Hash (pot, bud, etc.) brownies would not exist if it hadn't been for a recipe (given by Brion Gysin) from Alice B. Toklas, Gertrude Stein's ...um, roommate, called Hashisch Fudge. She included this in her cookbook, published in 1954, which contains a great many other recipes of note (try her onion soup, which is vegetarian, and very good), but there's little in it to suggest that she even tried this out, contrary to rumor and her suggestive name.

Unfortunately, it's not brownies, fudge, or anything like that at all! It's madjoon, which is made of varying amounts of dried fruit (dates, figs, raisins,...) chopped up with nuts (walnuts, almonds, hazelnuts, etc.), with spices (cinnamon, nutmeg, clove, cardamom, sesame seeds), and given cohesion by butter, honey, and sugar, plus about an ounce of pot to a pound of the other ingredients. (You heard right. Pot was about $3/ounce back then, or less than $20 with inflation.) Madjoon is also very good "virgin", and I've often enjoyed it that way.

First you toast the pot (to make it edible) by placing it in a dry frying pan and turning on the heat, stirring until it's brown and brittle. (Do this when the neighbors are away...it will smell.) Crush this to a powder. Now. You can either add this to the butter (THC will leach out into the fat, and can be used to make all kinds of other things), into the honey to make a paste (which is quite a lot of fun by itself), or simply dusted onto the fruit/nut/spice paste, and kneaded in. I haven't given much idea as to the rest of the ingredients, I know, but it's more or less according to taste: 1/2 cup of nuts to 3 cups of mixed fruit to about a tablespoon, total, of spices is a good rule of thumb....YMMV.

Cut into walnut-sized balls, and eat only one or two of them. Eaten THC is very potent and will keep you high for a great deal longer than smoked -- up to twenty-four hours. (No fooling. You have it from the horse's mouth.) About the only thing you can do to come down is to wait it out and drink plenty of water, or better, hot lemonade.

Bon appetit!