Cooking With The Nomad Cook

When my 14 day isolation period was over I left the Elements AirBnb rental in Campbell River and headed south to British Columbia’s capital, Victoria. I rented a loft in the city and set up shop for the next two weeks, stocking the kitchen full of food and booking a long list of guests for this little IG Live project, Cooking with The Nomad Cook. I was able to secure harmonious partnerships with Lab Effects, CBD Global and Fire & Flower. Going forward, each Thursday would become #terpenethursdays, and we would kick off the show with Lab Effects founder Scott Holden our terpene expert.  

In the first two weeks of April I had the pleasure of interviewing Jeff The 420 Chef, Leather Storrs from Netflix’s Cooked with Cannabis, Chef Pete Evans, Chef Kelvin Fernandez, Chef Jose De Jesus, Chef Scott Vivian, Leonardo of Famigila Baldassare, Matt Basile of Fidel Gastro’s, former NHL’er Eric Gryba, CFL’er Justin Renfrow, Social Media Influencer Karissa Pukas and many more interesting people from all over North American & the world.

Having to present a dish each night at 6:30 for Cooking with The Nomad Cook was inspiring me to relearn the joy of cooking for oneself. I’ll be honest, I had lost that. If I wasn’t cooking for someone else or creating something to serve for a future event, I wasn’t interested. Covid-19 was giving me time to focus on myself, and I was starting to see and feel the changes inside. 

Paradise, Quadra Island

On April 14th I headed back up north Vancouver Island to our family home on Quadra Island. With Spot Prawns in season, it was time to get out on the water. Like everyone else, the boredom associated with isolation through Covid-19 has been hard at times, with everyday falling into the next. I feel extremely lucky that I have the freedom to move around every couple of weeks and change up my scenery. 

Having received a sample package from Lab Effects just before leaving Victoria, I was very excited to start playing around with them. The package contained cannabis derived terpenes like Limonene, Myrcene, Caryophyllene, Pinene and Linalool, as well as blends ranging from Blueberry Yum, Pineapple Express, Chocolate Thai and Sour Diesel just to name a few. Terpenes are essential oils, some with therapeutic effects that are beneficial to the body when combined with CBD or THC. They are extremely potent and when used in food, only require a couple drops. They have individual boiling/evaporating points, so you can only apply in certain situations with sauces or food. In my opinion, the real future of culinary cannabis will be CBD & Terpenes. To share the power of Terpenes and how to incorporate them into your daily diet, I am using this time to write my first cook book! In the meantime check out my show Cooking with The Nomad Cook every Thursday and let me know what you want to learn to make! 

Pass It Forward & Get It Together

Shaabhaz Kara (Marketing Manager Lift & Co.) and I talked about options for the upcoming 420. Obviously with everyone restricted to stay home, we both saw an opportunity to do something virtually that could give back to the community. With Robert Tyndale recently joining as the new Creative Director for The Nomad Cook, we now had the ability to put together a higher production quality than I had been seeing with Instagram Live. Robert utilized an app that allowed us to interview multiple guests, interact with our viewers and support a Go Fund Me we started for the Second Harvest foundation. Over a 3.5 hour broadcast we interviewed 3 Canadian culinary icons; Chef Jermey Charles, Chef Justin Leboe and Chef Matthew Stowe, as well as cannabis industry insiders Shai (@thebusybudtender, Brett Feldman (@wonderbrett), Jamie Evans (@theherbsomme) and Cobb Keen (@matchstickmarijuana). Jodie B (@jodiebmusic) and Ayaz (@ayazvmusic) capped off the day, each performing a 20-minute set. We had prize giveaways from Levo Oil, Anova Culinary, Hippie Snacks, Gear Premium, Nektr Extracts and@the_nomadcook. We were able to raise $1150 for Second Harvest and overall made the most out of one the strangest 420’s anyone of us have ever experienced.

The most wildest thing to happen all month, however,  would come in the form of an opportunity with one of Hip Hop’s greatest; The Beastie Boys. While standing in grocery store line up I received a call from Herb founder, Matt Gray, asking if he could put me in touch with the Beastie Boys management team reading a cooking video they were looking for 420. With the release of their documentary Beastie Boys Story on April 24th, they wanted to find a chef that could take one of their recipes from their biography book (which was created by Chef Roy Choi) and make a quick video to it. Without hesitation I jump at it and two days later was taping my Samsung Galaxy to the ceiling of my kitchen for that perfect birds eye view. I would make the BBQ Pineapple Grilled Macaroni Cheese Sandwich paired with their hit song Get It Together. Robert Tyndale would do his magic working until the late hours of the night on April 19th editing and on the morning of 420, both of us were grinning ear to ear. Of all the projects we’ve done together,the one filmed on a cell phone would receive the most views.