I once traded a small refrigerator to a dealer friend of mine for a single, gigantic bud of decent pot (that, for the curious, weighed approximately 1/4 ounce). I know what this sounds like, but it wasn't, really - I think I had just got the refrigerator in some other shady deal the day before.

Of course, when you are seriously invested in the lifestyle, making pot brownies is just one of those things you end up doing eventually, just like you end up going on the Circle Line if you live in New York City long enough. It's vaguely nostalgic, perhaps harkening back to an earlier time when there were no fights at Woodstock, Gerry Garcia could still remember his lyrics, and potheads had big Leave-it-to-Beaver-style kitchens in which to bake things, or something.

Perhaps because the oven in my friends' student ghetto house apartment had not been properly cleaned since the Nixon administration, or perhaps just because it was all the local Stewarts shop had, the brownie mix acquisition team returned with only a single tiny box of microwave brownie mix.

That would probably have been OK, except that the marijuana management team overzealously de-seeded and broke up the entire gigantic bud. And even that, in itself, was not so bad, except that it left the way open for the brownie preparation team (who to their credit, were trying to improvise, having no recipe for pot brownies that handled the microwave variety) to even more overzealously pour the entire pile of weed into the brownie mix.

This was not the brownie mix that mom used to use. This was the all-in-one student ghetto mini microwave variety. The mix, and the tiny tray in which to pour the mix in order to microwave it, were all included in the same box. It was very thin and square and no more than 8 inches on a side. When functioning normally, was designed to create 9 rather diminutive microwave brownies of the fudge variety. You might not have known that from looking at ours, which came out brilliant green. You could barely taste the chocolate.

I ate two. So did three other people. And we discovered something interesting about pot. It is much less effective to eat pot than to smoke it, so I have been told, and I believe it. But, even given that, it is possible to eat a lot more pot in 30 seconds than you could smoke in an hour. And that, basically, will make you trip out.

I recall waking up, discovering that I was passed out on the bathroom floor of the apartment, looking up and seeing one of the girls of the house on the toilet, peeing. She smiled, waved, offered me a cigarette, and spoke several words of complete gibberish. The rest is hazy.

Now, if pot were legal, the FDA could be called to look into this sort of thing.

How to make pot brownies:

Ingredients:

1 stick of butter

1 package of brownie mix (ingredients called out on brownie mix box, minus the oil)

(1/8-1/4) oz. ground up marijuana

Instructions:

Slowly heat the stick of butter in a pan. Once it has warmed up, turn the heat off and add the marijuana to the melted butter and stir. Cover this and let it sit for a little while (approximately 5 minutes). Turn the heat on once again and bring the butter to a bit of a boil and turn the heat off immediately. Again, let the mixture sit for a while. Repeat this process 7 to 10 times, to activate all of the THC in the pot.

Once you have done this, strain the butter to remove most of the large particles of the pot (preferrably in a metal strainer, plastic will melt). Use the butter in place of the oil in the instructions on the brownie mix. Follow the brownie mix instructions.

When they are finished cooking, ENJOY!!

Bud brownies are cakes (brownies) with marijuana in them. Variations on this include hash cookies, pot-cakes etc. All work on the same basic recipie and they can be easily made by using the following "recipie":

Take the instructions off the back of the box for the muffins or brownies and follow it, to plan except for one difference...When you get to the butter part, take the instructed amount of butter out, put it in a saucepan, once the butter starts melting put around 3 grams (you may as well put a half q in but its okay if you use less) of your bud in. Now before you put it in chop it up, and you're going to want to chop it pretty fine so you dont have to chew on any buds when you are eating your brownies. Put the chop into the saucepan of butter and stir it around for a few minutes being careful not to burn the mixture. This does two things,
1)Binds the marijuana to the butter
2)Heats the marijuana in order to release THC
You can do this a few times if you please but it should all soak in the first time. Most of the pieces of bud will disappear and the butter will turn green, so when this has happened pour the butter out into a container and put it into the fridge to set it, then use it as normal butter in the recipie. Bake the brownies in the oven as usual and voila, you have bud brownies!

Pot brownies can be made in a variety of ways, and there are a million different recipes that will work, however, with varying degrees of efficacy. The key to preparing any kind of pot for oral consumption is maximizing the oral bioavailabily of THC and other cannabinoids. So keep these considerations in mind:

• While THC isn't very water soluble, it is very lipid(milk, butter, oil) and alcohol soluble. Now, some recipes call for real butter while others maintain that butter can also be substituted with margarine, but since real butter has more fat, THC will be much more soluble in it.
• When trying to extract THC and other cannabinoids from the plant material, it helps to apply a bit of heat to the mixture and to grind the pot up into as fine of powder as possible before cooking it.
• THC has a boiling point of roughly 390°F. So when cooking the bud in butter do not let the solution boil for very long and get too hot. Instead, it is probably best to just let the mixture simmer, and after mixing in the rest of the cooking ingredients bake in the oven at around 350°F.*

* - This recipe does not require boiling/simmering the weed in butter.

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Cheap and Easy Magic Brownies:

Ingredients:

• 8 oz. "unsweetened" baking chocolate.
• 3/4 cup (1 - 1/2 sticks) butter
• 2 cups sugar
• 3 eggs
• 1 cup flour (you won't use all of this.)
• 1 oz. cannabis buds or leaves (shwag/brick weed will suffice. There's no need to spend $200-300 on a batch of brownies.)

Perparing the Batter:

1. Remove seeds (and stems if you'd like) from your buds. Throw the rest of the desired components into a coffee grinder and pulverize until you end up with very fine green powder of equal consistency throughout.
2. Put the "green flour" into a measuring cup and mix with enough regular flour to make 1 cup of mixed flour.
3. Put the butter and chocolate into a bowl and microwave on HIGH for 2 minutes or until the butter is melted. Stir until chocolate is completely melted.
4. Stir in sugar, eggs, and the mixed flour until well blended.
5. Optional: You can add an extra 1/2 cup of flour with 1/2 cup of milk to make more cake-like brownies.

Bake:

• Bake in a greased foil-lined 13x9-inch baking pan at 350°F for 30 to 35 minutes.
• Be careful not to overbake!

Serving:
After letting the finished brownies cool down, cut into 20 to 24 single-serving squares. Depending on how much attention you paid to the considerations listed earlier, the pot brownies should kick in anywhere from 15 to 45 minutes after ingestion. It's a creeper high so give it a good hour to peak before you eat more.

Personal Notes:
Pulverizing your weed in a coffee grinder is CRUCIAL to making good brownies--this is one of the reasons why dry weed is preferable for cooking--aside from the economic advantages. It's a common misconception that THC is heat-activated. In fact, THC is sensitive to heat and will break down when heated too much. Weed is often boiled or set to simmer in butter when used in cooking in order to extract as much of the THC from the plant matter as possible before straining it out and discarding it. However, when the weed is pulverized into a fine powder to be used as a partial substitute for flour in a baking recipe, this tedious and temperamental step is avoided. This method ensures that the brownies maintain even texture (no bits of weed getting stuck between your teeth) while utilizing all of the weed and thus retaining all of the THC as well. But I encourage others to try out different recipes and compare the results themselves. This method obviously doesn't work with pre-constituted brownie mix, but traditional brownies aren't that hard to make. Personally, I've found that using 1 oz. of stress and this method produces the best tasting brownies with the optimal potency, and it only costs me about $60 for a batch that serves 20+.

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_{As a warning: it is guaranteed that your kitchen will reek of pot after this process.
As a second warning: it is generally a good idea to wait about an hour or two after ingestion to determine whether you need more. Usually 1 brownie with the above recipe should do the trick. But if you are determined to push the envelope, give it enough time to fully kick in before proceeding with a second helping.}