Cannabis-infused Gingerbread Cookies for the Holidaze!

Let’s face it! The holidays can be a bit stressful. Winter is normally the time that Nature is asking us to turn intuitively inward and yet Culture is asking us to be out and about, socializing and shopping. It can be a depleting time of year and sometimes a bit joyless, so put some pep in your step and take the edge off with some cannabis-tinged gingerbread cookies!

This recipe will instruct using Synergy Wellness tincture # 119 Sativa Blend in Sesame oil.

Edibles are a tricky thing and you have to do some calculus to make sure you are getting a happy amount in each cookie. You also must remember that these are delicious so you don’t want to eat the whole batch! So dosing these is up to your own measurements. I personally like my edibles to be in the 5-7 mg THC range. So, if I were to make these cookies, I would probably aim for about half that amount in each cookie so I could eat two because who just wants to eat one cookie? Not I!

You can also choose to make these with a CBD-dominant tincture so that their psychotropic effects are not detectable but you will still be getting all the benefits that CBD can bring (anti-anxiety, anti-inflammatory). For CBD tincture, dosage is not as important.

This recipe yields 36 cookies and I will be calculating this recipe with a dose of roughly 3 mg THC Per cookie. Please adjust accordingly. And it’s always recommended, no matter how delicious, that you start with one cookie and wait an hour to see how it affects you (unless you are well aware of your tolerances and limits).

Feel free to decorate by frosting/icing to your heart’s delight (Your decorations might be more fanciful if you eat a cookie first before icing the rest of the batch!).

From our Synergy Wellness family to yours, we wish you a very healthy, happy, and high holiday season!

Start to finish: 90 minutes

Yield: 36 cookies

Ingredients

• 3 cups all-purpose flour

• 1 1/2 tsp baking powder

• 3/4 tsp baking soda

• 1/4 tsp salt

• 1 Tbsp ginger, ground

• 1 3/4 tsp cinnamon, ground

• 1⁄4 tsp cloves, ground

• 6 Tbsp butter

• @ 6-7 droppers-full of #119 tincture (bear in mind, a ‘dropperful’ is usually about ¾ of the pipette)

• 3⁄4 cup brown sugar

• 2 eggs, large

• 1/2 cup molasses

• 2 tsp vanilla

• 1 tsp lemon zest (optional)

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 375 ºF.

2. Prepare baking sheets by lining with parchment paper.

3. In a small bowl, whisk together dry ingredients.

4. In a large mixing bowl beat butter and sugar until smooth.

5. Add molasses, vanilla, and #119 tincture and lemon zest and continue to mix.

6. Gradually stir in dry ingredients until blended and smooth.

7. Let stand at room temperature for at least 1 hour.

8. Sprinkle flour over dough and rolling pin. Roll dough to 1/4-inch thick. Use additional flour to avoid sticking.

9. Cut out cookies with desired cutter and space cookies approx. 1 inch apart on cookie sheet.

10. Sprinkle sugar on top of cookies (or, once baked and cooled, decorate as you wish.)

11. Bake for 7-10 minutes.

Unraveling the Origin of Santa Claus

Drawing by Thomas Nast, 1881

Magic mushrooms may have played a central role

For the last 100 years or so, we have all come to recognize and love that universal symbol of Christmas, Santa Claus. His origins have been traced to St. Nicholas, who lived around 300 AD and was regarded as the patron saint of children. The modern version of “Sinter Klaas” (as the Dutch referred to him) evolved from several sources: the publication of the poem “The Night Before Christmas,” in which the jolly figure was described in detail with flying reindeer and descents down the chimney added to Santa lore; cartoons drawn in the 1870s by Thomas Nast, a political cartoonist who practically invented the editorial cartoon, and marketing efforts by the Coca-Cola company, who commissioned illustrations in the 1930s that laid the final groundwork for the cherubic fellow we know today (and conveniently for Coca-Cola, reinforced their red-and-white branding).

Coca-Cola ad from the 1930s

But in recent years, another origin story has been making the rounds that suggests that Santa’s beginnings lay with shamanic figures from the Nordic countries who would bestow the gift of magic mushrooms on the local populations. Shamans (the term originates in Russia) were the medicine men of their time, and harbored much knowledge concerning the healing and transformative powers of plants. The mushroom in question, Amanita Muscaria, features a bright red top dotted with white. They were commonly found underneath the local conifers, and eventually this gave birth to the idea of “goodies” under the Christmas tree. It’s not a coincidence that Santa’s outfit is red and white.

“Why do people bring pine trees into their houses at the winter solstice, placing brightly colored (red-and-white) packages under their boughs, as gifts to show their love for each other?

It is because, underneath the pine bough is the exact location where one would find this ‘Most Sacred’ substance, the Amanita muscaria, in the wild.”

– James Arthur, author of “Mushrooms and Mankind”

Around the Winter Solstice (December 21) it was traditional for the shamans to deliver gifts of dried mushrooms by entering houses through openings in the roof, as the door to the house was likely to have snow piled up against it. This became the chimney through which Santa descended every Christmas Eve. And in another fun parallel, the mushrooms were dried by arranging them on an evergreen tree. These were the first “Christmas trees.”

Vintage Scandinavian Christmas cards from the 1930s

The local reindeer were also fond of the mushroom (some biologists theorize that they relieved the boredom of a long winter) and could be observed in animated states after consuming them. Shamans considered reindeer to be “spirit animals,” and since an oft-reported effect from ingesting mushrooms is a sensation of flying, it’s not much of a stretch to conceive of “flying reindeer.”

Weave all these strands together, and you have something remarkably like the story we’ve all heard this time of year since we were small children. It’s a story of love for your fellow humans, the desire to make them happy with gifts, and the power of the natural world to make magic happen.

• • •

Banishing the Holiday Blues

by Billee Sharp

 The holiday season is here, and after the excitement of Thanksgiving, we embark on a busy, fun-filled month of festivities, from office parties to carol services, all leading to Christmas itself and then onto the grand finale of the New Year celebrations. Sadly, the pandemic has stayed with us since last winter and although social events are taking place, they are fewer and we are cautious of too much indoor interaction, although we are simultaneously craving company! It seems that again this year, not only do we have the regular stresses that the holidays bring but also the extra worry of spreading the Covid-19 virus.

Traditionally the holiday season was marked with rituals; recently a German friend told me that as a child in Bavaria her mother had baked different cookies and confections every week in December, storing them all for the Christmas holiday. These days with our busy schedules we often end up frantic in December, running between the early festivities and the holiday preparations so that by the time Christmas has arrived we find ourselves a little burnt out and blue. After all our efforts, we are not enjoying the joys of the season, and no matter how much we promise ourselves we’ll be better organized next year, many of us regularly overdo it during the holidays.

If you’re feeling a buildup of pressure this year, or a gloom sinking in around the holidays, the best natural remedy is found in CBD. CBD is regularly recommended for depression and anxiety and provides relief at the correct dosage. According to a recent 2019 study*, 4mg-600mg CBD daily will alleviate a wide range of depressive symptoms: the test group of 57 adults suffered from a range of depressive conditions including: mild depression, Seasonal Affective Disorder and Social Affective Disorder. Interesting, the results showed a wide disparity in effective doses, and this reminds us to set our personal dosage according to our own perception of effectiveness. At times when the pressure is on, we might re-consider our dosage.  Ultimately, we need to be in tune with ourselves and adjust accordingly.  

Try tuning into your self-wisdom and when you feel the onset of anxiousness, irritability, or depression descending this holiday season, take a dose of CBD.

Whichever delivery method you personally prefer, is always your best choice, but there are certain advantages to consider. Often what is most useful is a quick abatement of symptoms and the fastest delivery methods for CBD absorption are sublingual or inhalation. A sublingual tincture dose will be fully effective in 20-30 minutes, anxiousness will dissipate, but energy levels will not be reduced. After a sublingual dose, the tincture is swallowed and will then pass through the digestive tract where CBD will be absorbed by receptors in the gut, which sustains the action. 

Inhalation is by far the fastest delivery system as the lungs are a direct conduit to the bloodstream, thus the effects are literally immediate. Smoking, of course, is not for everybody, particularly those with sensitive or compromised lungs. CBD vape pens can be a good choice as inhalation is gentler than conventional smoking. Synergy vape cartridges contain only pure CO2 extracted CBD with no secondary filler ingredients, all our extracts are also winterized removing the natural waxes for a gentler flow to the lungs.

Holiday blues are often the result of a combination of factors, and while the season’s festive gatherings are our focus, it can turn out to be more fraught than fun. Here are a few other suggestions to keep the blues at bay using CBD to navigate social gatherings.

Winter holidays have a strong association with alcohol, from mulled wine to whiskey toddies and brandy eggnog. The unfortunate reality is that alcohol is a depressant and after an evening of fun the next morning might bring back the blues. If you are battling the blues perhaps a CBD infused cocktail would be a pleasant alternative. Adding drops of CBD-rich tincture to your favorite soft drink can keep your spirits lifted without alcohol, or make your favorite cocktail and add CBD tincture instead of the booze. I like to doctor a tall glass of sparkling water with a few drops of bitters and 15 drops of CBD tincture, it is refreshing, hydrating and tastes good and makes you feel good! One has to use the alcohol-based tinctures, instead of the oil based, to add to drinks.

This month’s Cooking with Cannabis article features a mouthwatering recipe for canna-rich gingerbread cookies. CBD edibles pair perfectly with CBD infused drinks, the slower absorption of CBD in the gut means that the beneficial effects will be felt over a longer sustained period. Recent research has shown that CBD interacts with the cannabinoid type 1 receptor (CB1R),

The serotonin 5-HT1A receptor, which regulates anxiety responses and mood modulation.

With the pandemic fairly raging around us, the holidays will be different this year. Staying healthy and happy has to be our primary Christmas wish for everybody.

From everybody at Synergy Wellness, Merry Christmas!

*”Antidepressant-like and anxiolytic-like effects of cannabidiol” Scherer,Silva

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24923339/.