Recently, Mason Jar Event Group hosted their winter cannabis pairing dinner at art gallery Boulder Creative Collective. Chef Jamey Fader, executive chef at Lola in Denver, cranked out courses while attendees enjoyed marijuana bud, concentrate and edible products from featured sponsors. Talking to the Report, Mason Jar made it clear the dinner’s are a unique opportunity to bring first-timers and aficionados together to appreciate cuisine and Colorado cannabis the way it is intended, in a group setting.
Wall Street Journal: California’s Next Buzzy Varietal May Not Come From Grapes→
/ALBION, Calif.—Justin Calvino maneuvered his mud-spattered black Ford truck away from crashing waves of the Pacific Ocean and into the piney hills of what he hopes will become “the Bordeaux of cannabis.”
USA Today: Smoke, because you can: Inside a legal marijuana dinner→
/BOULDER, Colo. – Nervous at first, they enter cautiously through the discreet side door, men in ties and women in high heels, clutching little green gift bags.
Candles flicker amid floral centerpieces on the long tables. Smartly dressed servers circulate among the growing crowd with plates of red shrimp ceviche and kimchi-pork appetizers.
Viva: A Four Course Pot-Pairing Dinner is Coming to Colorado→
/It’s not exactly a secret that getting stoned makes you hungry. Before you buy out the Doritos from the nearest corner store though, maybe consider something a little more refined. Pot pairing is becoming a thing in Boulder, Colorado, and it isn’t the junk food frenzy you’d expect.
When Founder Kendal Norris woke from a dream filled with cannabis and cuisine, Mason Jar Event Group was born. It was that dream that continued pushing Norris to host dinners where each course comes with weed, and guests experience the flavor profiles that the pairing creates.
Dope Magazine: →
/This article was published in print.
Huffington Post: Colorado Is Bringing Cannabis To The Fine Dining World, And They’re Knocking It Out Of The Park
/It was a blissful Sunday evening in early October, and the night would begin with a question I’ve never had the chance to ask myself before: “So, what does one wear to a fall cannabis pairing dinner?”
The Cannabist: How marijuana fine dining is slowly becoming a thing→
/Marijuana cooking classes. Upscale chefs. Friendly gatherings. A look at how cooking with cannabis is going public — and the struggles organizers still face regardless of legalized weed in Colorado
Westword: Mason Jar Event Group Celebrates One Year of Seasonal Cannabis-Themed Dinners→
/On Sunday, October 2, more than 150 people gathered at Planet Bluegrassin Lyons for another Mason Jar Event Group seasonal dinner. Gathered on the banks of North St. Vrain Creek, guests socialized as they smoked cannabis and enjoyed the first course — organic roasted-squash soup served with grilled Brie-and-green-apple sandwiches — from chef Hosea Rosenberg and his team at Blackbelly.
Associated Press: Gourmet ganja? Marijuana dining is growing up, slowly→
/LYONS, Colo. (AP) — How to set a tone of woodsy chic at a four-course candlelight dinner served under the stars in the Colorado foothills:
Live musicians and flowers, check.
Award-winning cuisine, check.
Beer and wine pairings with each course, check.
Marijuana pairings? Oh, yes.
The 100 diners at this $200-a-plate dinner smoked a citrus-smelling marijuana strain to go with a fall salad with apples, dates and bacon, followed by a darker, sweeter strain of pot to accompany a main course of slow-roasted pork shoulder in a mole sauce with charred root vegetables and rice.
303 Magazine: My First Time at a Cannabis Dinner→
/“This day in rock ‘n roll history, all six members of The Grateful Dead were busted by California narcotics agents for possession of marijuana at the group’s 710 Ashbury Street House in San Francisco, California,” read Kendal Norris, founder of Mason Jar Events, her iPhone doubling as a flashlight in the pure-black evening.
SF Weekly: Chem Tales: ‘High Culture’ Has a New Meaning→
/Once a season, Mason Jar’s Kendal Norris hosts elaborate parties for adults to enjoy marijuana amid other mature pleasures, like good food and conversation. On Sunday, I accepted an invitation to Mason Jar’s latest outing.
A weed-friendly party bus picked guests up in Denver and delivered us into a bucolic autumn scene: Dark wood tables handsomely set amid the resplendent foliage. A bluegrass band unpacked their instruments by a burbling brook. Behind them, a sheer vertical cliff loomed, glowing pink as the sun set.
Rolling Stone: Haute Pot Pairings: Inside the World of High-End Marijuana Cuisine→
/Sativa with fish? Indica with steak? Or is it the other way around? Welcome to the world of pairing strains of marijuana with specific foods to enhance their flavor – the hot trend in states where marijuana is legal.
This is not like eating food cooked with cannabis, which people have been doing at least since Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas served their guests in Paris hashish fudge. "It should be eaten with care," Toklas wrote in her cookbook. "Two pieces are quite sufficient."
Fast Company: High-End Dining: Are Marijuana Meals The Next Big Foodie Trend?→
/"Other venturers into the spacey food space include celebrity chefs. Top Chef star Hosea Rosenberg cooks seasonal, multicourse marijuana pairing meals for theMason Jar Event group in Colorado. Unlike Sayegh's dinners, Rosenberg pairs more traditional edibles (primarily bars and candies) with (non-infused) dishes like pork roast with organic mustard greens, Western Slope apricots, Israeli couscous, and cherry cobbler topped with spiced amaretto ice cream and smoked candied almonds. Mason Jar plans these meals for "the cannabis connoisseur and the cannabis curious," with much of the experience dedicated to educating diners on different varieties. Rosenberg's events are so popular, they each receive as many as 10 sponsors (all from various sectors of the marijuana business), up from four just a year ago. Mason Jar is currently planning a 5,000-person event for 2017." - Fast Company
Zagat: Will Pot-Friendly Restaurants Become a Thing?→
/"At the edge of a flower-lined pond in Longmont farm country, long banquet tables set with china and crystal stand beneath big old shade trees. Waiters bearing hors d’oeuvre trays circulate amid the well-dressed, all-ages crowd gathered on the lawn to mingle and sip Arnold Palmers from Mason jars. If you didn’t know, you’d guess you were at a wedding reception. Until, that is, the THC-infused tea in your drink starts to kick in. Turns out this elegant affair is a multicourse cannabis dinner catered by no less than acclaimed chef Hosea Rosenberg (Blackbelly Market) — the sort of thing food media has been clamoring for ever since Colorado legalized recreational marijuana use in 2012 (us included, as this video attests). Bye-bye pot brownies; hello haute cuisine for so-called cannasseurs.
Though “we’re still building a reputation for these experiences,” says Mason Jar Event Group founder Kendal Norris, “people are excited about the level of sophistication” they can achieve. “I use my parents as an example: they would never go to something like this unless it was in a setting where they felt comfortable.” Rosenberg agrees, seeing his involvement as a chance “to be a part of something amazing, brand-new, experiential and fun.” For now, he eschews cooking with cannabis in favor of wine-style pairings: “We talk to the growers about what they see as the qualities of a particular strain and create dishes that pair best with its flavors, aromas and overall sensations.” Take the first course at the Longmont dinner, in which a sprightly salad of beets, fennel, goat cheese and pistachios matched thecitrusy aromas and energizing effects of OG Kush. But Norris incorporated edibles into the meal as well, such as the BlueKudu Black Forest chocolate bar that accompanied dessert, and Rosenberg predicts that the future for boutique infused foods, “not just sweet but savory" too, is “limitless.”
Food Republic - Puff, Puff, Pastry: Anatomy Of A Marijuana Dinner→
/Since 2015, Kendal Norris has run Mason Jar Event Group, a cannabis-focused venture that pairs weed with yoga and food. The idea literally started with a dream: “In the dream I was moving around a room where people where doing yoga, eating, drinking and consuming cannabis, and I knew that it felt right,” says Norris. “It’s a new concept serving a group that has not had an opportunity like this before.”
Kindland: I Went to Colorado for a Gourmet Cannabis Pairings Dinner→
/My high sets in some time between the serving of the intermezzo and dessert. I barely notice it. But the euphoria; the escape from anxiety; the feeling of content; the canna-bliss––really takes its place next to my bones, as the Colorado sun begins to retreat behind the surrounding flatiron foothills. The stone isn’t intense or overwhelming. I’m not spun out of my mind, or paranoid, or giggly. To my right, a diverse group of people from all corners of the cannabis industry are laughing, and joking, and smoking, and vaping, and dining on gourmet, chef-prepared food. And to the left, a lone cloud in the distance rids itself of any rain long before it would join our Longmont party. I’m at the Catalina Wine Mixer of Colorado weed dinners.
Read the full article on Kindland
Westword: This Cannabis Summer Harvest Dinner Was So Goddamn Precious→
/The Summer Harvest Dinner welcomed the de-stigmatization of cannabis along with the industry's highest society members to the Shupe Homestead in Longmont on July 14, 2016. It's been nearly one year since the Mason Jar Event Group's first cannabis dinner, with food prepared by the team from Blackbelly out of Boulder. Little jars filled with cannabis from Sweet Leaf were stars of the evening; sponsors whose gifts graced the goodie bags included Canyon Cultivation (delicious lollipops), BlueKudu (Black Forest cannabis chocolate bars), Anonymous Bags, 420 Science, Pax, Baker, Stillwater, Jane West (travel packs), Marley Coffee and Healthy Headie, to name a few.
The Atlantic: Why the Marijuana Business Is Appealing to Female Entrepreneurs→
/“The conversations that I have with executives of companies that are women are a lot easier than the conversations that I have with men,” said Kendal Norris, who runs Mason Jar Events, a company that puts together swanky pot-themed parties. “And I think that might be for a couple of reasons, one of which is, it sort of goes back to that thing from Madeleine Albright, that there’s a special place in Hell for women who don’t help other women.” - The Atlantic
High Times: Top Chef Winner’s Pot Diner
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Top Chef champion Hosea Rosenberg, winner of season 5 of the televised culinary competition, is keeping on the cutting edge of foodie trends by incorporating cannabis pairings into his farm-to-table, local, seasonal style. While serving medicated food in a restaurant setting is still a no-no in Colorado, inviting guests to a private event and offering cannabis along with artisanal cuisine is quite legal. A collaboration led by Mason Jar Event Group, Headquarters cannabis retailers, 3 Chicks Bartending and Rosenberg's Blackbelly restaurant, last night's Harvest Dinner combined high-end cuisine with cocktails and cannabis for a classy night of socializing. Guests were bused to the dinner location at Boulder's Shupe Homestead to avoid any intoxicated driving, and medicated foods were not served.
