Liv in Willamette Week!

"Liv Vasquez is on a mission to redefine stoner culture through food.

The chef—who started culinary school at 16 and owned two restaurants in New York by 22—makes a living catering high-end soirees and pop-ups which consist solely of cannabis-infused dishes. She's been flown to Napa Valley, Los Angeles and New York for events that range from weed-and-wine pairings to cannabis fashion shows..."

- Read the entire Wilamette Week Article 

Here -https://www.wweek.com/culture/2018/09/25/liv-vasquez-wants-her-highbrow-edibles-to-show-the-world-that-stoner-culture-isnt-just-brownies-and-basements/

High Noon Brunch March 30th, 2018

I have been a chef for close to 20 years, I stopped cooking professionally after closing my last restaurant in New York.
In the last year I have started planning these cannabis dining adventures.

For my latest High Nonn Brunch, I brought table-to-farm and threw an elegant party in a greenhouse. As a chef, being able to go to the soil, pick an ingredient, then cook and serve it to guests, was so incredible.
I organize these events and make every element and every bite special, it is a labor of love. It is expensive and a lot of people dont get it...but for those people who take a risk and sign up for my events I will always deliver something unique and special. Cooking like this has brought passion back to my life and to my food. I just had to share with you other food folks...sometimes our relationship with cooking can be a rocky one, and after this weekend, it feels like I renewed my vows.

I have been a chef for close to 20 years, I stopped cooking professionally after closing my last restaurant in New York.

In the last year I have started planning these cannabis dining adventures. This weekend, I brought table-to-farm and threw an elegant party in a greenhouse. As a chef, being able to go to the soil, pick an ingredient, then cook and serve it to guests, was so incredible. 

I organize these events and make every element and every bite special, it is a labor of love. It is expensive and a lot of people dont get it...but for those people who take a risk and sign up for my events I will always deliver something unique and special. Cooking like this has brought passion back to my life and to my food. I just had to share with you other food folks...sometimes our relationship with cooking can be a rocky one, and after this weekend, it feels like I renewed my vows.

High In The Sky - The Menu

Now lets talk about the food and drinks of "High In The Sky"...

 If you take your eyes off of the beautiful sunset and surroundings for one second you can probably see me making cocktails in the background of this picture. The drink that I'm making was to start our culinary Adventure by activating the endocannabinoid system. My intention with this cocktail, (That I called The Stoned Hemingway) was to get a nice dose of THC-A and CBD into the guest's system. I muddled mint leaves and cannabis fan leaves in with grapefruit juice, orange bitters, a little bit of vodka and a CBD simple syrup and soda water to make this drink. Everyone got one of these cocktails to start the meal, and to lay down the cannabanoid groundwork for everyone to have a good time. The Grapefruit and Mint flavors of the cocktail were to pair with the flavors of our Spearmint and GrapefruitSelect CBDpens so when you took a puff and sip, all of the flavors would co-mingle in harmony.

When it came to the food of High In The Sky I went with a vegan menu, and I wanted to give a nod to breakfast in every course, since my previous event was High Noon Brunch, this past April.  

So we started off with a First Course of a savory Root Vegetable "Pop Tart" that was filled with a maple, pecan chutney and delicata squash, I served that side by side with a roasted butternut squash soup that was topped with an olive oil that I had infused with sage and Cannabis (5 mgs of CO2 derived THC Distillate provided by the amazing people at Select Oil). 

Each plate was individually Dosed  after it was cooked. This was to ensure that none of the cannabinoids got cooked off so that I could account for all of them. This made for a more precise dose in every dish.  

This along with the @select_CBD pens that were on each place setting, made for a very balanced start for each guest at our little Cannabis adventure.
I wanted this event to be vegan so that everyone digested their dose a bit quicker and to showcase some of my favorite vegan recipes. 

One of the experimental measures that I took to make sure that everyone who attended this dinner was within the same age range. A lot of the studies that I read and lectures that I have audited have suggested that age range has more to do with absorption than weight or height. This also helped to almost guarantee that people would have commonalities to strike up conversation at each table.

The 2nd Course was beautiful and simple. Grilled, marinated asparagus with a vegan hollandaise sauce, topped with a micro green salad that was tossed in an Lemon and RSO vinaigrette. I compared the lemon notes in this vinaigrette to the terpene "limonene". This course had 4mgs of THC and 3mgs of CBD.

For the Hollondaise sauce I used Hot For Food's hollandaise sauce recipe and it was so perfect!

This recipe incorporated lots of lemon and nutritional yeast to give it a nice creamy but also acidic flavor which really tasted incredible with the grilled, marinated asparagus.

(Check out Hot For Food on Youtube for amazing vegan recipes and meal ideas!)

We then took a 20 minute "Intermission"so that guests could enjoy the incredible view from the Downtown Los Angeles rooftop with a Mango cocktail that was infused with 5 mgs of THC in a vanilla bean tincture made from THC Distillate.
Most cannabis users have dealt with anxiety or restless legs, so the intermission is a nice break for guests to stand up, stretch their legs, check their phone and not feel like they are just stuck in their seat.

The myrcene compounds found in mango can increase, strengthen and even lengthen the euphoric feeling of marijuana. So giving the guests a mango cocktail during this break was to increase the amount of terpenes that they were ingesting.

 Marijuana contains more than 100 terpene molecules that are responsible for affecting THC in the brain and giving highs their ebbs and flows. But marijuana contains the myrcene terpene more than any other kind. So, the mango juice, and cannabis in this cocktail worked together to carry over the high of each guest.

When guests returned to their tables we went right in to the Main Course, a 3 day Vegan Bolognese sauce made with heirloom tomatoes, soy and seitan, that was topped with grilled "Grits" or polenta and a creamy cashew mozzarella. This dish was dosed with about 5 mgs of decarbed flower under the vegan Mozzarella (made with Miyoko's Kitchen), the herbaceous flavor of the flower played really well with the fresh Oregano and Basil in the dish.

The point of this was to show guests that you do not HAVE to infuse flower into fat directly to absorb it.

Next I bridge the gap between the Main course and the dessert course with a seasonal cocktail that I call "Nug Nog", which consisted of 1 shot of home made Kalua that was infused with a cbd tincture, Soy Egg Nog, and some chocolate almond milk.

This drink was actually a shout out to one of my guests who asked me to make a vegan eggnog recipe for her on my instagram last year around the same time.

We finished out our meal with a layered dessert that consisted of a layer of Egg Nog cashew cheesecake, a layer of Chocolate and Coffee aquafaba creme and topped with a crunchy Speculoos crumble that consisted of 5 mgs of THC that was infused in vegan butter.
This was my first time working with Aquafaba and seeing the water from a can of beans whip up EXACTLY like egg whites made me feel more like a scientists than even converting percentages into milligrams could!

So the entire meal was around 30 mgs of THC and a LOT of CBD in layers so for guests the experience was more like wading into water more than waves crashing over you. 

I covered a lot of ground with this dinner, I got to speak with so many people about cannabis science, theories,  and food. 

So for me it was basically a dream date with a lot of amazing *cannabis enthusiasts. (Weed nerds**) 

I can not wait to show you guys what I have planned for Napa in January...

Stay tuned! 

All professional photos taken at High In The Sky were taken by Forest Casey.