An official email from the CT Dept of Consumer Protection appeared in my inbox on April 2. It consisted of two uptight, terse sentences: “The Department is aware that April 20 is a day on which cannabis demand is expected to increase significantly. We encourage medical patients and caregivers to obtain their medicine prior to April 20 in anticipation of these increased sales to ensure that they have access to medicine.”

Jeez, DCP.gov, lighten up. 420 aka Four-Twenty has been an unofficial weed holiday for years. You can mention it by name without giving up your authoritarian gatekeeper vibe.

I got into making weed cookies almost by necessity. I was visiting my sister, who had recently been diagnosed with breast cancer. We were parked on the couch watching some television one night and she went out to the kitchen and brought back a cookie, which she promptly split with her son, Jay. Jay was 19 and was battling leukemia for the second time in his life. I said to my sister, “Hey, where’s my cookie?!” She explained patiently that these weren’t her usual Toll House cookies, but cannabis cookies from the local dispensary in her state. I asked, “Do they really help?” She looked at me kinda fiercely and said, “Well, when he goes through the chemo infusions, he gets sick as a dog and can’t eat anything. He can’t eat because he’s nauseous most of the time and loses a lot of weight. And I’ll be damned if I’m going to stand by and watch my kid waste away. The cookies calm his nausea and the only side effect is that they give him the munchies and he starts to eat again.”

That settled it for me. But she told me they were $25 per cookie and not covered by insurance (still not covered by insurance). I was outraged. I told her I would start working on a cheaper (or free) alternative. Which I did.

When I got back to Connecticut, I started looking for a source of organically grown local cannabis. The organic part was important; I didn’t want to be using marijuana grown with pesticides and chemical fertilizers. My sister and her son were already being pumped full of chemo compounds and I didn’t want to add further unknowns into the mix. It took me a little while, but I talked to a guy, who knew another guy who knew someone who could get me some organic, high quality green.

But then it was a matter of making the cookies. I searched the internet for a list of best practices in making “fortified” cookies. But in looking at all available sources, there were a few self-proclaimed experts publishing how-to advice. But none of them agreed on weights, measures, practices and standards. So I hacked my way through it and came up with standards of my own.

Dosage: No more than a quarter oz (7.1g) of good quality cannabis per batch of cookies. I used green that was in the 20-25% THC category. Using the basic Toll House cookies batch of 60 cookies, it breaks down like this: 7.1g of dispensary cannabis with a verified THC content of 20% contains 1420mg of THC. (Whoa, that’s one-thousand, 420mg. Cosmic.) And if you divided that up into 60 cookie-sized portions, that’s almost 24mg of THC per cookie size portion.

Prepping the green: When cannabis is harvested, it contains the active ingredient of THCA, but requires a little heat to transform it into the psychoactive and therapeutic ingredient of THC. This process is called decarboxylation. I placed my 7.1g of cannabis into a small foil pan, covered it tightly with a small sheet of foil and into a preheated oven at 240°F for 30 minutes. This completely dehydrates the plant material and decarbs the active ingredients.

Grinding and adding the butter: This is where my process differs greatly from the online experts. After letting the cannabis cool from the oven, I grind it in a small electric coffee grinder into a fine powder. Then I place it into a 2 oz canning jar with 2 Tbsp of butter, seal it and place it into a preheated crock pot with enough water to cover it. Set the crock pot to low or medium heat and let it cook for 24 hours. A lot of the internet “experts” strain the buds out of the butter. I don’t do that, for three basic reasons: 1) You throw away about 20% of the THC by getting rid of the plant matter. 2) 7.1g of cannabis grinds down to about 2 Tbsp of fine powder and that doesn’t affect the texture of the final product. 3) Nobody is eating cannabis edibles because they are culinary masterpieces. They should look and smell a little different because you don’t want anyone eating them by mistake.

After the crock pot step, remove the jar(s) and let them cool. Label them clearly with the date, name of the strain of cannabis and total amount of THC (weight of the cannabis in grams × THC% × 1000 = total THC mg). You can store in the freezer for up to a year with little or no deterioration of the active ingredient.

Using the Cannabis Butter Concentrate: When you are ready to use the prepped cannabis butter, thaw it to room temperature. Replace 2 Tbsp of butter in any cookie recipe utilizing butter with your cannabis butter concentrate. Weigh out the total of cookie dough in grams and use a 1 Tbsp cookie scoop to measure out even portions of the dough for baking. Divide the total milligrams of THC by final number of cookies to give you a pretty solid estimate of the dosage per cookie.

Eating and enjoying your final product: Start low and go slow! If you’ve never eaten edibles, don’t eat a whole cookie at first. Begin with a low dose, especially if you're new to edibles. A common starting dose is around 5 mg of THC. Wait at least one hour to feel the full effects before considering taking more.

Rich Swanson is a local cook who has had numerous wins in nationally sponsored recipe contests. He is also the layout specialist here at The Day.

Comments? Questions? Suggestions? Rich Swanson can be reached at TheSurlyTable@gmail.com.