Ganja Vibes Blog

How to Cook With Cannabis This Thanksgiving | Alternet

For those of you spending this Thursday with weed-friendly friends and family, here's a quick guide to cooking with cannabis.

Photo Credit: Shutterstock

Thanksgiving is a holiday for spending time with friends and family over a heaping platter of comfort food, so why not celebrate this year with a special Thanksgiving dinner? After all, 2012 will go down in history as the year Colorado and Washington legalized marijuana, giving cannabis users a lot to be thankful for. Plus, incorporating easy-to-make cannabutter into traditional recipes will give your dinner conversation an extra buzz, not to mention help you and your guests to clean your plates. So, for those of you spending this Thursday with weed-friendly friends and family, here's a quick guide to cooking with cannabis.

Cannabutter. Making cannabutter is the first and most important step to create a THC-rich meal.

1. Pour a few cups of water into a large saucepan and bring to boil. For every ounce of marijuana, add one pound or four sticks of butter (or one ounce of oil for vegans). 2. Once the butter is boiling, add weed, making sure it is floating about an inch-and-a-half from the pan's bottom, and turn the stove to a lower heat. (Keep in mind that you can use vaporized bud, and that high-quality weed is not necessary to get a good buzz.) 3. Without burning the butter, heat the ingredients for at least an hour (the longer, the better) until the mixture resembles a thick, saucy liquid. Then, use the finest strainer you've got to remove the cannabis from the butter. 4. Let the cannabutter sit in the refrigerator overnight so  the water and butter separate as the cannabutter collects on top. Pour the water into the sink while blocking the cannabutter with, for example, a Tupperware lid.

Now that you've got your cannabutter ready to go, it's time to incorporate it into your favorite Thanksgiving foods. As you'll see, you can add cannabutter to pretty much anything, making for a wide variety of possible canna-snacks and entrees.

Let's Start With An Appetizer

Green-bean casserole is a regular dish at my family's Thanksgiving dinner (which, unfortunately, will not include cannabutter this year, or ever). Spruce up your recipe by adding cannabutter, or use the one below, from Coed Magazine :

Cannabutter Green Bean Casserole

Cooking time 30 mins, Serves 10 – 12

Ingredients:

• 2 cans Condensed Cream of Mushroom Soup

• 1 cup milk (fat free or 2%)

• 1 onion finely diced

• 2 tablespoons cannabutter

• 1/4 teaspoon salt

• 1/4 teaspoon ground black pepper

• 8 cups cooked cut green beans

• 1 cup French Fried Onions

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees.

2. In a large skillet sauté the chopped onion in a little cannabutter over medium heat for a few minutes until cooked.

3. Stir in the canned mushroom soup, milk, salt and pepper, green beans and 1 tablespoon of cannabutter and mix well until it's all warmed through.

4. Using the leftover cannabutter grease the casserole dish.

5. Transfer to the casserole dish, sprinkle with French Fried Onions and bake for 15 mins or until hot and bubbling.

The Main Course

Nothing is more important on Turkey Day than the turkey, and even that can be infused with cannabis. From Culture Magazine , here’s how to make this Thanksgiving’s main dish extra special:

What you need:

1 medium-sized (12- to 15-pound) turkey

1/2 cup marijuana butter

1/4 cup chicken broth

1 tablespoon lemon juice

1 teaspoon poultry seasoning

1 teaspoon sweet basil

1 teaspoon thyme leaves

1/2 teaspoon sage

How to make it:

Melt butter in a small saucepan over low heat and blend in remaining ingredients. Stuff turkey or season with salt and pepper, if desired. Make a small incision in skin of turkey, force a finger through the slit and break the contact between the skin and the meat. Using a meat injector, squirt half the butter mixture under the skin. Cook the turkey according to your favorite method, basting with the remaining butter mixture every half hour until done.

Dessert

When most people think about weed food, they probably think about pot brownies, which seem to be the standard for weed food. There's also cookies and "space cakes," but they're straightforward recipes many of us mastered in high school. So let’s be adults here and start with a Thanksgiving classic: Pot Pumpkin Pie! From High Times:

Chef Ra’s Great Ganja Pumpkin Pie

2 cups fresh pumpkin or 1 16-oz. can of pumpkin pie filling

2 eggs (beaten)

1/4 cup condensed milk

1 tsp molasses

1/2 stick butter or margarine

1/4-oz fine ganja buds or fan leaves

1 tsp cinnamon

1 tsp nutmeg

1 tsp vanilla

1/4 cup brown sugar

1 9-inch unbaked pastry shell

Place the ganja, crushed and finely chopped, into a double-boiler pot (one pot that fits inside the other separated by water). Cook the ganja in the butter for 45 minutes over very low flame. Cook slowly without burning the butter. Then, strain out the particulate (leaves, stems, etc.) and set aside. Combine the beaten eggs, milk, molasses, cinnamon, nutmeg, vanilla, brown sugar and pumpkin in a large bowl, and beat. Add the ganja butter to the mixture. Pour the mixture into the pastry shell. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Cook pie for 50 minutes or until a knife inserted comes out clean.

There you have it! These dishes should make for a super-fun Thanksgiving celebration -- and one that, working alongside a little tryptophan, will leave you cozy, full and ready for a good night's sleep. One of the problems with eating a lot of weed food, however, is that THC gives you the munchies, and so quite often, the more weed food you eat, the hungrier you get. It's a slippery slope, so you may want to keep a plate of leftovers hidden away, just in case.

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How to Cook With Cannabis This Thanksgiving | Alternet.  

For no reason at all: Coffee-Ginger-Pistachio Cake

  • Coffee-Ginger-Pistachio Cake
  • adapted from The Guardian
  • makes one 9″ cake, cut into 2 layers
  • For the cake:  50g unsalted butter 75ml milk 1 Tbs. ground coffee (not instant) 2cm piece of ginger, finely grated (about 1 Tbs.) 2 eggs 200g caster sugar 100ml neutral oil 75g pistachios, chopped 75g glacé ginger, chopped 275g plain flour 1 Tbs. baking powder 1/4 tsp. saltFor the topping:  200g cream cheese, at room temperature 125g unsalted butter, at room temperature zest of one lemon 2 tsp. lemon juice 175g icing sugar 25g pistachios, chopped
  • 1. Line the bottom of a 9″ cake tin with parchment and butter the sides lightly. Preheat the oven to 180°C/35°0F.2. Melt the butter in a small pot over low heat, then remove and mix in the milk, coffee and ginger. Set aside. 3. Beat the eggs and sugar together with an electric mixer until pale and foamy, then beat in the coffee mixture and oil until well combined. Stir in the pistachios and glacé ginger then fold in the flour, baking powder and salt. 4. Scrape the mixture into the prepared pan and bake for 30-35 minutes, until an inserted skewer comes out clean. Let cool completely before carefully slicing in half with your largest knife; separate the layers until ready to ice. 5. To make the icing, beat the cream cheese with an electric mixer for one minute, until smooth and creamy. Add the butter and beat for another minute. Briefly beat in the lemon zest and juice before adding the icing sugar and beating until justcombined. 6. Spread half the icing over the first layer of cake before carefully topping with the second layer. Cover with the remaining icing and sprinkle with the pistachios.
source: http://www.kitchenist.com/cooking/cake/for-no-reason-at-all-coffee-ginger-pistachio-cake/2431

Gaga Goo Goo Ballz

Written by Purplina Kush | | | Ingredients: (Makes 20-25) - 2 cups raw oats (organic is usually just about the same price in the bulk bins) - ¼ cup cannabutter, melted (have extra cannabutter - semi sweet chocolate baking squares (2 should be plenty) - 4 tbsp shredded unsweetened coconut. (also often organic at same…donation, lol) - goodly drizzle of la lechera (condensed milk), likewise with honey, for a lil extra sticky icky In large mixing bowl…mix! Once all oats are sewn nicely into a chocolatey gooey coat, we’re good to go. Now, put the whole bowl in the freezer, 10-15 min perhaps. The goal is to get the stuff form-able. About 1tbsp per ball. As with all Ganga Ballz I’ve formed thus far, if you have little to no interest in interplanetary transpo during the hand formation of such goods, you might use thin plastic gloves to avoid more and more cannabinoids in every pore. Sadly, it is already hard enough to perfect the consistency of these bad ballz n adding the element of gloves shifts it to near impossibility. Happily, you will be so rocked off your ass before the batch is even near done. Okay, now that we’re good to go nowhere fast, and any other place sloooowwly, we should have a parchment paper lined cookie sheet, or pan, or tin, or whateves, and neat rows of hand formed space ballz. Have shredded coconut in small separate bowl. Drop n roll each goo ball lightly in the flakes and place back on the wax paper. Now look, I was already a little outer-spaced, and was bringing these to a party of patients. Know what I did? You can see it in the pic. Yup, I melted more of the beautiful green butter w/more of the condensed milk, and I even think a marshmallow or two (I don’t know I was hiiiiigh) into a frosting type drizzle on top. Can’t stop, Won’t Stop! Cover these specialty spheres and refrigerate until serving. Bring them to a party and watch that thang blast off peaceful and giggly like, a little fuzzy even. Wish I could show y’all the pics! But that’s the great part: You don’t have to have been there: GO THERE! PK xoxo source: http://www.sarahdmagazine.com/index.php/food/beyond-brownies/74-gaga-goo-goo-ballz.html