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...LET THE GOOD TIMES ROLL PART TWON
PLAIN TEXT
JUST A TRICK OF THE LIGHT
If this page has a theme song (and, you may notice that some pages in
this issue do) it must be ‘The Green, Green Grass of Home.’ But
that is just the editor remembering his roots. In part two of our review
of how smoking habits have changed in the UK, we meet a couple of
growers and get very stoned indeed. But, first, the historical crap . . . .
. he counter assistant stood with his mouth open so I repeated my
request. “Thirty-two Growlux 80 watt tubes, please,” I said. He came alive. “Thirty-two?” he said. ‘Thirty-two,” I repeated. He hesitated for a moment and then said, “I’ll just see if we have got that many in stock.” As
he made his way between the blue-lit aquaria full of shiny fishes I was glad I
was the only customer. I felt like I had just ordered the Bumper Book of Disgusting Pornography (with free reusable blow-up doll). Conspicuous, you know? Eventually, the assistant came back clutching a bundle of neon tubes
in thin card containers. He placed them on the counter and disappeared again into the stockroom. When the thirty-two sheaths were piled on the counter
we messed around for ten minutes with brown tape trying to contain the wayward eight foot long tubes. After a lot of sticking and cutting, I paid
and hoisted my not inconspicuous bundle onto my shoulder. As I turned the assistant piped up with the question I had hoped no one would ask: “What are you going to use that many lights for?” he said. “I run a fish farm,” I replied glibly. And that was it.
...Except. Later and for ever he would
 ... .. specialised supplies and seeds but clones ready to go into pots.
...Almost overnight the UK dope
scene changed. It was at this point
that many long-term smokers redis-
covered the joy of smoking. And
found a worthwhile reason for grow-
ing. For even the slowest of us could work out that if Amsterdammers
could do it so could we.
...History happens whether you
observe it or not. The wheels of
change roll (very slowly) ever on.
And in the years between the hippy
era and the discovery of Amsterdam
the whole fabric of England had
changed. An over-enthusiastic sweep
. remember the guy who came in
and bought the shop out of Grow-
lux 80 watts.
...If the brief bolt of bright light that had been the summers of ‘66 and ‘67 had done nothing else, it had left some of us with an abiding interest
in the growth, processing and con-
sumption (particularly the consum-
ption) of a certain weed. It is difficult now, 30 odd years on, to piece together exactly how it happened but in just a few years cannabis had come from being an ‘also ran’ in the great intoxicants race to rank right up there among the leaders. If the alternative culture had been jump started by the appearance of acid, it had sustained itself on marijuana. It was the psych-
edelic snack that kept us going bet-
ween the twice weekly acid banquets. For those of us who had some acquaintance with the GanjaMa, the glory days had arrived.
...It was inevitable that the first definable drug culture in the UK -- the pill-popping, mohair suited, 		...
of American commercialisat-
ion had long
since started to
wipe the face
of Britain clear
of the small
shops that had
made it possible
for the diminut-
ive French despot, Napoleon, to describe Eng-
land as ‘a nation of shopkeepers.’
The self service stores had become
supermarkets and the supermarkets had become sup-
erstores and the
superstores had become ware-
houses.The garden
centre had arrived. But not the specialised range of fertil-
back-combed and scooter riding Mods -- would, in part, gravitate towards the Mother of All Intox-
icants. Fashion rules and all that. Fashion and a new found hedonism, as taught by Keith Richards. As the post-Mod relics cast around for a
new fashion statement to make, the emerging hippy culture gave them just what they wanted. And along with the beads, bells, kaftans and primary colours came the substances that had been their inspiration. In a blink of an eye, cannabis emerged from the shady backstreet beatnik sub-culture in which it had been condemned to be merely an accout-
rement on the way to becoming a smack addict and hit the high street. Big time.
...For those of us who had been 		had all, everyone of us, lamented the waste as we had flushed a half ounc eof oily, bulging, ripe and ready seeds down the lavatory (ah, sweet paranoia). With such a surfeit of seeds it was not surprising that some got planted. Seeds ‘casually tossed out of the window’ of Paul MacCartney’s Ayrshire farmhouse grew into a bustable garden. Nice try, Paul. Elsewhere embarrassing plantations were appearing in family gardens. In those innocent days the general public had no idea what a marijuana plant looked like so the worst that could happen was that your father would pull up the Green Goddess for the weed that it was. Although most of the plants produced from that cornucopia of seeds fell foul of the bonfires, it isers. However, hope was at hand. For, we discovered, England, too, had its growshops.
...I can remember the first time I saw the Sunlight Systems ad in Viz magazine. ‘Grow your own pot,’ it said. 'Outrageous," I said.
...Personally I couldn’t believe
they could get away with it. But they
did Here, indeed, was a bit of history
that had happened without my notic-
ing. With the grow shops, the seeds
and the inspiration of Amsterdam in
place, everything was ready for a
creation of the UK skunk growing
industry.
...Kevin and Sasha live in a flat in a
Victorian villa on a pleasant leafy
street in South London. Kevin (48)
is a self-employed graphic designer
who works from home. His common
law wife, Sasha (42) was made re-
dundant two years ago and she is
also at home. They live a quiet, res-
pectable, sedate life amongst the
Hooray Henrys and Cashmired
Camillas, keeping to themselves,
avoiding the occupants of the other
flats in their building and they are
comfortable.
subsisting on a diet of the rather ordinary hash brought into thecountry not by devotees but by merchant seamen whose interest was in a quick profit not quality, the sun began to shine. The over-pressed slabs of Moroccan and under-pressed bricks of Leb were still around but they were suddenly supplemented by a wide variety of aromatic, hand- rolled, high quality Blacks from India. I can still remember the first time I smoked Nepalese temple ball and can almost re-experience the amazing knee-wobbling, eyeball-
popping, time-stopping high. Such experiences made us all reassess this substance that we had hitherto 		did not take much cunning to stop that happening. The more ambit-
ious went out into the fields to scatter their largesse of conscious-
ness upon the ground in secret places they would never find again. And the more organised just planted whole fields and prayed. On window sills and in window boxes, on patios and in and small demonstrated their wonderful easy growing ways.
...Of course, hardly any of these crops produced grass worth smoking. In 1968 in a garden in Brighton, a seaside town long since regarded as the UK’s drug mecca, I planted five seeds from some		 ...Their flat is a nicely decorated,
immaculately tidy and extremely
tasteful mix of Victoriana, art nou-
veau with just a dash of deco. It is
quiet, peaceful and sweet smelling.
Very sweet smelling. But, then, they
are fairly obsessive about the smells.
As, quite rightly, they should be.
For, in their cellar, they have over
300 marijuana plants in various
states of growth from newly planted
clones to full budded, dripping and
very smelly Mamas just about ready
to crop.
...“Although our friends say they
can smell the grass as they stand out-
side the street door, we aren’t part-
icularly worried,” says Kevin as he
thought to be so slight.
...When the GanjaMa grabs you by the pleasure zones, she grabs you hard (squeeze those zones, Mama). Just a few puffs of a joint and you can be transported to a new dimension where this reality sparkles and shines, shimmers, shakes and slip slides into a dream world where a
rolling inner vision leads you towards a wider understanding of the nature of yourself, your life and existence in general. To each of us the GanjaMa grants the power of thought.
...And it was everywhere. As the culture slowly found the switches that lit it up, the devotees danced around the Mother. A vacuum, particularly a cultural vacuum rarely exists for long, and there was soon a flood of information to satisfy those who had read and re-read the botanical entries in the encyclopaedias. For many of us the silliness of ‘A Child’s Garden of Grass’ denoted a frivolity upgrade that was as necessary as it was revolutionary. But respectability was soon to follow with the publication
of ‘The Book of Grass’, edited by George Andrews and Holland’s own Simon Vinkenoog. At the same time, just to make the information come alive, grass made its debut in the UK. It was all imported, thin and weedy, sometimes rank smelling, sometimes rich and rummy, often packed with seeds, but it was grass. And those of us who had become experienced in the cannabis arena recognised that here was a different beast.
...There are those who will tell you
-- even today in Amsterdam -- that hashish offers the pinnacle of the
smoking experience. It is, they say, a purer, cleaner and higher smoke.
And maybe they are right. But, as we all know, hashish is made from the resin glands alone and contains 		Indian grass that had blown us all away. Fortunately, it was a good summer and the garden was a sun trap. When the plants reached about eight feet and had my neighbour asking what they were, I decided that it was time to top them. Three weeks later I did it again. And twice more before, towards the end of September, I pulled them. By that time they were as wide as they were high. As I piled them up by the house, my neighbour leaned over the garden wall and said: “Before you throw your ferns away, could I have a cutting?” I smiled sweetly and told her they only grew from seed and that I would see if I could find any seeds on the plants. I never did.
...The five plants produced almost five kilos of leaf with nary a flower in sight, and, yes, I not only sold it all but got rave reviews. And, I have to say, that those leaves were remarkable. They produced a knee-trembling high that few of us had experienced before with an imported product let alone a home produced one. As we sat around rolling joints of the chlorophyll-
rich, minty leaves, feeling like Robert Crumb cartoons, we did not even have the knowledge to lament the fact that the plants had never flowered. We were just overjoyed that we had got a result, any result.
..As I have said before, they were innocent days. I mean we knew		 draws on a king-size spliff that sends
up clouds of bluish smoke that threat-
en for a moment to overwhelm the
sticks of Nag Champa burning on
a coffeetable. “We figure that if we
come up with enough smells from
this flat no one who doesn’t know
what we are doing is ever going to
be able to distinguish the smell of
the skunk.
...And he may be right. For two
years they have been growing comm-
ercially in a converted coalhole under
their next door neighbour’s flat. It
took Kevin over a year to clear the
coalhole of 80 years of accumulated
debris and, of course, coal, and to
paint and renovate it. In the process
he built a dividing wall, installed a
neon lit shelving system for clones,
installed an industrial extractor fan
and wired the whole lot up to a cent-
ral control board that would look
okay on the Starship Enterprise (but
probably only in a utility cupboard).
...Like so many people growing in
the UK, Kevin was inspired to start
his enterprise through his experi-
ences in Amsterdam. Like many
growers he buys his seeds from the
city of dreams because he can --
with a bit of searching -- smoke
grass that was actually grown from
the seeds he intends buying. At the
moment he is growing Shiva Skunk
from seeds he bought at Sensi Seed
Bank. “It is a fairly easy plant to
grow,” said Kevin.
..."We started out growing the Nor-


The Hazy Dayz label. Describing itself as 'The first (and only) choice
in branded UK-grown smoking cannabis,' the label includes a
Government health warning saying: 'Use of this product may cause
unnatural feelings of pleasure and happiness. In small print around the
edges of the label it says: 'Breaks the ice at parties,' 'Will make even
your mother laugh,' 'For best results use in the company of good friends'
and 'Spiritual insights may result from the use of this product.' Along the
bottom of the label, it says: 'High potency sinsimilla buds hand grown
and hand crafted by people who love you.'
•••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••
 thern Lights No 5/Haze from Sensi
Seed Bank because it has such a
fantastic high but it is a twelve
week plant and we had real prob-
lems with it. At that stage we
hadn’t started to use specialist fert-
ilisers but were still relying on the
local garden centre.Proper grass
fertilisers were not easy to come
by and although we tracked down
some mixtures with the right kind
of NPK ratings they weren’t for
cannabis. When you are working
with highly chemical concentrates
it is easy to over fertilise, particul-
arly if the plant has a long flower-
ing period. And, if you are grow-
ing in pots as we do, it is hard to
put it right.”
...“The Shiva Skunk plants were a
success right from the beginning,”
Kevin continues. “Even when we
were using the concentrates they
produced a fair crop. But once the
specialised fertilisers started to
come in from Holland they really
took off.”
...Unlike many growers Kevin runs
his system so that he crops a group
of fifteen plants every week. That
none of that awful plant matter or any of those dreadful secondary chemicals. As Robert Cornell Clarke says in his definitive exam-
ination of hashish (Hashish by Robert Cornell Clarke, Red Eye Press, 1998, ISBN: 0-929349-05-9) ’the resin contains the main psychoactive ingredient . . . THC.’ Get that? The ‘main psychoactive ingredient.’ You mean there are other psychoactive ingredients? So what happens to them? Well, man, they are just not 		that the female plant was more favoured than the male but that was about it. This was before we had even heard the word ‘sensimilla.' It is hard to peel away the layers of knowledge and experience and to remember how it was then. I can remember, in 1974, buying the High Times Book of Recreational Drugs and seeing pictures of sensimilla buds but that is about as far as it went. The import of the information missed me completely. means that each week he has a new
set of clones to prepare to replace
the ones moved on into the main
veg/flowering cycle. “It is quite
hard work,” Kevin says, reflectively,
“but well worth it. Although I am
only producing about 150 grams a
week that is nearly eight kilos a
year.”
...He feels that his enterprise is a
success. “The grass gives us a com-
fortable living that allows us to be
where we want to be. It is a bit rest-
ricting because we hand water and
when we go away, say to Amster-
dam, we have to get in a ‘babysitter’
but even that is not difficult.”
...It is an accolade to the cannabis
plants' versatility that Kevin and
Sasha have achieved such a success.
For their set up could hardly be seen
as high-tech. There is no pH adjust-
there in the hash, they are in the bin.
...Although quantity for quantity hash is far stronger than the grass from which it was made, there are many subtleties to the high that are absent in hashish. While many might regard these subtleties as undesirable they make for a richer and more varied high. But, as with all these things, that is a totally subjective view. For, as we all know, it is different for all of us.
...In those far off days, the arrival on the scene of grass had a profound effect. Suddenly we could -- just about -- recognise this substance as coming from a plant. And plants -- they’re everywhere.
 But I was not alone. It missed everybody else as well.
...If you read the first part of this tale (in issue one), you will know that it took 25 or so years and the discovery of Amsterdam to change the face of smoking in Great Britain. Thick or what? So many of us had indoor gardens but it was not because, as we all know, environmental control is the key to growing great grass. We had indoor gardens because being discreet is the key to staying out of prison. And, honestly, we did the best we could. When we read about how to flower the plants, we did adjust the photo-period. And we did produce		 ment to growing medium or water,
no EC meters to test the potency of
nutrient mixtures. Although care is
taken to try to get the temperature/
humidity/air balance right within the
two growing chambers, the balance
teeters on the brink of too much too
often. But they do try.When sum-
mer heatwaves raised the temperat-
ures in the chambers to more than
tropical level, an expensive portable
air conditioning unit was installed
that had the right effect.
...Punster Kevin believes he is part
of one of the UK’s largest growth
industries. “Almost everyone I know
has a garden or plants somewhere.
There seems to be a major revival
...As the threatening clouds of rep-
ression gathered around the ‘alter-
native culture’ many of us scaredy cats, fearing for our freedom and seeking to limit our personal knowledge of sodomy, backed away from the society we had helped to create. As our dealers got busted, scouring the town for someone
with something to buy became less of a pleasure and more of a hassle. For those of us who had drunk at the well of plenitude, this was not what we needed.
...Disenfranchised and abandoned in a desert by the substance we loved to love, some of us fought off the fingers of respectability that were plucking at our lapels and set about doing it for ourselves.
...The revolution that had been in the air over those crucial summers had produced some interesting if -- in retrospect -- somewhat short-lived effects. Freedom had been in the air and -- before it had been deftly netted, stuffed into a cardboard box and pushed to the back of the cupboard -- had briefly sprinkled the world with the fairy dust of change.
...Remember head shops? Yes, there was a time when the cannabis smoking society was seen as a market for straight(ish) businesses as well as for the other kind. In the echoing aftermath of the media-created ‘Swinging London’ myth that had swung its way across the Atlantic and helped to create, in part, the sense of freedom around which the hippy culture assembled, the infrastructure had been constructed. The legendary Carnaby Street -- which before it had become legendary had been just another seedy street in the heart of London’s seedy Soho area -- still housed the boutiques that were its claim to fame but now they served provincials from Norwich, Essex and Brighton up in ‘the smoke’ on shopping trips. The people that had helped Carnaby Street rise from its own gutters and had made it the international goal of the tasteless and styleless masses had long since moved on. As the Beautiful People colonised Chelsea and Notting Hill they took with them what seemed liked a travelling street party. Drab, grey, boring shopping streets full of greengrocers and ironmongers were transformed, it seemed overnight, into eastern bazaars hung with festive silk scarves and lit with the reflective light of a million mirror sequins. The headshops had arrived.
...In this overspill of freedom, information about cannabis flooded into the UK. And along with anthologies, the picture books and the simple prayers of adoration, came more substantial information.
...In the US, as if in a dream, one state after another followed Alaska’s lead in decriminalising the ‘Assassin of Youth.’ But it was just that -- a dream. Before you could say ‘Ronald Reagan’, things started to revert to the bad old ways. As decriminalisation crumbled, however, we did not give up hope. Certainly not in dear old Blighty, anyway. The British had not indulged in the post-hippy era freefall. In the UK cannabis was a prohibited substance and its control (which is about the nicest word I can use for it) was never relaxed. Quite the reverse. As the UK’s summer of love turned into an autumn of discontent, the UK went into a spasm of repression.
...But by then we had the growbooks
and we were thinking ‘botanical.’ More than thinking. Almost all of us had put away seeds from what we had felt at the time was a particularly good grass. Indeed, with most commercial grass made up of at least 50% seeds, we had them coming out of our ears. (Dokker De’Ath writes: It is a bad thing to keep your seeds in your ears or any other bodily orifice. Seeds in the ears can severely impair your hearing. Although unlikely to germinate, should a seed do so, you are also likely to find Mr Plod standing on your sideburns.) We
TOP OF COLUMN
 flowers just like those in the botan-
ical illustrations on which we based our assessment of our growing endeavours -- thin, weedy, insub-
stantial cotton puffs of white spiky flowers. And the grass was so variable. I never produced flower-
ing grass from an indoor garden that came any where near the leaf I had produced outdoors. But I was still regarded as a successful grower.
...It was, however, not easy in those far off days before grow-
shops. At this stage in the growth of grass-growing technology, there was almost none. High Intensity lamps were not, at this time, even a twinkle in the eyes of the electrical companies. It was ordinary neon tubes, mixed to kind of get the right light balance, or, for those on the cutting edge, Growlux. We had read that light intensity was an issue so we made up frames and packed those tubes --10 to 15 watts of light to the foot -- in. But the light was never strong enough to produce great or even good grass. And, of course, the great, globular, power-
packed super strains that Holland has developed were just not around.
...And just tracking down Growlux tubes in the UK was a major init-
iative test.
...It was compromise all the way. It was impossible to find fertilisers with the right mix of nutrients. The UK didn’t have the range of brand-
ed fertilisers that seemed to be available in the States and certainly did not have mixtures customised to suit particular plants -- unless you happen to be a tomato or rose grower. Standing in the ironmon-
gers or, if you were really lucky, the local seed merchant (this was long before the appearance of garden centres) gazing at the sparse branded fertiliser shelf you were hardly spoilt for choice. With a maximum of maybe five branded fertilisers from which to choose, the best almost always turned out to be Miracle-Gro with a 20, 20, 20 NPK rating. It was okay for grow-
ing nice large bushy plants, if you didn’t over-fertilise them, but when it came to flowering . . . .We tried everything to come up with a high PK fertiliser that worked, even down to concocting our own pot-
entially lethal brews. Nothing worked. Maybe someone some-
where got it right but there was no communication, sharing of know-
ledge, collectively, among those early growers.
...Eventually, for me, and others, it just got to be too much bother for too little gain. Slowly one by one we gave up guerrilla gardening for jobs, babies, mortgages and all the other stuff you have to try before you find out you don’t like it. There was always imported dope around. Well, not always, there were many notorious ‘droughts’. But mostly.
...It is always the young who lead the way and we had to wait almost three decades for our children to show us what we should have realised long before. A whole generation discovered Amsterdam and came back with tales of home-produced super grass so potent it was truly psychedelic. For those of us who had finally had to conclude that the bulging buds pictured in the books were just another myth, it was a revelation. Once they started the tales came thick and fast. As if the coffeeshops were not enough to make the English tourists stand back in awe, tales came back of growshops where you could not only buy
TOP OF COLUMN
 happening. Of course, it is because
growing skunk is so worthwhile.
And because there are so many
growshops. That has made life so
much easier.”
...A visionary with a sense of hum-
our, Kevin clearly gets a lot of
pleasure from his extra-curricular
activities as well as most of his
income. He has put his graphic
design skills to use in the marketing
of his grass with a brand name and
a label. Sold under the Hazy Dayz
brand name, the grass is loosely
packed into half and one ounce
blocks using an upended chocolate
box and lots of thick cling film. The
box is lined with the cling film with
plenty around the edges and a label
of the right size is placed face down.
The grass is piled on top and gently
pressed into shape. When it is a nice
solid but not compressed block, the
excess cling film is wrapped around.
Turn the box over and out slides a
nice neat block of buds with a very
pretty label. Kevin says he was just
“having a bit of fun.” He only packs
part of the crop in this way but, he
says, there is always a lot of demand
for the ‘special packs’ and they
seem to go out at a slightly higher
price.
...Like most growers, Kevin does
not sell his grass directly to punters
or in small quantities. The whole of
his crop goes out through one contact
on a regular basis. “Although it is
important to have a relaxed attitude
if you are a grass grower, it is also
important that it is not too relaxed.
It is easy, you know, to get paranoid
when you are involved in business
like this. You have to not be paran-
oid and watch the details. Not too
many visitors and no ‘unusual’ ones.
Watch the smells. Watch the noise.
Watch the electricity bill.”
...Although Brixton -- traditionally
one of the places to pick up in
London -- is only a couple of minutes
away by car, Kevin and Sasha live
in a predominantly straight area and
they aim to fit in. “We can play the
straight game as well as anyone,”
says Sasha.
...Although in many ways they are
not typical of growers (whatever
that is,) they do have something in
common with everyone who grows
grass -- they want to produce the
highest quality possible. “There is
still a lot to learn,” he says, “ and all
the information is in Amsterdam.
The guys in the growshops there,
they are experts who really know
what they are talking about. There
may be exceptions but I have found
that almost every growshop had lots
to tell me. In some you had to be
sure to ask the right questions but in
others the information just came. It
is talking to people in growshops
that made me realise just how
important things like pH are. I shall
be getting a pH meter and an EC
meter next time I am in Amster-
dam.”
...Kevin and Sasha see themselves
as a new breed of grower. “We
clearly are not criminals,” says
Kevin. “We believe we provide a
service that creates better people.
Smoking dope is about increased
consciousness and people function
out of consciousness. It goes with-
out saying that if you have more
consciousness you are probably
doing it better.”
...It is a philosophy with which Coff-
eehouse Culture can only agree.
...“We are providing a service that
should be provided by other institut-
ions within the state. I mean, clearly
smoking is a major stepping stone to
the development of spirituality. And
isn’t spirituality the major concern
of all religions. So why aren’t they
handing out bags of grass?”
...“It is clear,” he concludes, “that
grass is not so much a fairly harm-
THE
THRILLOGY CONTINUES

In the third and final part of this stunningly
boring thrillogy, we get cracking, smacking
and . . . er . . . flaking as we pay tribute to the
powers of oppression who gave the UK a
generation of hard drug users. The wonder is
that the British Government had the
commonsense to see what they
had done and tried, somewhat half-heartedly,
to make amends.
less substance as one that is distin-
ctly positive. It opens people up to
themselves and makes them think.
How can anyone suggest that is a
bad thing? It is ludicrous that grass
should be illegal. It is so obviously a
mistake that has an extremely serious
impact on individuals and the world.
That is why it is important for those
who know the truth to speak out.
And that is why we should all cherish
Amsterdam”
A stoned silence descends on the
room, now thick with blue smoke.
Somewhere in the distance, an ang-
elic choir is singing the ‘Hallelujah
Chorus.’ Or is it just a trick of the
light?
PLAIN TEXT • TOP OF PAGE
....
..COLUMN: COOKING WITH CANNABIS
PLAIN TEXT
NEAT EATS, TREATS
AND SWEETS

In a world where goosing the cook is always
more fun than cooking the goose,
our Giggling Gourmet brings new levels of
culinary confusion to your kitchen.
With his marinade (sorry, it's an English joke) and
his meringues soft, the best thing that can be said
about our own Gordon Blue is that he never
passes out over the MasterChef

A LITTLE SOMETHING TO DIGEST

Greetings gourmets, gastronomes and gluttons. And welcome to my new column in this gastronomically barren publication. As you may have gathered
I shall be telling you all about interesting and unusual things you can do with your excess grass. None of these interesting things will involve any unusual orifices. Personally, I think that if you have excess grass you should put it into a plain manila envelope and send it to me. But that is, as I said, just a personal point of view. I know that most of you will want to get more out of your grass than some good karma and lots of gratitude. And that’s where I come in.
down the substance containing
the THC. Even on an empty stomach,
the process of digestion can mean a
wait of an hour or more before an
appreciable high is experienced.
When the stomach has other food it
is digesting, the wait can be much,
much longer.
Cannabis and food have been together for as long as cannabis and smoking. As a plant, cannabis qual-
ifies very strongly in the herbal/
spice stakes. Depending on the type of cannabis product and on how it is processed, it can have a strongly distinctive and spicy taste that lends itself well to certain comestibles.
And, in every cannabis growing country of the world, there is a lexi-
con of traditional recipes in which cannabis is the key ingredient. Although many of these are sweetmeats and cakes, cannabis is versatile enough be used in all manner of savoury dishes.
And, indeed, in drinks. One of the best known cannabis concoctions
is the infamous bhang lassi. Rarely
seen outside of India, on the
ancient sub-continent it is an easily available treat that has a real reputation. Few of those who have had the bhang lassi experience
forget it. Usually because they can’t actually remember it in the first place. Ah, the majestic power of the bhang lassi.
Let us be clear, however, cooking with cannabis is not like other kinds of cooking. Indeed, it is an art unto itself. This is not a matter of getting the nutients and carbohydrates that propel the body through life into the system. The only real nutrients in foods containing cannabis are ones that affect the mind. And the amount of roughage is negligible. Cooking with contraband involves a whole new set of rules and attitudes to food. The whole point of cooking with cannabis is to get as much of the vital ingredient into one’s system as fast as possible. And that turns the act of eating on its head. Although grass can be added to almost any dish, it works best when it is not bulked out with other ingredients. That is why, traditionally, grass is used in small tasty snacks rather than in main courses.
Ingesting cannabis, or its active
ingredient, THC, though the digest-
ive tract is a rather different process to smoking it and it has rather diff-
erent effects. Smoking grass produces a fairly immediate and controllable high. It lasts for a couple of hours and if it starts to decline one has only to take a couple more tokes to get it all back. When individual capacity is reached, there are many telltale signs - like falling asleep on your girlfriend’s chest - that tell you it is time to stop.
Eating cannabis is totally different. The high from eating is far from instantaneous. Even on an empty stomach, a grass-laced cookie will take between 15 minutes and an hour to hit. And when the high starts it will not be the ‘in at the deep end’ experience like that produced by smoking. The high will take about an hour to develop fully and will last between four and eight hours, maybe longer. Not only will it be of much longer duration than a smoking high but it will be far more intense. If

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ever you want to run cannabis through its hallucinogenic cred-
entials, the way to do it is through eating rather than smoking it. Afterwards, you will never doubt that cannabis qualifies for its place in the pantheon of psychotropic substances.
The high derived from eating
cannabis is not dissimilar from a
trip. It is rather less psychedelic,
there are fewer hallucinations, it
is somewhat less ecstatic (or nightmarish) but one is definitely somewhere else. And, like a trip,
when you are there you are there. Taken in sensible quantities, that is fine. One will have an intense and very enjoyable experience. It is, however, easy to overdose when
eating cannabis.
The propensity for cannabis ODs
-- a virtually unheard of phenom-
enon in the smoking world --
when it is eaten comes down to the way the substance is absorbed into
the system. Not merely the way it
is absorbed, however, but also what exactly goes into the system, what active chemicals you get from the cannabis.
The active ingredient in cannabis,
as we all know, is THC. However, THC is the decarboxylated deriv-
ative of the non-psychoactive tetrahydrocannabinolic acid. The transformation of THC acid into psychoactive THC, takes place
through drying. The acid, how-
ever comes in many forms and not
all are converted during the drying process. Some of the remaining
acids are converted through the application of heat during the
smoking process but many remain unconverted or are too volatile to withstand the heat and merely
burn up without converting and
are lost.
The heat applied to cannabis when cooking with it is quite different to that applied with a flame. If THC acids are heated to boiling point for nice long time in a oxygen free environment, all of the acids will convert. This means that the grass
gets stronger, more potent. Tradit-
ionally cannabis cookery involves sautéing the cannabis in butter, oil
or milk. The medium in which the cannabis is heated protects it
from the air while the heat does
its work.
The simple rule here is too much
heat can destroy THC potency
while normal temperatures can increase it.
Cooking cannabis in an oily med-
ium is not only for the convers-
ion of acids. It is also a big aid to
the assimilation of the active ingredients. THC is always much
more easily assimilated if it is dissolved in fats or alcohol first.
When fats or alcohol are taken
into the digestive tract, the digest-
ive processes are naturally stimul-
ated. Without that stimulation there may not be enough digestive
fluids in the stomach to break
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 Even for experienced smokers, the
wait for the high can seem like for-
ever. Even on a totally empty stom-
ach it is going to be an hour before
you feel much and that can be a
long hour for those used to an inst-
ant hit from a joint. On a stomach
with some food in it, the wait will be
two hours. And on a full stomach
something like four hours. Those
who know, make sure that their
stomach. is empty and wait patiently
for the high to come on. If they are
wise they resist the temptation to
help the high along with some more
cannabis-cookie. If you don’t know,
it is possible to eat ten times too
much and more before the first
effects of the high are felt. In such
a situation, an intense experience
goes into overload and unconscious-
ness for up to 48 hours may result.
If you are on holiday in Amsterdam,
passing out for two days on the
street is bound to lose you friends.
Although in Amsterdam, many
coffeeshops sell space cake, it is a
practice that is somewhat frowned
upon by the authorities and on
Queen’s Day, in a rare piece of
festive rule application, citizens
selling cannabis foodstuffs are given
a warning. Too many people, it
seems fall foul of the wait for the
high or just aren’t expecting its
intensity and freak out.
Cooking with cannabis is not
something one does for sustenance.
It is an act of hedonism not necess-
ity. And, indeed, it is good to keep it
away from meal times altogether.
There are many recipes for main
course dishes that involve cannabis
but, like dropping it on a full stom-
ach, they should be avoided. Ingest-
ed with a large amount of bulk food,
the cannabis content is just a small
part of a much larger nutrient mix
that must be processed by the dig-
estive system. Although the THC
will be absorbed by the system it
will be a slow process. Only one
third of the food will have been
assimilated during the first three to
four hours. This will produce an
initial high. Another third will be
absorbed over the next six to eight
hours and will help to maintain the
high somewhat (but that doesn’t
mean you will be high for 12
hours.) And a full third will not be
assimilated at all and will pass
through the system. It will be the
most expensive dump you’ve ever
had.
It is for these reasons that this col-
umn is called ‘Neat Eats, Treats and
Sweets’ because that is mostly what
I will be giving recipes for.But there
is no space for any of those in this
issue. Even in the next issue I doubt
I will get to the recipes. But I will
be giving you some very thorough
instructions for processing your
contraband. So think of me in the
kitchen, wearing my gingham apron,
as I slave over a hot keyboard with
my balloon whisk in my hand. I am
just a cook and bottle washer to you.
That’s all I am.

PLAIN TEXT • TOP OF PAGE
WATCH OUT FOR THE GIGGLING GOURMET
HE’LL BE BACK IN THE NEXT ISSUE. HE SAYS: "WITH A BHANG."
...

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