like, I don't know, are we going to feel anything? And it was weird to me that, like, when it came, it just landed on me with such an intensity. It looked like it was like, you ... Done!

Dan Pashman: Right. [LAUGHS]

Jad Abumrad: You will do nothing for the next day and a half. You are over!

Dan Pashman: Right. [LAUGHS] And I was like, I had no ... [LAUGHS] I had no concept that that was about to happen.

Soren Wheeler: I think ... If I walked away with some words for myself in the future, it would be, know your baker.

[LAUGHING]

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Dan Pashman: So, I wanted to find out, I mean, is it just that simple? Did Ronni just lead us astray? Or is some of this an inherent problem with all edibles? I talked to Professor Margaret Haney, who runs the Marijuana Research Lab at Columbia University Medical Center.

Margaret Haney: Edibles are not keeping me awake at night, but it's more, you know, 15-year-olds smoking repeatedly throughout the day.

Dan Pashman: She says drugs that hit you faster are more likely to be abused, so that makes smoking and vaping a larger concern. Edibles come on slower because they have to go through the digestive system. But with edibles, the risk of a bad experience is higher.

Margaret Haney: People vary tremendously in the effect of consuming the drug. So one person might eat the same amount as another and feel a much stronger effect, and that's just going to depend on that person's body chemistry. Marijuana smokers are very good at titrating their effects. So if it's very strong marijuana, they smoke less. If it's weak, they smoke more. They get to the place they want to get to. And they can do that because the effects come on so quickly. But with eating it, you cannot do that. So again, it's going to be a real experiment with yourself to find something you're comfortable with.

Dan Pashman: All right. So clearly part of where we got into trouble is that Ronni's just got a much higher tolerance than we do. A weak dose for her is a strong dose for us, but I got to say, I have a hard time believing the dose she gave us was weak by anyone's standards. So, was it just unreasonable for us to expect her to have that level of control?

Gabriel Reeves: It is the hardest thing to predict the potency of your edibles without any sort of quantification.

Dan Pashman: Remember how I told you that good chefs were leaving their restaurants to get into cooking with cannabis?

Gabriel Reeves: My name is Gabriel Reeves. I am chef, teacher, and lab technician at Elemental Wellness Center in San Jose, California. 

Dan Pashman: Chef Gabriel worked in fine dining. He was even a chef at Google's corporate headquarters. Now he's at a medical marijuana dispensary.

Gabriel Reeves: The amount of cannabis in each flower varies so much with each harvest that the only way we can really standardize is through scientific quantification. And I spent years making cookies and brownies and cake, pie, everything I could think of, and I would never really know how potent it was until I ate one.

Dan Pashman: Have you had bad experiences with it?

Gabriel Reeves: Absolutely. There's a lot that I'm still understanding, and a lot of dishes I won't put it in, because I — if I can't teach an effective way to incorporate the medicine into that individual recipe, then I won't teach it to my students, so I feel like I've done the due diligence in the test kitchen with it.

Dan Pashman: So even for Chef Gabriel, getting just the right strength is tough. He was trained by chemists at Steep Hill Cannabis Labs to use special equipment to measure dosage. But he says when it's a recipe he's really got down, he can get it pretty consistent without that stuff, within 10 percent of his goal. And when he uses the lab tools?

Gabriel Reeves: Perfect. Perfect consistency.

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Dan Pashman: Yeah. And I'll move over here a little bit. Is this better for you? So you're, like, looking in the right direction.

Ronni: I'm like, I'll loosen up.

Dan Pashman: All right. So Ronni ...

Ronni: Hi!

Dan Pashman: Welcome back.

Ronni: Thank you.

Dan Pashman: First of all, thank you again for putting forth all your effort to make so many delicious foods for us.

Ronni: My pleasure. It was really fun.

Dan Pashman: How much did you eat?

Ronni: Not that much. I had some earlier in the day because I was tasting things and I was working with the product and then so I kind of felt a little messed up and I was like, "Oh gosh, I have to do a podcast, like I've never done this before."

Dan Pashman: So everyone left. I think, having had a good time, certainly. A day and a half later, we, like, went back in the studio and we sort of, like, debriefed and talked about like ...

Ronni: Cool.

Dan Pashman: I played Ronni parts of the conversation you heard earlier. 

Dan Pashman: What are your thoughts on that?

Ronni: Okay. So it's funny. They're like, we were supposedly being careful. [LAUGHS] Okay. I said, especially with the pie, I said one spoonful is probably good. I look over at the guys and they are just, like, licking their fingers clean of the pie. I was ... I knew.

Dan Pashman: Of the four of us, I was actually the only one who said that I would repeat the experience any — not that experience, but an edible, any experience with edibles in the near future.

Ronni: I saw how you ate the food. You were really good. You did, like, a little picking. You know, I brought apps and you picked nicely. You went a little lighter, I think, than the other guys. I really think the banana pie did them in.

Dan Pashman: Right. Although … But I would say that I still ended up with more than I — like, I ended up a lot more high than I wanted to be. I mean, to be clear, we are all grown-ups who knew what we were getting into, you know?

Ronni: Right. Right. Exactly.

Dan Pashman: It's not like you or anybody else was standing on top of anyone forcing food down their throats.

Ronni: No.

Dan Pashman: But I do feel like we were relying on you to a point to sort of guide us to know how much was in what we were eating, how strong it was. You did sort of express a general feeling of like, it's going to be totally fine. I went easy on you.

Ronni: Yes, because ... Okay. So I did feel like, first of all, some of it was a new experience for me. So I know I'm a little defensive because I feel bad. I feel like maybe, you know, I should have been a little more cautious. At one point I looked over at people and I saw a little sweat on their forehead and I was like, "Oh no, this really hit ‘em hard," and like, I felt bad.

Dan Pashman: But so at that moment, why didn't you say, A, like, I really feel that you guys should stop eating, don't eat anything more, and B, like, maybe eat something that doesn't have weed in it to slow down the absorption, because I'm concerned that you ate too much.

Ronni: I wasn't concerned in, like, a "I thought everyone was gonna wake up and think they were dying" sort of way, but I just — I was actually — or I was like, all right, good. Well, like, you know, at least they're getting what, you know, I came for. I went into it thinking like, I better get these guys high. I like overachieved a little bit, I think. I might've overachieved. So in retrospect, [LAUGHS] yeah, I would definitely try to test things.

Dan Pashman: Is the reason why you didn't do a test run because of the economics of it?

Ronni: Yes, definitely. If I had proper funding, and I had the resources to buy a large amount of marijuana and somebody was kind of helping me through that. I would have definitely been able to test and go back and forth. But yeah, it was more of an economical thing.

Dan Pashman: Now, in terms of ways you can avoid this type of outcome in the future, one option is just err on the side of having people start with a nibble and see what happens. But another option, and they're not mutually exclusive, is just make the stuff weaker.

Ronni: Yep. Yep. 

Dan Pashman: You know, like, because I think that that is one of the real dangers as people like you and many others around the country, who have a real expertise in cooking get into edibles, [Ronni: Mm-hmm.] the stuff just tastes so damn good. And it's very hard to hand someone a delicious banana cream pie [Ronni: Right.] and say, eat a half a teaspoon of this. 

Ronni: Right. 

Dan Pashman: So I talked to this guy named Kim DeCesar, who's a researcher at Steep Hill Labs, and Kim has offered to consult with you free of charge to help you refine your methods.

Ronni: That's amazing.

Dan Pashman: So, we'll put you guys in touch.

Ronni: Oh, thank you! That's cool. You know, I've devoted my whole time here learning about French pastry and the culinary arts and baking and the craft behind it. And I'm absolutely in love with every aspect of it. And this, I think, is just an addition to that knowledge. And I can take what he gives me and then take what I know, my expertise in gourmet French baking and, you know, really do something cool.

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Dan Pashman: One more fact before we wrap up. Colorado has legal limits for how strong edibles can be. In the first year after legalization there, they tested almost 4,000 products. Chefs there managed to get 98 percent of the products below the limit. But I still think the eating experience would be a lot better if they were way, way weaker. I mean, if you have a high tolerance, you can always eat a second banana cream pie.

Dan Pashman: Special thanks to Jad Abumrad and Soren Wheeler from Radiolab and to Ellen Horne, who was with Radiolab when we taped this and since moved on. Hi, Ellen. If you're one of the few podcast listeners in the world who doesn't already listen to Radiolab, you really gotta remedy that.

Dan Pashman: Please remember to subscribe to our newsletter so you can be automatically entered into our big summer cookbook giveaway. You have to get your name on the list by Monday, August 29th at noon Eastern. If you're already on the list, you're already entered. Go to sporkful.com/newsletter or text "sporknews" to 69866.

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CREDITS

Dan Pashman: Before we go, did you know that you can listen to The Sporkful on the SiriusXM app? Yes, the SiriusXM app, it has all your favorite podcasts, plus over 200 ad-free music channels curated by genre and era. Plus, live sports coverage! Does your podcasting have that? And there's interviews with A-list stars and so much more. It’s everything you want in a podcast app and music app all rolled into one. And right now Sporkful listeners can get three months free of the SiriusXM app by going to SiriusXM.com/Sporkful.  Until next time, I'm Dan Pashman

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