How to make weed cookies πΏβ‘οΈπͺ
A step-by-step recipe (video too) so you won't get fooled again by edibles. | Also: Thoughts from Rick Rubin, Heather Havrilesky, Dean Wareham, Oliver Burkeman, and more.
1) Everyone is doing edibles now. 2) No one has any idea what theyβre doing. βI didnβt mean to eat 50mg. Then, I couldnβt move for six hours.β My solution: Make your own! When you bake your own eddies, youβll know exactly how much to eat and what youβre ingesting instead of having to guess anew each time you decide to go green. Iβve been doing it for years (h/t to my olβ pal Kevin for the recipe) and highly recommend. Hereβs a video to show you how along with the recipe:
Note: This makes your kitchen stink of weed.
Take the weed (leave seeds and stems in) and grind it up (a coffee grinder works well). You're trying to maximize surface area so it all gets exposed to the butter.
Use one stick of butter per 1/4 oz. of weed. Melt the butter in a skillet. SautΓ© the weed. Keep the lid on and stir occasionally. After 15-30 mins, the butter should turn brown and the THC will have been extracted into the butter. You can then filter out the cooked weed from the butter by using a strainer with very small holes (or a coffee filter).
Put the butter in the fridge and let it harden back to regular butter consistency. Then you can use it to bake anything. I like this cookie recipe...
INGREDIENTS:
1 cup unsalted butter
1 cup crunchy peanut butter
1 cup white sugar
1 cup packed brown sugar
2 eggs
2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
DIRECTIONS:
Cream together butter, peanut butter and sugars. Beat in eggs.
In a separate bowl, sift together flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. Stir into batter. Put batter in refrigerator for 1 hour.
Roll into 1 inch balls and put on baking sheets. Flatten each ball with a fork, making a criss-cross pattern.
Bake in a preheated 375 degrees F oven for about 10 minutes or until cookies begin to brown. Do not over-bake.
For initial consumption, start off with just a little and then ramp up as needed after 45mins or so. Rookie mistake is to not feel anything after 15 minutes and then double down leading to uh oh anxiety. Also, if you make a bunch, you can keep the extras in the freezer and pull βem out as needed (weeded?). Wrap one up in aluminum foil and now youβve got a roadie you can chow down on whenever/wherever.
FYI, this is the same recipe I used for the cookies I eat in the first part of Substance. Thatβs my new comedy special/experiment where I perform high, drunk, and on shrooms. People are digging it!
If youβve watched, please leave a comment and/or tell a friend. πͺ
Quickies
π― One thing I've learned from Stephen A. Smith is that whenever you say "the temerity" you must ALWAYS follow it up with "the unmitigated gall."
π― Every year the Grammys does dumb sh*t and every year people get super mad at the Grammys. Then, a year later they do it all over again. If this sounds like you: You are in a toxic relationship with the Grammys.
π― βWe need a cartoon animal that does the Griddy and sells insurance!β
-Some advertising exec right now probably
π― Coming soon: βOn a dating app, my chat bot and her chat bot really hit it off. Then I had my deep fake Zoom with her deep fake. Eventually, we got married and had ChatGPT write our vows. Now my sex robot is doing it with her sex robot. Can't wait to see the software we produce!β
π― βThereβs nothing special or different about an article that is written by an AI, except itβs probably worse,β Jonah Peretti told the NY Times. That quote kills me. Um, WORSE IS DIFFERENT.
π― The way to be confident and happy is to power pose. But we hunch over our phones and laptops all day in what is basically a victim pose. And then we wonder why we're sad, anxious, and depressed. It's bodvious.
π― The worst thing about Zoom is how people have to oversell their laughs. Itβs like the crowd in a crappy 90s sitcom but with a slight delay.
π― Subtle or not, I can't imagine needing a book to teach you how to not give a f*ck.
Comedy
π I post clips of my standup atΒ Instagram,Β TikTok, andΒ YouTube.
π Recently at my other newsletter βFunny How: Letters to a Young Comedianββ¦
π Feb. 24: Iβm headlining in Arlington, VA (tickets). Info on my weekly NYC shows here.
Podcast
On the latest episode of Kind of a Lot with Matt Ruby, I deep dive on Tom Petty.
Petty understood America and that's why he could reach hipsters/hicks, north/south, and coastal elites/NASCAR rednecks alike.
Includes lots of great TP clips and superb production from Jeremiah McVay, my comrade in podcast.
π§ Listen/subscribe to Kind of a Lot
And if you wanna leave a kind review at Apple Podcasts, thatβd be swell (it helps!).
(Hereβs the original essay if you prefer reading.)
5-spotted
π― The more you make, the more youβre free. Creativity, According to Rick Rubin.
One thing I would suggest is finding a way to make a lot of things and put them out, just to get a cycle going, without even thinking that itβs for anybody or that itβs going to accomplish anything. But every time you put something out, it makes it that much easier to put something else out. So youβre creating a sense of freedom in making things and putting them out.
π― Shame is the opposite of art, according to Heather Havrilesky.
Art isnβt something you need an outside license or a paycheck to pursue. Itβs a way of life. Itβs a way of adding up what you feel and where youβve been and what you fear and what you can imagine. Itβs a way of seeing your life through a lens that makes everything β good and bad, confusing and clarifying, uplifting and depressing β valuable.
Shame is the opposite of art. When you live inside of your shame, everything you see is inadequate and embarrassing. A lifetime of traveling and having adventures and not being tethered to long-term commitments looks empty and pathetic and foolish, through the lens of shame.
π― The best albums are more than a collection of good songs, they have a unity of purpose. Encounters with Tom Verlaine by Dean Wareham of Luna:
The best albums are more than a collection of good songs, they are a sealed world where only that kind of music seems possible, a gathering in time and space. Iβm thinking about records likeΒ Colossal YouthΒ by Young Marble Giants, Big StarβsΒ Sister Lovers,Β the V.U.s third,Β Dusty in MemphisΒ β I could go on β they have a personality, a mood, a unity of purpose. Records like this are not recorded in ten locations over a period of two years; they are created in one (or maybe two) short bursts of time, in one space, and we get to inhabit that space too.
I wrote about Verlaine last week and his playing on the greatest guitar solo ever.
π― Oliver Burkeman: Forgetting is a filter.
When something you read resonates with you sufficiently for you to recall it without effort, that means something; it means it connects with your ideas and experiences in some relevant way. Replace that natural process with a more conscious, willpower-based system for retaining information, and you risk losing the benefits of that filterβ¦βYour natural salience filter is a great determinant of whatβs most alive to you,β as Sasha Chapin puts it, in an edition of his excellent newsletter. βIf you begin to rely on any other filter, you will increasingly record what seems like it should be interesting according to some pre-existing criteria rather than what organically sticks to your mind.β
π― The old saw is you should write for one person. Michael Dean gets even more specific: Write for Your Grandkids.
If I'm going to come up with a theoretical person to guide my writing, instead of inventing a cold stranger across the Internet, they might as well be a future descendant of mine with a curiosity to learn about their past.
Thanks for reading. Hit me up with any questions.
-Matt