Cannabis foods

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A variety of space cakes from Amsterdam

Cannabis foods are foods prepared with cannabis in herbal or resin form to enjoy the psychoactive effects of the drug for those who prefer not to smoke it. Commonly it is cooked into a cake, cookie, brownie, or other baked product to be distributed socially. As with other illicit activities and drug culture in general there are many different names and slang terms for these recipes. Most are based on standard recipes for brownies, cakes or cookies. The addition of hash, cannabis, weed or the more euphemistic space, magic, adult, special prefixes gives some of the more common names like hash brownie, space cake etc.

Types of preparation

They are usually prepared by using oil or butter which has previously been used to extract the active ingredient from the cannabis. Sometimes, however, the ingredients are mixed in directly.

THC and other cannabinoids are hydrophobic oils. They are insoluble in water but soluble in alcohols, fats, and other oils. As cannabinoids are insoluble in water alone, they suffer from low bioavailability when eaten. By dissolving the cannabinoids in alcohol, fats, or oils (such as the fat in butter and cheese), their ability to be absorbed by the body is increased. Heating the THC in the presence of fats or oils simply accelerates the process of dissolution in the fats, from some hours at room temperature to minutes in the microwave.

Cannabutter

Making Cannabutter

Cannabutter is an oil/fat/butter based solution which has been infused with cannabinoids. This is achieved by heating the raw cannabis along with the oil or butter and allowing the cannabinoids (THC and others) to be extracted by the fat. The exact procedure for this varies greatly. The equipment necessary for the manufacture of cannabutter can be as simple as a sauce pan and spatula or as complicated as a double-boiler, or crock pot, and cheese cloth and funnel.

Another way to produce cannabutter is to boil a large pan of water and then add a block of butter and add cannabis trimmings (the leaves and stalks). The water stops the THC from being damaged by heat as the mixture will never reach over 100 C. After half an hour or so of boiling sieve the mixture to remove the leaves and cool the liquid in a fridge. When it has cooled you are left with a potent layer of cannabutter on top of dirty water.

The flavor and color of the oil or butter used are changed depending on the method used.

Leary biscuit

A Leary biscuit is a snack consisting of a cracker, cheese, and ground up marijuana bud. It is heated in a microwave oven and causes a cannabis "high" in the eater. The heating is said to activate the tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), the active ingredient in cannabis. In actuality, the heating simply increases the solubility of the THC in the fats and oils in the cheese.^{[citation needed]} The plant material of cannabis is not easily digested, and so the THC is not readily absorbed into the bloodstream unless it is first dissolved in some kind of fat, oil, or alcohol. This is why cheese is used for the Leary biscuit - cheese has a high fat content, suitable for dissolving THC and making it more readily available for digestion.

Hash cookie

Hash cookies, also known as space cookies, hash cakes or space cakes are relatively common in regions with liberal drugs policies, including much of Europe (particularly the Netherlands). They are bakery products made using one of the forms of cannabis, including hashish.

Hash cookies are essentially the same as marijuana cookies, and are also seen in cake, ball, and brownie form. To make them, large amounts of hash (typically half a gram to as much as a gram a cookie) are baked into the product in careful steps, so that the user is able to achieve a high without actually smoking anything. Some users report that the high is not quite as intense as smoking, but instead it is felt throughout the body as a feeling of lightness, sometimes known as a "body high". The main benefits to preparing these cookies is that they can be used in many places where smoking is not convenient, as they can easily be brought to parties, cafes, and work. One is not usually able to tell the difference between regular baked goods and those containing drugs, but they tend to have a slight greenish tinge with marijuana, and they often emit a faint odor. Many resources for recipes, preparation, and dosage are available online, though they vary greatly in effectiveness and quality.

The writer Alice B. Toklas's inclusion of her friend Brion Gysin's recipe for "Haschich Fudge" in her 1954 literary memoir The Alice B. Toklas Cookbook caused a sensation at the time, and led to her name becoming associated with cannabis food with the use of the phrase "Alice B. Toklas brownies" for many years afterwards.

Drug effects

Eating such a food can result in a similar psychoactive effect or "high" as smoking marijuana, although it may be delayed or mitigated due to slower absorption of the tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) through the digestive tract. Some believe it imparts a smoother "high". However there are many accounts of stronger, sometimes frightening, longer lasting highs resulting from eating cannabis. Whereas the effects from smoking cannabis are usually felt within a few minutes, it can take up to two hours to get high from ingesting it.

Contrary to smoking, where one can feel the high coming gradually; the way the THC is digested can result in a significantly stronger high that can last for hours. Products containing cannabis are widely available in cannabis coffee shops in the Netherlands (and various European cities), where the consumption of marijuana is effectively legal.

In pop culture

A song entitled "I'll Never Smoke Weed with Willie Again" is about smoking cannabis with Willie Nelson. Written by Toby Keith and Scotty Emerick.

• The brownie was used in the 1968 film I Love You, Alice B. Toklas, in which a character portrayed by Peter Sellers becomes disillusioned with his mainstream life after falling in love with a free spirit, only to become just as disillusioned with the hippie subculture. Marijuana-spiked brownies are a key plot element.
• In "Garage Sale" - the second season premiere of the FOX sitcom That '70s Show - Steven Hyde makes "special brownies" that end up being consumed by Red, Kitty, Midge and Bob.
• In the movie Eurotrip, Scotty, played by Scott Mechlowicz, and Jenny, played by Michelle Trachtenberg eat some brownies in a Dutch bake shop that they assume are hash brownies and "suffer" the symptoms. They learn, however, that the brownies contain no cannabis, with the staff referring to the establishment as a "simple Dutch bakery", much to their embarrassment.
• Ethan Embry's character in the film Empire Records consumes hash brownies while watching television.
• In the movie Never Been Kissed, Josie eats a load of pot brownies.
• In the movie How High, the Chancellor of Harvard University and his wife unknowingly consume large amounts of brownies mixed with marijuana, causing them to act silly at a Halloween costume party later that night.
• In the movie "In a Noir York Minute", the character Jefferson, played by Regis Philbin, eats a hash brownie every night after work to "you know, just chill out a bit."
• In the movie Can't Hardly Wait, the stoner character played by Eric Balfour is eating hash brownies with his friends when his female friend feels tricked and throws her hash brownie at Lauren Ambrose's hair, where it sticks. Eric Balfour's character runs over to the thrown hash brownie and licks it off her head, saying, "I don't wanna waste any."
• In the movie Dick, Kirsten Dunst's character unknowingly makes hash brownies for President Nixon and his cabinet. (She believes the hash is "walnut leaves")
• In the HBO series Oz, the character Stan Burkowsky makes marijuana brownies for the Homeboys in season six before being killed by the Italians.
• In an episode of My Name Is Earl, Earl Hickey remembers about the time he switched Crabman's pot brownies with actual brownies. After dissatisfied customers found out they were eating real brownies (i.e. "I had to listen to a Phish album...it sucked!"), they stoned him "biblically".
• In the episode "High Holidays" of Frasier, Niles Crane plans to eat a cannabis brownie to experience the rite of teenage rebellion he had missed when he was a teenager. His father, a retired police officer, unwittingly eats the brownie.
• In one episode of Greg the Bunny, Eugene Levy's character accidentally ingests marijuana brownies.
• In an episode of Grounded for Life, "Henry's Working for the Drug Squad", Sean Finnerty eats cannabis brownie batter, still containing the seeds. He stumbles to his backyard and throws up. A marijuana plant grows in the puke.
• Space Cake is the name of a metal/funk band from Surrey, England.
• In an episode of Nip Tuck, a blond woman offers a chocolate-color cannabis brownie to Sean McNamara.
• In the movie Next Friday, Roach gives Chico the dog a brownie with cannabis so Craig played by Ice Cube could break into The Jokers home.
• In the novel, The Perks of Being a Wallflower the main character consumes a marijuana brownie accidentally while at a party.
• In the 70s US television show Barney Miller the police detectives accidentally eat a marijuana brownie the girlfriend of Detective Stan 'Wojo' Wojciehowicz has given him.
• In Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo T.J. tricks Deuce into getting high on space cake while at a cafe in Amsterdam.
• In an episode of Arrested Development (TV Series), following a comic misunderstanding with his nephew Michael, Oscar Bluth succeeds in getting his sister-in-law Lucille high on cannabis by "putting it in her brownie."
• In the video game EarthBound, the player must buy and consume an item called "Magic Cake" in order to inhabit the body of Poo, the fourth and final party member.
• In the movie 50 First Dates, Henry Roth makes numerous references to Marijuana and special brownies used by his friend Ula.
• In Taxi (TV series), a pot brownie completely derails the life of a straightlaced Harvard student, turning him into the junkie cabbie Reverend Jim, played by Christopher Lloyd.
• As part of his "Part Troll" tour, the stand-up comedian Bill Bailey encouraged the audience to suggest alternative foods that can be cooked using cannabis. On the DVD suggestions included lard, shepherd's pie and beef stroganoff.
• In the Fox animated series Family Guy, when Stewie is hallucinating due to fever brought on by immunization shots and Meg asks what is wrong with him, Louis responds: "He's just having a little halutiot5ion from the fever, just like when you were 2 and ate those adult brownies I was saving for the Doobie Brothers concert."

See also

Wikibooks' Cookbook has more about this subject:

Magic Brownie

• Chocolate brownie
• Brownie Mary

External links

• Cannabis Recipes at Cannabis.com
• The Straight Dope column on Alice B. Toklas brownies (includes original text of recipe)
• Erowid.com recipes for cooking with cannabis
• Totse.com – How to make Cannabutter
• Stoner Chef – Another Cannabutter recipe
• Make Marijuana Legal: Cooking With Mary Jane – Another recipe site for cooking with cannabis.

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