LOL! Your phrase "what if the crystals of THC are destroyed by the blades?" for some reason makes me think of when people say "shake but don't stir the martini lest you bruise the gin"!

I thought it was stir, don't shake, lest you water down the gin?

Ricky, this makes perfect sense. Nice that you're in a fully legal state now, too. :) But what about your patients? You're not trying to get them stoned, right? Are you going to get a lab test or something? Or have they moved to dispensary product?

Of course, you didn't really change the recipe if you're still using cannabutter. I mean, perhaps if there's a different amount of plant oil in the butter it might be a bit spreadier or otherwise minorly different texture, but that would be minor.

I'm grateful for my time living in the elbow of nowhere with little money and deficient kitchen. I learned not to worry about altering baking recipes. If you care about making the exact same thing you did before, you need a recipe, but if you're happy if the finished product is nice to eat, you can mess around with impunity, so long as you stay within the realm of normal.

OK I got it backwards, you should stir not shake it to keep from bruising the gin. I still don't get it.

Rita, I don't get it either, and I owned a bar! However, far me it from me to argue with Bond. James Bond. (grin)

Ricky, I change things with little thought when I'm baking. More vanilla, less sugar, more flour, different size pans, whatever suits me. It usually works as long as I keep the ratio of fat-dry-wet ingredients within a particular realm. Of course, my ingredients aren't quite as pricey as yours.

I also thought you still had patients, although your dear wife was a primary recipient due to her illness. Now that she's gone, your baking is strictly "recreational" and no longer "medicinal"?

And what in the world are you going to do with that many cookies? Invite the neighbors or the yoga studio? Can you freeze them for future use?

Annie

120 mg in 1 cookie? Gosh, that seems like 10 doses to me. The edibles we had in CA averaged around 5mg per piece and 15 mg was almost too much - 20 was in O.D. territory.

BTW, did you know there's a cannabis channel on Pluto TV? It's called THC and is on channel 420 (of course). They run these infomercials for cannabutter devices that take the guesswork out of it. The infomercials are pretty amusing, since the hosts are sampling their recipes and seemed fairly zonked out.

http://pluto.tv/live-tv/thc

And I'm not too afraid to substitute an/or add things when baking. Flavorings don't make much difference to the texture, etc.

And increasing the amount of surface area is what happens when you grind exceedingly fine, right?

These are recreational cookies. The medical patients, and I still have over 40 of them, get a different blend - 50% CBD and 50% THC. The THC component is around 80mg.

As the various states legalize, I've been losing customers. My group from Illinois is now baking on their own. In fact, I've cut my prices in half thanks to the lower cost of ganja here in Colorado. Some states are still years away from legalization, but I figure there will be a time where only lazy people will still come to me for cookies. Just an FYI, the nine dozen in the picture were packed and shipped today.

In terms of potency, yes these are very strong cookies but the folks that are eating them have an extremely high tolerance for THC. My own tolerance allows me to eat three or four cookies a day. But I'm also now five years cancer free.

I knew you had medical clients, I didn't realize you had a separate list of recreational customers too, which makes sense now that you say it.

As you know, Michigan hasn't yet implemented it's legal marijuana program. Since I'm 64 and have not yet used marijuana, I'm not really interested in the recreational aspects, but as you know, I have two daughters and one grandson that have seizures, one from drowning, one from a stroke and the grandson for reasons not determined. Especially Bud has trouble with control of those seizures so I'm interested in the possibility of seizure control with marijuana, and edibles will be preferable.

Annie

It's always an education reading Ricky's posts! I appreciate them so much!!!

As for the gin....does anyone want to do the research and see if Auntie Mame pre-dates James Bond?

Auntie Mame Gin Scene

Answers on bruising martinis and Bond. This includes an interesting speculation that Bond was asking for a cheap potato vodka martini to be shaken which would improve it. Gin, to me, tastes like the sweepings at the apothecary after a busy day dispensing medicinal herbs--one doesn't want to make it even more bitter by bruising it! The oily vodka theory is an explanation that makes far more sense than that Flemming just got it backwards. Yeah, John Lennon meant the Carpenter when he wrote I Am The Walrus, but one would think that even if Flemming, an upper class Brit and a known drinker, weren't drinking it, gin would abound in his world and he'd know how it should be handled.

Then, again, "shaken, not stirred" is sexual innuendo, and really, truly isn't required to mean anything about martinis.

James Bond was first published a few years before Auntie Mame.

Thanks, plllog! Interesting info in that link!

Ricky - sorry, didn't mean to hijack, just wanted to say something funny. As for pot edibles, I know nothing about it. Back in the hippie days I smoked and yes I understand the pot was supposedly different then, but I don't recall ever eating anything with pot in it. All I know is that it must taste AWFUL since smoking it left a bad taste in the mouth and also when I tried the CBD drops last year (which didn't do anything) it was almost impossible to choke down because of the awful taste, very reminiscent of the taste that the pot smoking left behind.

Not true - there are any number of edibles that taste so good, it can be difficult to restrain oneself from overindulging. The industry in CA is so sophisticated now it's a bit unbelievable. Back in the crunchy hippie 70s, the idea that things would ever to come to this would've been inconceivable.

I have spent more than eight years perfecting a set of cookies where there is no cannabis taste, that are undetectable by airport dogs, and are as accurate a dose as possible. I'm more than happy to send anyone who is interested a free sample. cookiemonster at fawnridge dot com is the only to make that request. Please don't do it here.

In the old days, and you can define that word any way you like, we didn't know about decarbing, about making cannabutter, about infusions. All we knew was get the box of Duncan Hines brownie mix, grind up an ounce - stems, seeds, and all - at bake it in with the brownies. Alice B Toklas be praised.

With current technology, we have control over the quality and needed quantity for the required effect. Yes, you can still get duffed if you eat too much (heaven knows I've tried) but for the most part, you can control your intake very easily while your tolerance is low because of the smaller doses available. 5mg and 10mg gummies, candy bars, and other edibles make it easy and safe for the casual user to enjoy a buzz.

And how much do you need?

Using my favorite strain - Blueberry Kush - as an example, will give you an idea of how different edible usage is compared to smoking. A single spliff contains around 75mg of THC. You lose most of that from just burning the ganja. So, your net intake, if you don't share, is around 25mg of THC. Blueberry Kush is a very powerful Indica, running around 25% THC by weight. It's probably better than what you're smoking now, unless you live in a legal state. The cookies in the picture have approximately 150mg of THC in each one. (The new technique has added at least 30mg to the old cookie.)

So, if you bought a box of ten gummies at 10mg of THC each, you could eat two of them and get a good buzz. If you ate the whole box, you'd be trashed and probably have agita. If you tried to smoke six joints of Blueberry Kush, BY YOURSELF, you'd be wasted, have a serious sore throat, and probably pass out before you lit the third one.

Just for comparison, most of the folks I ship to eat either a quarter of a cookie at a time, or two or three whole ones a day. A quarter of a cookie is around 37mg of THC, a full dooby and a couple of hits off a second one.