Category Archives: Cannabis edibles

Al Coles samples one of his Alta California tinctures.

BY ED MURRIETA

CBD is like salt.

Add a pinch of cannabidiol to tetrahydrocannabinol and, suddenly, that THC in your system responds like a tomato sprinkled with sodium — richer, balanced, complete.

“It’s a yin-and-yang relationship,” said Al Coles, founder of Alta California, a Stinson Beach company that makes medical cannabis tinctures centered on THC and CBD, two of more than 80 cannabinoids in the plant. “THC is the female: It takes you in and expands the mind. CBD is the male: It takes you out and focuses the mind.”

CBD is a non-psychoactive cannabinoid that acts as both calmer and catalyst to THC, the psychoactive cannabinoid that stimulates (and can over-stimulate) the mind and appetite. While both cannabinoids mitigate many ailments — seizures from MS and Parkinson’s disease, nausea in people with AIDS, cancer and Crohn’s disease, as well as chronic pain and depression in many people — THC is the cannabinoid that “messes with your head.” CBD, meanwhile, is body-centered and moderates the mind-racing and heart-racing effects THC can cause while also enhancing THC’s more pleasurable euphoric effect.

“It’s a better high,” Coles said. “That’s why I don’t do pure THC anymore.”

Holding up half-ounce bottles of tinctures high in THC and high in CBD during an interview last week at Magnolia Wellness, the Orangevale medical cannabis dispensary that carries his line of Alta California tinctures, Coles said, “There’s a whole new world of experience to be had by combining these two. I’ve been able to have a real good high feeling at much lower doses by having a little CBD in my system. A lot of people keep smoking pot while their high is going away. They say the THC is psychoactive but there’s no euphoria. CBD will bring back the euphoria.”

Alta California tinctures come in three versions: 99 percent THC and 1 percent CBD, labeled Euphoria; 80 percent CBD and 20 percent THC, labeled Healing; and 50 percent THC and 50 percent CBD, labeled Tranquility.

Coles said Euphoria works well for patients seeking relief from depression or insomnia and is especially popular with “the cannabis culture and people looking for the THC type of experience.” Healing, he said, is popular with patients who seek pain relief. And because CBD is an appetite suppressant unlike THC, Coles said his Healing product line is popular with women. Tranquility, he said, is popular with MS and Parkinson’s patients who suffer seizures and require the maximum benefits of both cannabinoids.

Recommended dosage, based on body weight, ranges from one-half milliliter (half an eye-dropper) to 6 milliliters. The tincture can be swallowed orally, placed under the tongue or may be infused into your beverage of choice. Each half-ounce bottle of tincture costs $40 — about $2.50 per dose.

As Coles described it, medicating with Alta California tinctures is like being your own alchemist and finding the balance of cannabinoids that work for you.

“High is a subjective assessment,” Coles said. “High is your symptom telling you it feels good, it’s got what it needs.”

Noting that THC in high doses can cause anxiety and paranoia, Coles said CBD is the natural, calming antidote.

“CBD deactivates the mind,” Coles said. “The active mind that people want to go away, it goes away. THC is the one typically that helps you sleep but a lot of people have been finding sleep benefits from CBD because their minds were so active — they’re Facebooked out, they’re always going, they need to shut it up. CBD does.”

Coles offered chemotherapy patients as another example of CBD’s beneficiaries. The memory of a previous chemotherapy treatment, he said, can trigger physical illness in patients en route to appointments. CBD, Coles said, prevents that physical illness by keeping the active mind in check.

“That’s what they call memory extinction,” Coles said. “Some people need just enough to keep that dominant memory, whatever it might be, at bay. And if you go too far with CBD, which is, the active mind is gone completely, you can take THC and it will kick it back.”

Coles said Alta California’s tinctures are made using whole cannabis plants — a version of the Harlequin strain for the high-CBD tincture and an Afghani and OG Kush for the high-THC tincture. Neutral grape spirits — 190-proof ethanol, made from organic grapes grown in Northern California — are used to extract and preserve the active cannabinoids, and to speed up their absorption in a person’s body. Honey and mint oil flavor the tincture, and propylene glycol, a food-safe stabilizer, binds and thickens. While each half-ounce bottle contains an amount of alcohol “equivalent to a quarter-shot of tequila,” Coles said his product doesn’t induce alcohol effects.

“Alcohol speeds up the bio-availability of the cannabinoids into the liver,” Coles said. “That means you get the medicine faster and you can judge if you have it right. If you have to wait an hour, you can’t judge.”

WHERE TO BUY
Alta California tinctures are available at these medical cannabis dispensaries in the Sacramento area. The cost is $40 per half-ounce bottle.

Magnolia Wellness: 9198 Greenback Lane, Orangevale; (916) 865-7351

Unity Non Profit Collective: 1832 Tribute Road, Sacramento; (916) 564-1824

1 Love Wellness:  1841 El Camino Ave., Sacramento; (916) 231-5683

Roasted Plum Cake, made with cannabis butter.

BY ED MURRIETA

A great cookbook.

The first sign something was amiss arose when the sugar didn’t cream into the butter in the mixing bowl. I’d chosen to use 2 ounces of cannabis butter and 2 ounces of unsalted butter in the batch of Julia Child’s roasted plum cakes that I hoped would relieve the swelling in my hip and the nerve pain that came with it.

Rather than let botched baking get on my last nerve, I let the Kitchen Aid run, beating in eggs, vanilla, and then, slowly, so as not to toughen the batter, flour, baking soda, salt, and buttermilk, or in this case half and half spiked with lime juice for similar acidic effect.

I’ve made this recipe scores of times. It’s one of many great recipes in Baking with Julia, a cookbook my mother gave me. I’ve made it at home, in restaurant kitchens, at campsites. It’s always turned out the same: tender, moist, golden-amber brown, barely clinging to itself, much less the roasted fruit it encases.

A well-baked Roasted Plum Cake, sans cannabis.

Baking with Julia and baking with cannabis wasn’t exactly a pairing made in culinary heaven.

I blame the butter, the cannabis butter.

But I should have known, too: The process of making cannabis butter — infusing dried plant into the butter fat as it heats, slowly — removes moisture from the butter. With this recipe, the result was dry, dense cake. Cake that didn’t brown properly. Cake, in fact, baked with a greenish tint.

Sure, perhaps I could have adjusted the recipe, reducing the flour or increasing the milk or quadrupling the brown sugar on top. (Yeah, yeah: baking is science, but, really, there is some leeway.)

But that’s not my point.

My point is: Cannabis butter is not equal to standard creamery butter.

Yes, as a cannabis-medicated edible, 1 4-ounce portion of this modified Julia Child roasted plum cake significantly eased my hip, back and leg pain, not to mention that pain that I am in that condition. As cooking analogies go, this cake went like this: It was like I put a juicy rib-eye steak on the grill only to serve a dried-out pork chop on the plate.

I want to stress: This is just one baking example, with just one cannabis butter product purchased from a dispensary. I also want to stress: I used half cannabis butter and half butter. Imagine if I’d used all cannabis butter?

I’m sure that if I used the same cannabis butter in another recipe from Baking with Julia that I’ve made many times — the Boca Negra Cake, a thick, moist torte fortified with intense amounts of eggs, chocolate and whiskey — it would be a great dessert.

Or, as a budtender who listened to me bitch about my botched roasted plum cakes told me, “That’s why I prefer oil-based recipes when I make my ganja cakes.”

As soon as I can retrieve the recipe from my files, I’ll share with you the best damn carrot cake you’ll ever eat, modified, with cannabis oil, from a recipe I learned in culinary school.

Until then, Pot Appetit.

BY ED MURRIETA
PHOTOS BY KURT HEGRE

“Edibles” refers to a category of medical marijuana products and ingredients that are eaten for therapeutic benefit. Cannabinods in marijuana provide their greatest benefits when they enter your body’s blood stream and are processed through your liver.

The effects of eating marijuana are different from the effects of smoking marijuana. Depending on the potency of the source material — the marijuana itself that’s infused into foods like oil, butter, honey, chocolate and milk — the effects of edibles can range from mild euphoria to narcotic nap time, generally more of a “body high” than a “head high.” Edibles made with hashish, a concentrated form of marijuana, can be more potent and their effects may be longer-lasting and may come in waves.

Some people who eat marijuana-infused foods report “not feeling anything.” There can be a couple of explanations for this: Some strains of marijuana have properties that soothe a person’s body without “messing with their head.” Also, some people metabolize food faster — before the cannabinods can kick in.

If you medicate with edibles, it’s recommended that you start slowly. Don’t eat the whole candy bar or drink the whole soda. Try a fourth of the serving size, wait an hour and gauge the effects. Consume more of the edible as necessary.

Some edibiles are marketed by dosage, others by the milligram content, by volume, of cannabis. There are currently no industry standards.

Unfortunately as well, most edibles are shy on label information. While most list ingredients, many fail disclose the strain of cannabis in the edibles or to distinguish between use of marijuana or hashish in a product. Read labels and ask questions of dispensary staff.

Here’s a selection of edibles photographed recently at one dispensary, All About Wellness in Midtown Sacramento.

Continue reading →

BY ED MURRIETA

I’ve got a Holy Grail among pot edibles: one-bite delights whose recipe is easily tweaked to deliver different dosages; a confection that can be infused with multiple pot preparations; a sweet, chewy treat that can be studded with different flavors and textures; and something that can be attractively packaged with a shelf life.

I believe I’ve found mine in caramel candies made with canna-butter, canna-honey, finely ground hashish and pot-infused chocolate to top it all off.

Making these caramels is as easy as tossing sugar, butter, milk, cream and honey into a sauce pot, turning up the heat, waiting for a puff of steam to burst through the sandy grains, followed by a long burble of molten brown lava that signals the transmogrification of simple pantry ingredients into a complex confectionery concoction of flavors and aromas — the buttery, creamy, nutty, coffee, even chocolatey notes that emerge when sugar and fat get really hot. Continue reading →

BY ED MURRIETA

My problem with medical marijuana soft drinks — Orange Kush, Doc Weed, Kush Cola and all their carbonated cannabis-infused cousins that are bottled and sold double and triple strength — is the suggestion that I am going to drink half, maybe a third of the bottle and save the rest for later.

For starters, who in God’s Big Gulping America opens a 12-ounce bottle of soda — with or without pot in the pop — and doesn’t drain the bottle?

Ever drink a full bottle of soda pot? Remember the punch that knocked out the Hawaiian Punch mascot? Jack Herer and Green Dragon soda pot hit you with even more wallop when you drink them as single servings.

As with any cannabis-infused food or beverage, it’s recommended that you consume soda pot in small portions, gauge the effects, and drink and repeat as necessary. That’s easily enough accomplished with non-carbonated cannabis-infused soft drinks in screw-top bottles, like Chronic Tonic fruit juices. But soda pot is carbonated, and bubbles lose their fizz fast.

Ever shove a bent bottle cap back on a glass bottle? Doesn’t work.

Got one of them air-tight stopper thingies? Didn’t think so.

Gonna let soda pot go, proverbially, to pot? At $10-$15 a bottle? Of course not.

Here are three easy ways to ration and extend the life of those high-priced, hard-hitting soft drinks once you’ve opened their bottles:

Ganja granita, ganja ice pops and ganja gelatin. Continue reading →