Procrastination is as much a part of human nature as is say…breathing. We’ve all done it. Don’t deny it-you have too. But, as we all know, it can spawn some serious trouble if you’re not paying attention. For example, the infamous Alice B. Toklas “Haschich Fudge”-quite possibly the first printed version of the pot brownie.
Approached by Harpers in 1954, just a few years after her famous life-companion Gertrude Stein had passed away, Alice signed a contract to deliver a cook book by the end of the year. With the deadline looking just a few months away, the aging Toklas began soliciting recipes from her artsy friends. Her wiseacre painter friend named Brion Gysin, presented her with the recipe. She stuck it in with the rest of the manuscript and thought no more of it. It’s said that Alice, unfamiliar with "canibus" (at least as spelled by Gysin) and lacking the time to test the recipes, stuck her friend's contribution into her manuscript and sent it off to the publisher. The editors at Harper's spotted the suspicious ingredient and held the recipe out, but the publisher of the British edition didn't.
The press promptly went nuts. Tittered Time: "The late Poetess Gertrude (Tender Buttons) Stein and her constant companion and autobiographer, Alice B. Toklas, used to have gay old times together in the kitchen. Some of the unique delicacies that were whipped up will soon be cataloged ... in a wildly epicurean tome ... which is already causing excited talk on both sides of the Atlantic. Perhaps the most gone concoction (and also possibly a clue to some of Gertrude's less earthly lines) was her hashish fudge."
Alice, a believer to the end in her friend's genius, was absolutely incensed that anyone should think it was artificially fueled! Still, as friend Thorton Wilder told her, the recipe was the publicity stunt of the year and the expurgated American version of the cookbook received wide and generally respectful notice. Just so you can see what all the fuss was about, here's the original recipe entry:
Haschich Fudge (which anyone could whip up on a rainy day)
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 Morocco 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 the ravished by "un évanouissement reveillé".
Take 1 teaspoon black peppercorns
1 whole nutmeg
4 average sticks of cinnamon
1 teaspoon coriander
These should all be pulverised in a mortar.
About a handful each of stoned dates, dried figs, shelled almonds and peanuts: chop these and mix them together.
A bunch of Cannabis sativa can be pulverised. This along with the spices should be dusted over the mixed fruit and nuts, kneaded together.
About a cup of sugar dissolved in a big pat of butter. Rolled into a cake and cut into pieces or made into balls about the size of a walnut, it should be eaten with care. Two pieces are quite sufficient.
Obtaining the Cannabis may present certain difficulties, but the variety known as Cannabis sativa grows as a common weed, often unrecognised, everywhere in Europe, Asia and part of Africa; besides being cultivated as a crop for the manufacture of rope.
In the Americas, while often discouraged, its cousin, called Cannabis indica, has been observed even in city window boxes. It should be picked and dried as soon as it has gone to seed and while the plant is still green.
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