Pot chef Jesse Monroe Alexander

Jesse Monroe Alexander is a farmer in Stagecoach, and he recently published the cannabis cookbook The Guide To Being A Master Edible Chef Vol. 1: Cannabis Industry Secrets Revealed. It’s available though Amazon, and Alexander hopes to have it in Northern Nevada bookstores and dispensaries soon.

How did you get into this?

I grew up out in Hawthorne, and I was born in Carson City, so I’m a lifelong Nevadan. I’ve lived all over the state. I ended up getting sick when I was about 13. There was a problem with my knees, and my grandparents took me in and got me checked out. We found out that I had Osgood–Schlatter [Disease], which is a bone growth disorder. It makes little nodules of bone in my joints, and it feels like it’s sand rubbing together inside my skin. It’s constant pain, and I’ve had to live with it forever. And I ended up becoming a drug addict because of it—a stimulant addict. And during the addiction, I found that they were treating people back in China 10,000 years ago for opium addiction by using cannabis. And I self treated, and I ended up kicking the addiction completely. I have no urge for it. It also ended up taking care of the pain and the anxiety problem I had.

Some people might say you’re just trading one addiction for another. What’s your response to that?

As somebody who was an addict, I remember what it was like to actually crave stimulants, and how bad that really was and the withdrawal involved. I can take cannabis and stop for a month. I’ll be in pain, but I’m not driving myself to go find it. I’m not willing to steal or hurt people to get cannabis.

Tell me about the book.

I actually wrote a cookbook. It’s the first of three. I took a different method than what most people see in the cannabis cookbooks, which usually involves a long, stinky process of creating an infused oil or butter or fat of some sort. I did a little bit of research involving dry ice and the extraction of that, and it makes edibles actually taste better, and it makes it far easier to accurately dose your edibles. … Most recipes involve taking the flower and putting it directly in the oil, what you’re trying to get to is the oil that’s sitting on the outside of that plant material, so instead of wasting all this time and energy trying to get the chlorophyll and everything else of the plant, we’re going to use dry ice and hash bags, and remove that oil prior to the infusion process. That way, you get a base weight of what you’re putting in, which is actually pure material, and it makes it way easier to know how much you’re putting in, dosage-wise.

What are your favorite recipes?

The sweet and spicy Sriracha cashews. I modified a Naturebox recipe to make that edible. … Another great recipe that I really like is the marshmallows. I watched the Food Network for a couple of years watching them making different versions of marshmallows, and took the dry ice extract that we use in our book and figured out how to bond that directly to it without an infusion process.

Do you have an interest in selling these things commercially or is this just stuff for home use?

I actually have been trying to get a job in the industry for five or six years, and every time I try, I either don’t blend with their company or the state directly stopped me from trying to build a brand early and get into the second round of the medical market. So in retaliation to both of them, I decided to start giving away cannabis industry secrets.