Posted on 10/29/2004 9:01:41 PM PDT by martin_fierro
A sky-high Swedish farewell cake poisons 13
Fri Oct 29, 3:14 PM ET
STOCKHOLM (AFP) - Thirteen employees of a botanical garden in Stockholm ended up in the hospital showing symptoms of drug poisoning after a departing intern served them cake as a goodbye gesture, police said.
A 27-year-old intern at the Bergianska traedgaard in Stockholm had baked a cake for his colleagues on his last day of work.
After eating the cake with their morning coffee, "five people became ill. They showed signs of having been drugged. Later on, more people got sick," Stockholm police spokesman Bjoern Pihlblad told AFP.
In all 13 people, including a 15-year-old boy, were sent to the hospital after reportedly experiencing dizziness, seeing hallucinations and having trouble breathing.
"We are not sure what kind of drug was used," Pihlblad said, adding that police had not yet located the intern and that they had conducted a search of his home for narcotic substances.
According to Swedish media reports, cannabis and mushrooms, both hallucinogenic drugs, had been found at the man's home.
One of the reasons why I never ate homemade food brought in by coworkers.
Slick tried the cake, but didn't swallow.
Unnngh.
Wise decision. I always hated those 'cake' parties. I prefer nothing, but the baked goods from a public bakery are a safer bet....bringing one's own snack is best.
"experiencing dizziness, seeing hallucinations and having trouble breathing"
LSD Layer cake? Far out!
"Thirteen employees of a botanical garden in Stockholm ended up in the hospital"
Wrong move. All they needed to do was sit in a nice quiet room and listen to some Allman Brothers and chill.
...rather obscure Barney Miller reference to cannabis cake from Wojo's girlfriend.
Alice B. Toklas brownies: the recipe!
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Dear Cecil:
What does Alice B. Toklas have to do with Alice B. Toklas brownies, anyway? --Judy Prisoc, Chicago
Dear Judy:
About as much as she had to do with The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas--which is to say, not much. The 1933 "autobiography" was actually written by Gertrude Stein, Toklas's lifelong companion and one of the legendary figures of the Parisian literary scene in the first half of the twentieth century. Similarly, the recipe for marijuana-laced brownies (actually it was a brownielike hashish fudge) that appeared in the 1954 Alice B. Toklas Cook Book wasn't Toklas's own but rather that of a wiseacre painter friend named Brion Gysin.
It all started when Alice signed a contract with Harper's to write a cookbook in 1952. She was a pretty fair cook, but what Harper really hoped to get (and what by and large it got) was not so much recipes but tales of her life with Gertrude Stein, who had died in 1946.
With the deadline only a few months away, Toklas, then in her mid-70s, found herself half a book shy. So she began soliciting recipes from her artsy friends. Gysin came up with "Haschich Fudge, which anyone could whip up on a rainy day." By way of introduction he gushed, "This is the food of Paradise.... it might provide an entertaining refreshment for a Ladies' Bridge Club or a chapter meeting of the DAR.... 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." The active ingredient in the fudge was what Gysin called "canibus sativa," more familiarly known as marijuana.
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 autobiographee, 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 incensed that anyone should think it was artificially fueled. Still, as her 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 recipe:
"Take 1 teaspoon black peppercorns, 1 whole nutmeg, 4 average sticks of cinnamon, 1 teaspoon coriander. These should all be pulverized in a mortar. About a handful each of stone dates, dried figs, shelled almonds and peanuts: chop these and mix them together. A bunch of canibus sativa can be pulverized. 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 canibus may present certain difficulties.... It should be picked and dried as soon as it has gone to seed and while the plant is still green."
Cecil must sternly advise that you shouldn't try this at home. If you do anyway, at least you won't have to worry about the munchies.
--CECIL ADAMS
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