Search Results: ganja (307)

Building gingerbread houses in elementary school usually involved fastening stale cookies to a milk carton, gluing some gumdrops and mints onto your uneven shack with frosting, and watching Frosty the Snowman for the 23rd time. Wasn’t it the best?

Forgetting the fun, childlike traditions of the holidays is a quick way to become a Grinch. In an effort to preserve the holiday spirit during such tough times, we decided to infuse a gingerbread house with about as much weed as we could.

There are two ways to approach this — or three, if you have enough money and really want to be home for Christmas this year: Infuse the gingerbread, decorate a normal gingerbread house with edibles, or both. Check out our ganjabread building effort below. Merry Loudmas!

Thanks to online retail, you don’t have to get stuck at the mall during holiday shopping season. That doesn’t eliminate the stress of choosing the right gifts, though: After pondering all the possibilities, many of us fall back on buying a bottle of booze, some golf balls or a gift card. But since Colorado has an entirely different spectrum of presents — the pot-related kind — from which to choose, why not take full advantage of those options?

Although it’s about to conclude four years of legal recreational sales, our state’s cannabis industry continues to innovate, creating products and consumption methods that were unheard of when this grand experiment started in 2014. The CBD craze has only added to that, giving us another platform for cannabis use, one that employs the same consumption methods for very different effects.

To impress both the stoners and the squares on your list, here are six cannabis gift ideas guaranteed to be a hit during the holidays — and beyond.

Witches Weed

Whether you’re toking up before eating your children’s candy, getting high to inspire jack-o-lantern designs or enhancing the visual aspects of The Nightmare Before Christmas (it’s not just a Christmas flick), you’ll find that cannabis can come in handy during Halloween season. And as with pumpkin beers and witches’ brew, there are plenty of scary strains to heighten the spirit.

Below are ten Halloween-friendly strains we’ve recently reviewed, all of which are routinely available in the Denver area. This ghastly mix of OGs, uplifting sativas, melting indicas and more will have you coughing at the moon in no time — and if you’re stuck in a pumpkin patch without a pipe, check out this guide on how to make pipes out of harvest fruits and vegetables. 

Ladies, unhook your bras. The Ganja Goddess Getaway is coming to Los Angeles (well, Palm Springs, but it’s basically the same thing at this point right?).
Founded by two powerhouse women in the cannabis industry, this women’s-only overnighter is intended to celebrate sisterhood, tear down the walls of inhibition and put cannabis to use as a “creative and spiritual tool.” Four weekends a year, at outdoorsy locations in both Northern and Southern California, this weed-centric trip brings together 75 to 100 ladies for glamping, dancing, yoga classes and a little “Puff, Puff, Craft” time. You can take a hike in the desert, a dip in the hot tub, or get your tarot cards read, all in the name of “radical self-love.”

“Some people are very lucky — everything they touch works for them,” laments Steve Horwitz, owner of Ganja Gourmet. “But for whatever reason, ever since I opened this business I’ve had a black cloud around me. Pretty much nothing has worked the way it should have or could have.”

Horwitz, a seasoned salesman in his fifties with a hearty Long Island accent and a gold chain around his neck, doesn’t take no for an answer, though; he just shifts his approach and tries again. Over the past eight years — the period during which the marijuana industry exploded in Denver — he’s changed his business model four times. He opened Ganja Gourmet at 1810 South Broadway in late 2009 as a medical marijuana restaurant (and one of the first spots William Breathes reviewed), turned it into a takeout joint in 2010, transformed it into a medical dispensary in 2011, then changed it into a medical/recreational store in 2015. Now, to keep up with the times, Horwitz is gearing up to stamp his candy logo on wholesale edibles and partner with a smoke room once social consumption is allowed.

Every startup has its challenges, but a cannabis startup comes with additional challenges. Entrepreneurs who want to get in the business face a unique set of hurdles, including ever-changing regulations, legal issues and struggles to set up the right team.

Canopy, a Boulder-based business accelerator program and venture fund for the cannabis industry, chooses ten new enterprises every year for its mentorship and business-building program. The first class graduated in 2015; this year’s companies range from a robotics endeavor to a real estate outfit to an eco-friendly packaging firm.

Micah Tapman, managing director of Canopy, is in charge of the team that narrows down the program applicants. “Finding participants is easy and hard,” he notes. “It’s easy to get a lot of interest; it’s hard to find the gems.”

We recently sat down with Tapman to find out what he thinks is essential for success in the cannabis industry. Then we added some tips from the Women Grow Leadership Summit earlier this month to compile this list of ten things would-be ganjapreneurs need to know:

BlueKudu founder and CEO Andrew Schrot (right) discusses a rebranding by his edibles company.

Denver Startup Week began in September 2012 as a chance for entrepreneurs to meet and trade ideas. Over the past five years, it’s evolved into an expansive event where anyone hoping to start a business can choose from hundreds of panel presentations featuring people who’ve been there, done that. And this year, ganjapreneurs are among the industry leaders sharing experiences and expertise.

At a September 13 panel titled “From Kitchen to ‘Shelf:’ Smart Growth Tips for Packaged Food Startups” at the Infinite Monkey Theorem Urban Winery, Andrew Schrot, founder and CEO of BlueKudu, a prominent edibles company, joined food-industry reps from 34 Degrees, Saso Pepper Co. and Capello’s Gluten Free; BrandJuice creative director John Bellina moderated a discussion that focused on the ever-growing food market in Colorado.

Kayvan Khalatbari

He co-founded one of the first dispensaries in Denver and, earlier this month, he sold it to Willie Nelson for his Willie’s Reserve operation. Now Kayvan Khalatbari, who was featured in our January 2, 2014, roundup of leading ganjapreneurs, is looking ahead to other ways he can contribute to Denver’s ever-evolving culture through art and advocacy. Khalatbari sat down with Westword to discuss what he’s doing next, his thoughts on Denver’s growth, and whether he’d consider another run for Denver City Council or even mayor.

Westword: Talk about the Cannabis Symposium in October.

Kayvan Khalatbari: It’s a symposium on October 26, which is the front end of the Marijuana Management Symposium the city throws at the convention center. We’re going to have a day totally committed to stewardship and have all these traditional folks, utility and technology people, operators in the industry, come and speak about what you can do right now that will impact the business positively and the environment positively, but also long-term best practices that we’re creating internally.


This is exactly what marijuana cooking needed: a 91-year-old Italian grandmother that knows how to throw down in the kitchen teaching her skills to the masses via the internet.
For what it’s worth, Aurora Leveroni, star of Vice’s “Munchies” series doesn’t partake in the pot she cooks — but she knows it can help and wants to share her love of healing through food with the world.

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