Saturday, December 08, 2007

Celebrating Festive! Green Alpaca Wagers All!

And now here, for your edification, is the TRUE and ACCURATE story on the 'Pot Brownies' myth!

Alice B. Toklas was a woman who enjoyed a good meal and loved her saturated fats. So legendary became her table that Ms. Toklas was prevailed upon to write up a collection of recipes: The Alice B. Toklas Cook Book.

In this collection are many delicious things. One of the delicious things is a narcotic party nibble she presents to us with the title
'HASCHICH FUDGE (which anyone could whip up on a rainy day)'

NOT BROWNIES. NOT HASH BROWNIES. NOT POT BROWNIES. NO BROWNIES. THERE ARE NO BROWNIES IN THE ALICE B. TOKLAS COOKBOOK. OF ANY KIND. NO NO NO.

And in fact her 'haschich' fudge is not chocolate and has no hash in it, but instead dried fruit and crumbled cannibis sativa (she also suggests indica in areas where obtaining sativa 'may present certain difficulties'.)

Her introduction to the method is priceless:

This is the food of Paradise- of Baudelaire's Artificial Paradises: it might provide an entertaining refreshment for a Ladies' Bridge Club or a chapter meeting of the DAR. In Morrocco it is thought to be good for warding off the common cold in damp winter weather and is, indeed, more effective if taken with large quantities of hot mint tea. Euphoria and brilliant storms of laughter; ecstatic reveries and extensions of one's personality on several simultaneous planes are to be complacently expected. Almost anything Saint Theresa did, you can do better if you can bear to be ravished by 'un evanouissement reveille'.

By fudge she means 'a gooey sweet thing'. I have no doubt that grated chocolate could be added to wonderful effect, particularly if the chocolate were one of the new high-percentage, low-sugar darks. Nevertheless, I present to you the recipe as she puts it down, with my paraphrase.

1 teaspoon black peppercorns,
1 whole nutmeg,
4 cinnamon sticks,
1 tsp. coriander
1/4 oz good bud, well cleaned and very dry
Pulverize all to a fine powder (a coffee grinder would work excellently here.)

One handful each, chopped fine:
stoned dates
dried figs,
shelled almonds,
shelled peanuts

Add all the above together and toss to combine.

Melt 1/3 c butter, and dissolve into this
1 cup sugar
NOTE: do not cook this mixture...simply stir the sugar into the just-melted butter and take off the fire.

Remove from heat. Cool until mixture can be handled, empty into bowl with other ingredients and stir together.
Turn out onto a cool smooth surface and knead to combine thoroughly.
Roll into a log, from which lumps may be cut and rolled into balls about the size of a walnut and dusted with powdered sugar. Try and do your best to let these sit at least overnight so that the flavors blossom. They will firm up but never quite solidify.

Ms. Toklas advises us that two of these are more than sufficient. Those of more robust or practiced liver may find that the suggested serving size must be adjusted upwards.


Hey, you know. I'm just sayin'. It's certainly not like I'd be making anything like this for Christmas eve or anything.
That would be wrong.

29 comments:

  1. no, no, that would be entirely wrong.
    and the future son in law would definitely not have just proclaimed "aaaallll RIIIIIGHT!!!! yes!" upon reading this. no. because pot is bad.

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  2. Pot is bad. Not that I'd know. Not that I took a puff way back in 1999 and got so high and paranoid that I thought my cousins, with whom I was riding with on a trip to New Orleans, were all conspiring to rape and kill me and throw me in the woods, leading me to ask them to pull over at a rest stop where I called 911 from a pay phone.

    Yep, pot is bad. But like, I said, not that I'd know.

    heehee!

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  3. God Bless You, F.N :)

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  4. A WHOLE nutmeg? are you sure? how many can you make from this?

    questions, questions, questions

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  5. And we can always count on you to do the right thing, that is why I have always looked up to you.

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  6. My friend's brother kindly made some of these for their mother's birthday. She didn't stop talking for two days.

    Over in Britain, we get our Christmas kicks from drinking Advocaat, which is, like, some good Dutch shit, man.

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  7. Can you really get anything you want from Alice's Restaurant?

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  8. I am surprised Frobishers isnt claiming he already thought of this recipe and doing a big blogging diva hissy fit :-)

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  9. SSA: ...because this is how we say 'welcome to the family' hyar in the brush!

    awa: and now see, in a similar situation, in a car full of hot guys smoking dope,(and because i was not related to my cousins)that story would have taken an entirely different turn.

    sopwith: i'm here to help. and someone had to set the record straight.

    frobi: hey, blame alice. apparently there's psychotropic chemicals in the nutmeg which augment the effect of the chiba. it's pretty damn highly flavored, though.

    gale: i swear to god this is not how i parented. this is, however, how i damn well empty nest! YEE HAW!

    betty: and you stuck with the pfferneusse, huh? if that's your story then o-tay. *googles advocaat*


    mj: apparently so, huh? and wasn't it her who first published the 'pot brownies' recipe in the Alices Restaurant cookbook? or was it Mountain Girl?

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  10. beast: snook under the wire there!
    don't attempt to divert attention away from your own blogging misdeeds and remember....don't sleep...clowns WILL eat you.

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  11. My mistake and my fault for confusing you, FN. I've realised I mixed up ALice B and Mrs Robinson in my head, but worse than that, the title I parodied is a Kurt Vonnegut one, and it isn't about either of those two, so I have no Idea what was going on in my mind this morning. Maybe it's the fumes from the wood fire addling my mind.

    BTW, nutmeg is supposed to indice distortions of time if taken in enough quantity. Robert Anton Wilson's books have it as the drug Dillinger used when locked up before his breakout. I just thought it worth mentioning.

    But of course, it could be as wrong as anything else I've come out with today :)

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  12. and see, i wasn't confused until this comment. and my name isn't rosewater. so, so.....yeah. :)

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  13. ... and you wouldn't be making it in any case even if pot wasn't bad, because of course the stuff is absolutely impossible to procure way up there by the border with all that empty land out in the foothills. Nuh huh.

    And even if pot wasn't bad, you wouldn't be my new favorite person ever for posting this. Naw.

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  14. These are the rum balls look-alikes that are sometimes "mistaken" for petit fours at posh receptions. In a little cafe in Amsterdam (30 years ago) you could buy the biscuit (American "cookie") variety. Probably still can!

    About that recipe..."stoned dates." Why does your companion have to be loaded????

    And, yes, nutmeg is listed as an aphrodiasiac.The late Vincent Price (yes, he of horror movies fame) told me that it partners spinach very well.

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  15. Anonymous4:07 PM

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  16. Anonymous7:28 PM

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  17. That sounds yummy.

    Where'd I put those cinnamon sticks....

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  18. evil stuff.. muwahahahaa... i thought everyone knew how to make food with the um devils work inside... we have "harvest parties" here and they tend to leave with a three day hangover... everything on the menu is tinted slightly green...

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  19. Exactly my thought! (As she goes back to baking christmas cookies for her chid's teacher...heh...heh)

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  20. My mom used to tell me about Alice B. Toklas! I would love to make this, but I have not the foggiest idea where to obtain The Key Ingredient! I dunno, you think Frobisher could hook me up?

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  21. i wonder if buddha butter would work????

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  22. So THIS is where the hippy convention is? I didn't know (insert name of lame jam band like the Grateful Dead or Phish or the like) was on tour.

    Now, off to White Castle (or whatever regional 24hr fast food establishment sells food one can only eat 'altered') with you.

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  23. Another myth exposed at Christmas((sniff))..
    I just can't take any more disappointment.

    Shouldn't it be Alice Be TOKEless?

    I recently discovered that everyone my age is still smoking Pot like there is no tomorrow! It will definitely be legalized here within 10 or 15 years...or as soon as we can have a National Reefer-end-dumb.

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  24. Anonymous8:06 AM

    Oh, back to my school days, but we did the brownies thing, back when the movie first came out (yes, no, not that old, no, yes, please). I like this recipe, thanks for putting it out.

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  25. still no reply?!?! nations must be trying out her new recipe!!!

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  26. EVERYONE:

    ....wait, what?




    I....huh.

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  27. *shaking first nations to wake her up...*

    "wake up, nations you cant curl up behind the toilet like that again.."

    *slapping her around as he drags out of the bathroom..*

    "where did you hide those damn fudge balls"

    *smack, slap, whack, slap, slap, smack, boot, pop, smack, whack...*





    uh, errr, sorry i was having a little too much fun kickin yer ass there...

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  28. Anonymous7:47 PM

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  29. Anonymous11:19 AM

    Use the brownie recipe on the box of baker's chocolate and about an OZ (I save the trash at the end of the bag, shake & seeds & stems). Instead: break the herb up and simmer in a reasonable quantity of water for about 3 hours. During the last 30 minutes, add a stick of butter. Strain, removing all the 'poticles'. Refrigerate. Then, pull the skin of butter off the top: it will be green. Discard that nasty water, and now use the herbal butter in the brownies. MUCH tastier. THC is stored in your fat, therefore the butter is an excellent medium for transferring it.

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