Mini Marijuana Pumpkin Pie Recipe

It’s Thanksgiving and you have smoked your turkey and now it is time to get baked with your four closest buds. What better way to do it than with a tiny pie? This recipe makes four mini pumpkin pies and remembers, you can always adjust the amount of cannabis you put in according to your tolerance level.

Ingredients:
Crust
1 1/3 cup all-purpose flour
5 tablespoons vegetable shortening
1 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
5 tablespoons unsalted butter
5 to 6 tablespoons ice water

Filling:
1 can (14 or 15 ounces) sweetened condensed milk
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1/4 teaspoon ground cloves
1 can (14 ounces) pumpkin (not pumpkin pie filling)
1 gram finely ground hash or kief
2 large eggs
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
1 teaspoon ginger

Crust:
Treat them like you are Dexter, chop the butter and the shortening in to small chunks and place it in the freezer for 15 minutes.
While the butter is getting cold, toss in the sugar, flour, and salt in a food processor and blend everything together.
Add in the cold butter/shortening mix and pulse until everything is looks like a bunch of crumbs.
Take the mixture out of the food processor and put in to a large mixing bowl.
Add in the ice water and mix together with your hands until it balls up and is a little wet.
Pat the dough in to a disk and wrap it with plastic wrap, carefully setting it in the fridge for about 20 minutes before removing it and rolling. Cut the dough into quarters.
Take a quarter and place it on a piece of wax paper and sprinkle it with flour. Cover it with another piece of wax paper and use a rolling pin to roll the dough in to a circle to form your mini pie crust.
Put your rolled crust in to a pie pan and press the edges in firmly to make your pie forms correctly. Place the crusts in the freezer to harden while you now make the crust.
PRO TIP: If you don’t have tiny pie tins then use a muffin pan! Multi-tasker is good.

The Filling:
Take a large mixing bowl and beat the eggs with a mixer until they’re frothy.
Add in the pumpkin, salt, cinnamon, nutmeg, hash/kief, vanilla, cloves, sweetened condensed milk, and ginger.
Beat everything until it’s well combined.
Pour the mixture in to the prepared crusts that you have ready and bake them for about 15 minutes at 350 degrees. (Small pies make for quicker baking).
Check their centers with a toothpick and if they come away clean, the pies are ready. If not, continue to check them at 5 minute intervals until the toothpick comes out clean.

Share and enjoy.

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Affordable Health is here.: Health Insurance Washington 2016

Affordable Health is here.: Health Insurance Washington 2016: The first week of open enrollment has been exciting. We have had some new customers and some old. When we first started and I looked at t...

I didn't know that there are over 180 total plans that the exchange was offering. Even when I narrow it down to county, I am often sorting through 72 health insurance plans. Do not be over whelmed grab a broker. There is no charge to using one and they are trained and can advise how plans function. The smartest people that I know use advisors all the time.

Can my kids get poisened from Halloween candy?

Happy Halloween!! As a dad and a professional in the Cannabis Insurance Industry, I get a flood of scary things about the creepy neighbor down the street poisoning my 9 year old. Last year it was from the newly licensed Recreational Marijuana Stores in Washington and Colorado. It appears to have dropped off the social media darling list for now but I think that the week is just starting.

We have Police Department.
We have Forbes.
Snopes talks about it.
Wikipedia talks about it.

Let’s skip beyond the obvious that Edibles can be expensive or who would think of doing that to a kid doing Trick-Or-Treating. How many kids have been poisoned over the years from Halloween?

I am going to go with a Professional, Joel Best, a sociologist at the University of Delaware who specializes in candy tampering legends. Best looked into all the newspapers published between 1958 to 1983 and found fewer than 90 instances that might have qualified for actual candy tampering. Of those, he found five child deaths initially thought to be caused by homicidal strangers but none were investigated. For example, one was a child eating uncle’s heroin stash. A child is more likely to be injured by being struck by a car than finding candy laced by strangers.

So when Halloween rolls around have fun. Send the kids Trick-or-Treating making sure that they can see and be seen. Check the candy for anything damaged. Have fun because the odds are favor that you will get sicker from all the sugar than anything drug laced. Don’t believe the hype and have fun. If you want to talk about insuring a Cannabis business then give me a call.

How do I start a Marijuana Business?

These days it seems like everyone is trying to find out how to start a marijuana business. Some call it a ‘Green Rush’ others just smart business. After all of these years working around the industry, I have developed some tips:

1. Walk away from the $9,000 lawyers and talk to an assortment of experts. One of the best is the 420college. They have classes in a bunch of states and assemble some of the best people that I have met in the industry. It is also at the most reasonable prices with the ability to come back.
2. Select a specialized accountant. The 280E is no joke. Find someone that will work with you and not just take information from you. Al Capone was snagged for taxes don’t be that person.
3. Select an insurance expert. Find someone that is current in the industry. You shop for experts, let your experts shop for products. They can even start advising you on underwriting pitfalls such as protecting your marijuana in a particular size of safe so that it can be insured.
4. Select a legal expert. Find someone that understands the laws. For example in Oregon there are some areas that will not allow a marijuana business.
5. Join an association and find out what associations your experts are in. Not only do some associations you get benefits, you also can meet other professionals and educate yourself. In Washington, I recommend checking out Coalition for Cannabis Standards and Ethics as they are a good mix of benefits, lobbying and networking.
6. Build a business plan and understand product flow, people flow and cash flow. Do not bank on product selling itself and that bad things won’t happen to you. I have seen dispensaries shut down for Robberies and wind wiping out crops.

This is a business like any other with thousands of people wanting to make money. Many of which will not set themselves apart by doing the hard work and learning everything that they can. It is not for everybody. Good luck, I look forward to seeing you out there.

Lloyds and Marijuana Insurance

I get questions about Lloyds and Insuring the Cannabis Industry on a regular basis. It can be from a new client in Colorado to an old one in Washington asking about renewals. (The two questions that I have had this week).

There are actually quite a few articles on the subject talking about how horrible this event is however I have found the experience refreshingly old school. I tend to refer people to industry Articles about Lloyds leaving the business.

Today was the first time that I got a hard copy letter from the carrier stating the end of Lloyd’s and Marijuana Insurance. Check it out:

It had little effect for my clients because the previous February, I switched over to Hannover as a primary carrier. I work with multiple companies. It is an ongoing process to see what company can do for different categories of clients. I have literally told client’s if they find a company that is better than the one I am using then let me know as I am more than happy to add on to my offering.

Insurance has always been about the customer. Picking good insurance involves picking a good broker.

We will fire no weed before it's time.

This weekend was Hempfest in Seattle. 24 years of the Marijuana community coming together and having a huge party. There are bands on stage. There has been Bong-A-Thons. Celebrities show up like Tommy Chong and Woody Harrelson. Then why was I 180 miles east?

I was in for a Man –I-juana weekend. It was a week ends of firsts and of high danger. This was not a Kumbaya love fest where everyone holds hands. This was a joint smoking, beer swilling, everyone grabs a shovel to save the Farm weekend. I got in late Friday evening when one of my clients called about Chelan being fired and what was his coverages. From that we developed a plan.

We were going to talk in the morning and evaluate the situation, get power running and the farm up and running. The farm survived the night as it raged on one mountain side. The sheriff ordered an Evacuation level three (everyone out because of danger) and at one point told them that ‘they wanted that pot farm to burn to the ground.’

When I showed up the entrance to the valley was blocked and the sheriff was not letting anyone in. By checking the map, I saw that there were other entrances that got to where I needed to be so I found a secondary route into the valley. I got to drive over some power lines and headed to the farm.

I had my first introduction to the team and the first silver bullet for the night. There was ash raining down in the air as we checked the electrical lines for the greenhouses. Since everything was 110 plugs, it was a matter of running electrical cords with a generator. I had a 135 watt solar panel with an 800 watt inverter attached to the deep cycle battery. I need a better battery pack and possibly a stronger inverter. It was weird that with so much going on there was no cell services so my wife wouldn’t get my call until I hitched a ride into town.

Before diner a woodpile flared up across the way and so we grabbed shovels and went for it. A couple of the neighbors showed up with an Orchard sprayer and shovels. The neighbors were amazed that an Insurance guy would be out in the smoke with everyone and they gripped that they couldn’t get coverage for their cherries. There was a good dirt road to act as a barrier and the first appearance of the fire department. We hung out and found out that they weren’t going to do anything major until structures were threatened. This means that crops and livestock were not on the list to be saved and for the most part we were on our own.

We retreated for the food and to watch the hillside slowly burn. Booze, burgers and joints were passed around as we talked under the glow of the wildfire until one by one the majority crawled into a bed. There were rockslides, burning logs and bleating goats to wake everyone on a regular basis. Every couple of hours a spot light from the road would shine up at the fires. We would all say to each other, ’Yup that’s a fire,’ to highlight the ridiculous attitude of the officials. A few of the guys stood watch throughout the night. We knew if it hit the hay field then we could lose everything in a firestorm.

I rolled out of bed around 5:30 as the fire was to the first hay field. The fire department finally made an appearance with an engine. After a coffee run and what seemed like hours of debate. They finally let the farmer disk the field and the fire to burn itself out. We retreated again for food and work as the fire department watched the situation from a comfortable distance.

After we got generators up and running for the green house fans, it was pretty clear that the action was done and my smoky butt should go home. After a day and a half, I felt like I rubbed myself with cheap grocery store bacon. We learned some good lessons.

1. Don’t expect the police to be friendly despite doing a legal business.
2. Do expect the power to go out.
3. Do build a way to defend property against fire and a team that will fight.
4. Do look at insurance coverages for property to give you options.

Man –I-juana is a the can do spirit of the entrepreneur that will fight to build an industry. Will stand and deliver when others run from the fight. You may never see any of the guys that I say on a main stage celibrating, they are too busy with the hard work of fighting fires with shovels.

Having your business survive a Wildfire.

I started fielding calls last night for the latest round of Wildfires in Eastern Washington. With high winds, draught conditions and lightning strikes it made for a long night. Some of the best growers in the state are in remote areas that property coverage when possible is costly. With the trends of the last couple of years, the price of fire insurance for property will continue to rise. Insurance is to get you able to rebuild. Yes, it can be costly however do you want to start from zero or do you want to have money to rebuild?

One of the first things that I talk about is defendable space. Clearing brush and barren roads help reduce the chances of fire jumping. There are plants that resist wildfire better than others. Remember it is only a reduction. Keep sprinklers running to reduce flare ups on your outdoor crops. Last night was a grim reminder no barrier is 100% effective as we had fire jump the Columbia River. At almost a mile across, residents consider it one of the best barriers for fire and it failed. If you are ordered to evacuate then get out.

The major issue for remote location is power. You cannot run your fans or your pumps with no power. Some of my guys favor small generators but quite a few are on solar. I am taking out my Teardrop trailer today. It has a 135 Watt panel on top and with an inverter; I can run a large portion of a client’s farm. The lack of power left large portions of last year vulnerable during last year’s season.

Lastly, if your crops get hit by the fire retardant, rinse off as soon as possible or else your plants’ leaves will burn. It can stain paint and discolor metal. Don’t let pets drink from puddles.

Good luck out there and stay safe.