Entrepreneur Maya Elisabeth is the owner of California-based Om Edibles and has partnered with actress Whoopi Goldberg to create a line of medical marijuana products geared toward women. (Provided by Om Edibles)

Food & Weed: Maya Elisabeth seeks munchie transcendence and makes her own rainbows

When Om Edibles founder Maya Elisabeth called from her sunny California kitchen, she was in the middle of creating a feast of rainbow tacos. That day, inside each corn tortilla she placed shiitake mushrooms, kale, tofu, onions, sauerkraut, salsa, garlic and a miso-smoked cashew cheese, which she said, proves good enough to garner obsession.

“I love cooking, I truly do, and I try to get a rainbow on every plate, which means green peppers for green, red peppers for red, blueberries, raspberries and all these beautiful things filled with antioxidants and nutrients,” she said. “I eat really well and believe if it came from the Earth you can put it in your mouth, if came from a lab, don’t. It’s the same philosophy for both of my companies.”

With Om Edibles, a company Elisabeth founded in 2008, and Whoopi & Maya, her newest venture with actress Whoopi Goldberg in which they created a line of products designed for women, the 34-year-old entrepreneur focuses on cannabis, oils and food that’s ethically sourced, raised without chemicals and as unprocessed as possible.

Elisabeth refers to consuming marijuana as medicating, and a lot of what she has done in developing edibles centers on making foods that taste good and are also good for you. Take the raw chocolate Om Edibles produces — it has just six ingredients in it and proves so pure, Elisabeth said that if you really wanted to, you could put it on your skin. Same goes for the brand’s olive oil, an allergy-friendly condiment that can be used on salads, as a bread dip or even swirled into hummus.

“I want to make edible products nutritious,” Elisabeth says.

When consuming marijuana personally, she likes to smoke it and indulge in edibles that are as wholesome as the variety of vegetables in her refrigerator at home. She said when she’s elevated, she loves to eat and play flavor games with her food. For example, nibbling something sweet, then trying a spicy nosh and following that up with tangy and salty flavors, and then sweet again.

“The munchies are super real. Cannabis has this wonderful ability to increase your senses, including your sense of taste,” she said, adding her love of food came from her love of cannabis and having said munchies. “It makes food taste better while telling your brain you are starving, which is why the munchies can be so insatiable.”

Aside from her beloved rainbow tacos, when at home Elisabeth makes a Cuban black bean dish from a special recipe her mom gave her, different types of salsa, vegetable medleys, frittatas and a lot of fish. However, when not at home making a meal, she is out snarfing down sushi, burritos and whatever else strikes her fancy.

Restaurant outings typically start with a smoke beforehand, she said, a practice that usually results in excess eating and enjoying every bit of it.

“We will get nice and stimulated in our appetite and order twice as much food,” she said, describing going out to dinner with a friend. “I look around and think, ‘Oh my god, no one is experiencing this meal on this level like we are experiencing it on this level.'”

Then, when she’s finished another satisfying meal, Elisabeth said she likes to smoke again right away to help digest the feast, preparing her body to do it all again the next day.