Hi! I’m Chef Jessica Catalano.
I specialize in crafting healthy carnivore recipes using wild game, educating on the intricacies of making medical cannabis edibles at home, and guiding others in consuming ancestral foods through hunting, fishing, and trapping. I hold the conviction that everyone has the inherent right to nourish and heal their bodies as nature intended. In my view, animals serve as sustenance and plants as healing agents.
I aim to enhance your quality of life through a meat-based diet and an ancestral lifestyle. When combined with nutrient-rich animal foods, cannabis can contribute to a longer, more satisfying life. Indeed, for the past 15 years, my career has been devoted to aiding individuals in healing with cannabis and nutrient-dense foods, while educating on the medicinal advantages of plants.
It’s All About Your Body and Your Choice.
This website is dedicated to providing top-notch information, straightforward tips, effortless tricks, and practical hacks for homemade wild game carnivore recipes and traditional medicinal edibles. It aims to enhance your well-being, boost your health, and encourage mindful consumption of nutritious food by integrating meat and cannabis into your lifestyle. Above all, it seeks to help you cherish the body you are within.
Recipes You Can Expect to Find Here
I have always focused on educating others about the history of food, the lineage and pairings of cannabis strains, their medicinal properties, and the flavor profiles of both food and cannabis combined. Additionally, for the past 15 years, I have been committed to teaching not only traditional cannabis cuisine but also the preparation of raw cannabis dishes.
My culinary creations are centered around health-conscious choices, featuring wild game, carnivorous, animal-based, and ancestral foods, yet they preserve the essence and cultural significance of traditional recipes. The classic cannabis recipes will remain archived for those occasional indulgence days. However, it’s important to note that traditional isn’t negative when enjoyed in moderation.
Carnivore Diet, Carnivore Recipes
The recipes featured on this website are designed to nourish and heal the body, focusing on wild game carnivore dishes I’ve created for my family, using plants solely as medicine, promoting wellness through ancestral living, managing weight healthily, and sustaining body homeostasis. Each recipe will be presented with detailed step-by-step instructions.
So, What Do You Need to Eat to be Considered Carnivore?
Meat, dairy, eggs, salt, animal by-products, and water. And yes, I have become radical. No birthday cake, bakery treat, or cheats at a restaurant on a family vacation is worth becoming sick over.
Carnivore Not Your Thing? Don’t worry, I Got You Covered!
Alternative recipes you will also be able to find here: traditional cooked edible recipes that I have written over the years for cannabis magazines, cookbooks, news articles, and press.
What is the Carnivore Diet?
Often, as time passes throughout the ages, memories often fade, and a clear picture of the past can become cloudy. Thankfully, we can thank our prehistoric ancestors who first taught us how important a meat centric diet is. When paleontologists discovered Australopithecus, which are thought to have lived on Earth 4 million years ago, they were the first humans to start eating a primarily meat-based diet. It is from here, that the carnivore diet started to unfold in our human history.
Certainly, as human evolution progressed, diverse groups in various regions consumed foods that were available in their climates. With the opening of trade routes, food availability shifted yet again. Historically, tribes such as the Inuit and Maasai have maintained a predominantly meat-based diet. In contrast, other cultures, like the Irish, have traditionally relied on dairy, grains, meat, and vegetables as their dietary mainstays. Ultimately, meat tends to take a central role, with all communities endeavoring to secure it above all else.
It’s crucial to remember that there wasn’t a singular “ancestral diet”, that all ancient humans adhered to. Based on their geographic locations, agricultural season, genetic makeup, and the eras they lived in, our ancestors’ dietary habits and the food that was readily available to them varied greatly. For instance, the diets of African hunter-gatherers and European subsistence farmers were very different from one another. Nevertheless, despite their differences, several of these diets had some fundamental similarities across the board – and that was a focus on hunting as much meat as possible.
Advancing to the 19th century, German writer Bernard Moncriff, author of “The Philosophy of the Stomach: An Exclusively Animal Diet” in 1856, is recognized for introducing the all-meat diet concept after subsisting on only milk and beef for a year. Italian physician Arnaldo Cantani, in the 1870s, prescribed an all-animal diet to his diabetic patients. In the 1880s, James H. Salisbury advocated for a meat-centric diet that involved consuming three to five quarts of hot water and two to four pounds of lean beef daily for four to twelve weeks, known as the Salisbury diet, or simply the meat and hot water diet.
In 2018, Dr. Shawn Baker, an orthopedic surgeon and author of “The Carnivore Diet,” began promoting an all-meat diet on social media. He co-founded Revero, an online medical clinic leveraging carnivore diet protocols to treat patients. Dr. Paul Saladino, another proponent of the meat-only lifestyle, authored books and diet plans highlighting the alleged health benefits of this zero-carb approach. However, after five years, he shifted to an “animal-based diet” that includes meat, fruits, organs, dairy, and honey. Mikhaila Peterson and her father, Jordan Peterson, have also been strong advocates for the diet, adhering to a strict regimen of beef, salt, and water, known as the “lion diet.”
The carnivore diet focuses on unprocessed, organic, and natural foods sourced through hunting, gathering, fishing, and farming from land, air, and water. Its goal is to foster health restoration, reduce excess body fat quickly, and mirror the pre-industrial revolution ancestral diets. Many are astonished to discover that this diet offers all essential nutrients, including proteins, vitamins, and minerals.
What Foods Can I Eat?
Carnivores consume animal-based foods such as seafood, poultry, pork, beef, game, lamb, goat, eggs, and dairy. They strictly avoid grains, legumes, vegetables, nuts, seeds, and all fruits. Salt is permitted and necessary to maintain electrolyte balance due to the diet’s low carbohydrate content. Similarly, humans have historically sought out salt, which has been a resource worth waging wars over, much like animals in the wild.
- Pastured raised meat
- Wild-caught seafood
- Wild game
- Raw grass fed dairy
- Fermented dairy and meat products (protects the gut microbiome)
- Bone broth
- Organ meats
- Animal fats
- Animal by-products
- Eggs
- Salt
Preserving Hunting, Fishing, Trapping, and Farming Traditions
From field, stream, and farm to table, fostering a deeper bond with the food we consume is vital to me and hinges on our role as custodians of the land for future generations. It’s crucial to preserve ethical practices in hunting, fishing, trapping, and farming, or we risk losing these skills permanently. Imparting such generational knowledge to our children, like trapping for example, equips them with essential skills for producing food and clothing when necessary, and this heritage must not be forgotten.
Many animal rights groups, under the guise of environmental advocacy, seek to ban trapping. Urban residents might sympathize with fundraising efforts to end trapping until they face the need for traps to manage infestations of raccoons, mice, and other animals themselves. Trapping remains the most viable option for controlling certain wildlife populations. The ongoing necessity to trap large numbers of harmful animals will demand skill and effort. However, the increasing public awareness of the extreme tactics employed by some animal rights groups, including terrorism, violence, and illegal activities, casts doubt on the future of these organizations.
Modern trapping is a highly regulated practice, vital to a select group of individuals who contribute significantly. Skilled trappers provide invaluable ecological and social data, aiding in the management and surveillance of plentiful furbearer populations. In the contemporary context, this enduring cultural pursuit retains its significance and necessity. For instance, scientifically validated regulated fur trapping contributes to mitigating damage caused by disproportionate wildlife populations, reducing the risk of disease outbreaks among animals, and supplying instruments for wildlife conservation.
In terms of wildlife monitoring, licensed trappers in many states provide yearly “trapper harvest reports” that aid biologists in tracking individual species and identifying population trends. So how can provincial and state scientists collect the crucial data needed to track furbearers? The answer is straightforward: data and information regarding population health should be produced by trappers, who have a stake in the natural resources of these species and their habitats. To monitor these abundant species, these authorities rely on information from sightings, reports, and their state’s licensed trappers. This is only one of the many reasons that wildlife experts still rely on authorized trappers.
In addition to wildlife conservation and population management, trapping offers benefits beyond clothing; it provides nutrient-rich meat. The animal’s bones can be crafted into jewelry or culinary knives, while its scent glands may be used for future lures. It’s crucial to educate others on the significance of cooperating with nature and respecting the animals we harvest by utilizing every part. This practice aligns us with nature, promotes a sustainable relationship with the land, and enlightens people about the effort required to provide food and clothing. Many in modern society are detached from the realities of the food chain and survival. Preserving these skills helps reconnect us with our ancestral heritage and the essence of being human.
MJ’s Chookie Farm
In 2018, I started a micro-farm for my daughter Mary Jane and reclaimed the native plants that were trying to grow but that the previous owners did not want. At first, I tended to the existing fruit, deciduous, and evergreen trees that hedged our entire property in a green fence. We cleaned up the property and stocked a cord of firewood. My husband built raised beds so that I could plant berries, herbs, onions, garlic, tubers, and pollinator plants that all would come up every year. I wanted to plant food for us and for the bees that would take minimal maintenance and were perennials. He also built German style compost bins so that I could make my own soil.
Every year, I added more perennial food and flowers and reaped the benefits of making my own soil. In addition to the perennials, we also enjoyed planting seasonal root vegetables. Instead of working against nature, trying to create a perfectly manicured lawn, I worked with nature and created a habitat that quickly became a wildlife refuge. Then the natural progression of regenerative farming really began to snowball in the most beautiful way.
We bought baby chicks late season and quickly got to building a chicken coop and run. At first, we gave away our eggs to our community at church, friends, and neighbors. But we quickly realized that our hens were quite literally sitting on something special. “Best eggs EVER” literally came out of the mouths of every recipient of our eggs. It seemed orchestrated at first, but the same words kept coming from new people. Under the guidance of the local chicken guru Charlie, from Charlie’s Chicks in Port, Orchard, Washington – I legally started MJ’s Chookie Farm.
As our flock grew, so did our customer base and the food on the farm I was growing for the chickens. Our farm became a full-blown regenerative farm, that was giving back to the land and back to our clients. It was an amazing feeling to be able to provide quality nutrient dense eggs that people kept coming back for more. Today, we are truly blessed with the continual growth of our regenerative farm and our customer base.
MJ’s Chookie Farm free-ranges the entire flock, and they are meat fed. Every day they also get raw or cooked meat, cheese, raw kefir, a fruit/veg salad I grow on the property, and scraps from the kitchen and left over meals. During the winter they get organic cracked corn only during the coldest days, as it increases heat in the body and helps keep them warm. I also ferment oatmeal and kefir overnight to pull anti-nutrients in the fall/winter. Organic soy free chicken feed and oyster/eggshell is always available as a supplement. And then they get a big bowl of mash everyday as well. The mash ingredients are a secret recipe, but its fermented as well 🙂
American Spirit Yoga
During the pandemic I wanted to start a yoga business because, why not? I saw how many people’s health were being affected negatively and decided to do something about it. I realized at this moment that people needed more yoga and whole foods in their life.
American Spirit Yoga, came to life, to bring accessibility to yoga that has never been seen before. It was my goal to make this daily practice obtainable by everyone and every, body – regardless of income, race, gender, disability, or creed.
“Yoga, as a way of life and a philosophy, can be practiced by anyone with inclination to undertake it, for yoga belongs to humanity as a whole. It is not the property of any one group or any one individual, but can be followed by any and all, in any corner of the globe, regardless of class, creed or religion.” – K. Pattabhi Jois
Slow Living, Slow Food, Micro Farming, Hyper-Local Gift Economy, and Minimalism
Since relocating to a rural suburb of Seattle in February 2018, our family has gradually embraced the principles of slow living, slow food, regenerative farming, hyper-local gift economies, and minimalism. We discovered that by taking the time to savor the present, converting our land into a micro-farm, preparing simple meals at home, engaging in the hyper-local gift economy, and keeping only the essentials, our lives have become significantly richer. Transitioning to a minimalist lifestyle revealed how deeply we were ensnared in the consumerist and disposable culture. Opting out of the so-called “rat race” has been an enlightening experience unlike any other.
As I journey along this path, I’ll be sharing DIY tips and tricks. My goal is to demonstrate how simple and rewarding it is to lead a greener, more minimalist lifestyle, all while saving your hard-earned money instead of enriching large corporations. Living simply isn’t costly or complex; in fact, it’s quite the contrary! You’ll be surprised by the significant environmental impact just one person can have. Each small change you implement benefits our planet and can motivate others to follow suit. <3
15 Year Cannabis Industry Veteran and Leading Expert
Jessica Catalano is a professional Cannabis Chef who is classically trained, cannabis edibles expert, wild game carnivore recipe developer, food writer, the pioneer of strain specific cannabis cuisine, chicken farmer (your local egg plug), founder of American Spirit Yoga (RYT 200), and author of The Ganja Kitchen Revolution: The Bible of Cannabis Cuisine traditionally published by Green Candy Press. Catalano is also a passionate wild game hunter, angler, and trapper. She is a Medical Cannabis and Cannabis Lifestyle advocate who has combined her two loves of food and cannabis into stylish medicated dishes for Medical Cannabis patients.
She was born and raised in Buffalo, NY and then headed west to Colorado at 23. Catalano holds three culinary degrees: Pastry Arts, Culinary Arts, and Food Service Management and an EMS certificate that she earned while living in Colorado. Between her education, experience in the bakery and restaurant industry, impressive cannabis industry working experience, and her knowledge of cannabis, she has been called the “OG Cannabis Chef” by many.
Catalano pioneered strain specific cannabis cuisine for flavor, the first chef in the world to publicly do so, by infusing terpenes into cooking and baking via strain specific recipes to elevate the taste in the edibles she creates. What this means is that she uses specific strains in specific recipes to enhance the flavor profiles of the dishes she constructs. For example, Lemon Kush can be paired with Vietnamese Spring Rolls. By doing this, the Lemon Kush will impart a lemony taste with floral and mint undertones which deepens the flavors in this dish because of the similar taste profiles already present in the ingredients. This also helps patients to understand the importance of terpene flavor profiles in recipes for a more enjoyable experience and how each strain will affect their bodies.
In 2009, she began experimenting with Strain Specific Cooking and Baking in conjunction with Raw Cannabis Cuisine then launched a blog in June 2010 to share her recipes with medical marijuana patients. The Ganja Kitchen Revolution blog was born and quickly became such a success that in September 2010 she was approached by Green Candy Press. Jessica was offered a book deal at 26 years old which she accepted and TGKR went into production. Two years later it hit the market as the first Strain Specific Gourmet Cannabis Cookbook. It has quickly become the authority on strain specific cannabis pairings and a must have in any aspiring cannabis chef’s cookbook collection. Today Chef Jessica Catalano still produces free recipes for medical marijuana patients to make in the comfort of their own homes.
Currently, Catalano tests wild game carnivore recipes in her kitchen and runs her blog to help educate cannabis patients on cooking and baking with cannabis. She is the former Food Columnist for the international SKUNK Magazine and former cover girl for Tokin’ Female of the Month (Skunk Magazine Volume 8, Issue 3). In addition to SKUNK Magazine, she has written for their sister magazine The Highway as a cannabis food writer. She also was a contributing editor to Diane Fornbacher’s LadyBud Magazine, contributor to the national Cannabis Now Magazine, and Culture writer for Weedmaps.
Catalano was also named Stoner Girl of Winter 2015 by the Stoner Girl’s Guide. She is the former Cannabis Chef at Cultivating Spirits who taught the Cooking with Cannabis Class as well as the Sensational Fusion Private Dinners. She cooked for and co-hosted the first cannabis pairing dinner at the 2015 Aspen X Games with the Cultivating Spirits family. Catalano has cooked for celebrities such as Snoop Dogg in Aspen and has served as a judge for the Denver Hightimes U.S Cannabis Cup in 2012, 2013, 2015, and 2016 for Edibles, Topicals, and CBD products. She is also a former reviewer for Seattle products on “The Proper Cannabis Committee” for A Proper High
She has appeared on TLC, Munchies VICE, and Al Jazeera. Her work has been mentioned in Vogue Magazine, Vice, Al Jazeera, Brazil’s Carta Capital Magazine, Buzzfeed, the Associated Press, The Guardian, Business Insider, StarChef’s Rising Stars Magazine, Culture Magazine, Skunk Magazine, Cannabis Now Magazine, Ladybud Magazine, FSR Magazine, Denver Westword, the Aspen Times, the Summit Daily, the Cannabist, the Stoner Girls Guide, and many more. She has also done cannabis food writing for StickyGuide, Releaf Magazine, Smell the Truth, The Nug, PROHBTD, Whaxy, Stuff Stoners Like, the Smoking Bud, Starchef’s, Leafly, High Times Magazine, VICE, MUNCHIES, Colorado’s very own weed-rag The Daily Doobie, and many other publications.
As a Medical Cannabis patient herself, she has extensive knowledge since early 1997 for medicinal purposes. She continues to strive for excellence both in cooking, baking, living foods, and Medical Cannabis knowledge. Her goal is to help as many Medical Cannabis patients as she possibly can creating a better quality of life for them. She explores the health benefits of cooking with cannabis which when balanced with good nutrition and a healthy lifestyle can help promote a longer and more fulfilling life. She is also a passionate yoga teacher and martial artist (Taekwondo). Catalano also is an ardent supporter of hunting, fishing, and trapping tradition who draws upon inspiration from exploring the Pacific Northwest to fuel creativity in the kitchen. Catalano currently resides in a suburb of Seattle, Washington on a micro-farm with her husband, daughter Mary Jane, son Blaze, Bombay cat Mao, Russian Blue cat Rarity, and flock of chickens.
Get in Touch:
Questions? Press and media inquiries? Fan mail? The fastest way to reach me is via email at Info@jessicacatalano.com
You can also check out my press page for interviews, videos, and my freelance recipes from 2010 to present day.
I hope you love what you find here!
My recipes and book are my gift to you. I hope that they bring you good health, happiness, and a return to nature. Happy cooking and baking!
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