Mennlay Golokeh Aggrey

My baby, The Art of Weed Butter cookbook. Support Black writers and cooks (especially in cannabis) by purchasing a copy anywhere you buy books 🌿🧈✨ Link where it always is. Thanks to @alexiaarthurs and @jamesoseland and everyone who has supported the book over the years and encourages me to continue researching, writing and getting creative and blazed in the kitchen. #cookbook #weedbutter #cooking #cookingwithweed #edibles #herbs #anothercornyasshashtag #chef #weedchef #cannabischef #infused

Fufu is a 16th century Ghanaian 🇬🇭 and Liberian 🇱🇷 staple and national dish in 🇨🇩 Congo where 6.9 million have been displaced—making it one of the world’s largest displacement and humanitarian crises, after Sudan. My Liberian/Ghanaian roots ties fufu, my palate, and my heart to Congo and the Congolese. The violent displacement of this scale haunts me of the family members, land, heirlooms, and culture I lost during Liberia’s notorious civil war. In the wake of our heart-opening awareness of global suffering, consider these things: ✨ a donation to @congofriends who advocate to raise consciousness, education and the liberation of Congo; ✨ @actionagainsthunger , a team on the ground supporting families with food, water, aid and mental health for displaced mothers; ✨opting for refurbished or used cobalt-powered electronics + EVs. This recipe has been passed down by my great grandmother and incorporates both modern and indigenous African methods of preparation. I made this fufu with palm butter, you can serve Fufu with any West African stew. What you need: 1 large Yuca root (cassava) 2 green plantains (unripe) 1-2 cups of filtered water Pinch of salt What to do: • Peel plantain and cut it into cubes. Peel and scrape the cassava, de-string it and cut into cubes. Place cassava and plantain into the blender. Add 1 cup of water if you prefer fufu firm, 2 cups if you prefer it softer. •Blend in food processor until reaches a smooth paste consistency.Next, heat paste in a saucepan over medium heat. Stir constantly with a wooden spatula for 8 to 10 minutes to remove lumps. •Reduce heat to the lowest setting and cover with a lid and steam for 10 minutes.After sitting, increase to a medium heat setting and stir. The fufu might look too soft, but it will become firmer as it cools. Stir until a thick, paste-like doughy fufu is formed. •Transfer fufu into a bowl and sprinkle one teaspoon of water on the surface to prevent forming a film. Let it cool completely. Shape into a balls and serve with West soup or stew of your choice. Photo 1,2: fufu and palm butter @cenas_sin_fronteras Photo 3,4: @hughkinsellacunningham 🇨🇩 #freecongo

‘Let Her Cook’, ‘Ate’ & ‘Left No Crumbs’: On Hunger and Slang—what idioms reveal about global food insecurity. NEW essay and a recession-proof bread recipe on TASTE BUD @substack (full article link where it always is, amor). There’s a clear link between the price of food, famine, food access, and the rise of food as fashion and celebrity culture. It’s in our art, our music, and especially our slang. When you’re hungry, it’s all you can think about. And as food costs have increased and global hunger has reached alarming numbers due to conflict, genocide and greed—so has food’s cultural and economic symbolism. “Let her cook” goes beyond TikTok talk. Like many expressions born in Black and queer communities, it emerges from a lineage of linguistic invention and under pressure—poverty—where language becomes performance, survival, resistance. From ballroom to the barbershop, subcultures have long reshaped language made into vernaculars as a way to claim power in the margins. I am soberly aware of how corny it must sound to talk about resistance and revolution in a food blog. But maybe, for now, we make focaccia—because it’s cheap, recession-proof, and tastes so damn good. It’s vegan, it stretches and adapts. Because bread feels like the beginning. It feels honest. And it is something everyone deserves. **Donation & Food Resource List in Article**

Lovers ask if I want to have children, now more than ever. At a time when I'm more convinced that I never actually did. They are shocked and so am I. This is an essay about what I'm calling 'Anotherhood,' notes from non-mothers experiencing motherhood from the outside. It's for my first love, my first country--my mommy and all of you reflecting on the trauma and triumph of motherhood. I’m throwing out a wide net of love and gratitude for all of the mommies, queens and GNC mothers, mentors, aunties, caregivers, grandmothers, and humans caring for the youth and nurturing life in this cold, cold world. Read the full essay and recipes on Substack. Thanks for reading and supporting the work; it means the world to me.

Long before soccer moms were exchanging artisan THC gummies, cannabis was part of the ital lifestyle led by Rastafaris in Jamaica. And before that, it was hailed as a sacred plant in Hindu texts. Before you spark up today, take a second to read @mennlay Golokeh Aggrey’s essay at the link in bio.

I’m hosting a [digital] creative writing workshop on April 19, built from a practice I’ve developed through my own work and past community workshops. So giddy to host another masterclass this year, details below. We’ll write together in two parts, using a sensorial shift in state to investigate how we move on the page and to gauge what best supports our creative process. Join me for the only workshop of its kind | Sunday, April 19, at 12 PM PST / 3 PM EST. I think it’s also worth noting that this is not a practice I rely on for commissioned or editorial work. Those pieces require a different kind of rigor, and structural clarity. This workshop is what happens outside of that. Where the edges of ideas begin, where your voice can loosen. Intentionally sized session. 90 minutes. Digital workshop live on Zoom with resources. Tap the link in my bio to reserve your spot. ☆ if you have the means to sponsor a participant(s), please reach out!

When extracting infused oil, you press the softened leaves and flowers against mesh to release every last drop of potency. What remains is dry, flattened, clinically referred to as “spent.” This is the experience for Black women. Last fall, while reporting on the state of DEI in cannabis for @bonappetitmag , it pushed me to zoom-in on who Malcolm X quotes as, "the most disrespected, unprotected, and neglected person in America," the Black woman. Since February 2025, more than 600,000 Black women have been surgically removed from the workplace. And within just three months, those losses took $37 billion from U.S. GDP. Meanwhile, in weed—an industry that once positioned itself as reparative—only 4% of business owners are Black; with less than 2% of venture capital funding actually reaching our startups. Yet we represent 40% of consumers and patients and in some jurisdictions, we are 97% of those arrested or ticketed for herb. Extraction always reveals what is considered expendable. This essay is a companion piece my reporting with an additional infused plantain chip recipe. Get the full article from TASTE BUD on Substack. Link where it always is. Thanx for reading!

People are finally confronting the reality that proximity to whiteness will not protect you from violence. We’re watching it unfold in Minneapolis, Tehran, and across so many borderlands. And while I try to stay out of white people’s business, it's inevitable that it finds me. In Dr. Christina Sharpe's piece, 'In the Wake,' she explains how Blackness was produced and maintained through structural violence. And so, whiteness itself was legislated into existence as a tool to secure colonial power: by rendering Blackness less than, and punishable. So what does it mean when people across the world assign themselves or are assigned to a race that was invented? Why do descendants of the Levant, North Africa, and Southwest Asia fold into the category of white? I wrote an essay about this plus an Azerbaijani–Persian–style dolma recipe, just as juicy as the tea. Link where it always is. —Thank you for supporting the writing, editing, test kitchens, research and emotional labor that goes into this work! xx

MLK Library holds a significant Black studies collection with over 20,000 books, newspapers, maps, census records, genealogical info, and other records as part of The People’s Archive. i don’t take lightly being able to spend sustained time in a public library where every level is devoted to Black thought; with lower floors that serve as a dignified refuge for unhoused people. say what you will about MLK, who was in his holy bed, or the annual performative remembrances. but the way the feds surveilled Dr. King, fixated on his private life, and now flattens his politics into insultingly thin, pale equivalencies—tells us everything we need to know about his magnitude. “Anyone who lives inside the United States can never be considered an outsider anywhere within its bounds.” a reminder that the ICE-enforced war on immigration, on human bodies, and on the sovereignty of people and countries, is a moral failure. here’s to bleakly hoping that what resists continues to live in the institutions of the people.

lemme teach you how to make these 🍸 non alcoholic drinks. recipes on TASTE BUD Substack

new work in print for @port_magazine on how Afro-Mexican food cradles communal lore, heritage, and the spaces like @exp_maiz that reject culinary hierarchies of chefs, colonial kitchen structures -embracing Indigenous cyclical formats of cooking. many thanks to @aylaangelos for tapping me to write this piece that is published amongst very good company. grateful for all the commissioned work this year—looking forward to writing, researching and getting crafty with herbs in the kitchen for the sake of culture and history in 2026.

Ho ho ho. Briefly not behind the laptop.