Pubdate: Wed, 13 Apr 2005
Source: Guardian, The (UK)
Copyright: 2005 Guardian Newspapers Limited
Contact:  http://www.guardian.co.uk/guardian/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/175
Author: Laura Barton
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/find?207 (Cannabis - United Kingdom)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/find?232 (Chronic Pain)

GRANDMA'S COOKING POT

Patricia Tabram last week became a convicted drug dealer for serving
casseroles and cakes laced with cannabis to her friends. But, as she
tells Laura Barton, she's unrepentant - the drug has solved her health
problems

'There is a new strain of very strong cannabis called organic skunk,"
Patricia Tabram explains of the crucial ingredient in her
controversial cookery range. "Before I had the privilege of being able
to obtain the organic skunk, I used one quarter of a level teaspoon of
powdered fresh cannabis bud. Now I only use five-eighths of a level
teaspoon of the organic skunk - that's half of what you'd put in a
cannabis cigarette, so I have no way of getting high and it keeps me
pain-free for 24 hours."

On Friday, the 66-year-old from Hunshaugh, Northumberland, was given a
six-month suspended prison sentence for cooking an array of
cannabis-laced culinary delights for her friends, four elderly MS
sufferers. She was rumbled, she says, by a police informer on her
street and remains utterly unrepentant. "Cannabis lifts depression!
Queen Victoria used it for her period pains!" Now she is hoping to
tackle the secretary of state for Wales, Peter Hain, on the electoral
battleground of his Neath constituency, on a platform denouncing most
mainstream medicine. (She is standing in Wales for the Legalise
Cannabis Alliance, which is targeting the principality as a key
battleground.) "Since I started medicating with cannabis I don't use
my walking stick any more, I don't wear my neck collar, I don't wear
my hearing aid."

Tabram recalls quite vividly the first time she tried cannabis.
"Originally, I suffered terrible depression after the death of my son
when he was 14," she says. "And my husband had died and I had nursed
my mother till she died, and I was placed on medication for the
depression. Then I started to develop arthritis in my knees, and was
placed on another kind of medication for that. And I developed - from
the combination of medication - a lumpy red rash around my face,
tinnitus, lost the hair from the top of my head and had very bad
bruising on my arms and legs, blood in my stools and bleeding from my
waterworks area. When you get up close to my face I look like an ugly
old fossil.

"A year gone February, I was lying in bed and I was very depressed.
And I said, how can I kill myself easy and quick? And I thought about
alcohol and I thought about pills. But then I remembered a film called
Thelma and Louise and I thought, that's what I'll do: I'll drive to
South Shields where I was born; I'll drive along the coast road and
I'll rev my car up and I'll drive off the cliff, and no one will get
hurt because it's February and there'll be no one on the beach."

Before she could do so, however, a neighbour called round, concerned
that she hadn't seen Tabram for a while. Worried by the physical and
mental state in which she found her, the neighbour sought out a
cannabis cigarette to calm her down. "I took one puff," she says, "and
you know Tweety Pie? How her head is bigger than her body? I felt like
that, and I started giggling and singing." Though she didn't enjoy
smoking or being high, she did note that it improved her sleep, lifted
the fug of her depression and significantly reduced her physical pain.
She asked her friend whether there was any other way of taking it and
was told that she might try cooking with it. Soon afterwards she found
two cannabis recipe books in a shop in Newcastle. The problem was that
they were recipes for people who wanted to get stoned.

"I started with scrambled egg, and I put in one teaspoon of cannabis
and of course I threw it all up straight away. I never made that
mistake again." She has made other mistakes, too, in what she
describes as her "voyage" of cannabis investigation. In October, she
spent two days in London, the first time in months that she had been
without her "medicated" meals. and without her pain relief, Tabram
noticed she had something of a toothache. The cannabis had so
successfully masked the extent of her dental problem, that she had to
have all of her bottom teeth removed. Consequently, she now uses
cannabis only five days a week, "because I think if I have an appendix
that wants to go off it will tell me on a weekend, won't it?"

And yet Tabram's habit has the unfortunate complication of being very
explicitly illegal. Doesn't she worry about the fact that she now has
a criminal record for supply? Tabram prefers not to engage herself
with all that, repeating instead her assurance that conventional
medicine has countless ghastly side-effects, and citing eye-popping
figures of the many thousands it supposedly kills each year. "The
government are so silly about cannabis - I believe it's because the
pharmaceutical companies would go bankrupt if they legalised it."

As for her recipes, her best one, she says, is chocolate-chip cake,
but her culinary repertoire extends to starters, main courses,
biscuits, cakes and desserts. Meanwhile, her new-found fame has meant
she has not had to actually buy any cannabis for two and a half
months."You know," she insists, "that NHS medication has up to 85
side-effects? That is why Grandma eats cannabis."

Cannabis cuisine ... Tabram's recipes

*Leek & potato soup with cannabis

4 medium-sized leeks 2oz butter 4 small potatoes 1 pint of water 1
pint of chicken stock Salt & pepper 1 pint of double cream to which
add 1 level tsp of powdered cannabis

1. Wash and trim the leeks and chop into small pieces using both white
and green parts.

2. Melt the butter in a pan and add the leeks. Cover the pan and
reduce heat so that the leeks cook slowly without browning, for about
five minutes. Shake the pan occasionally.

3. At the same time, peel the potatoes and cut into small cubes, then
add to the leeks with the water and stock. Add salt and pepper.

4. Bring the soup to the boil, cover the pan and simmer for 25
minutes.

5. Liquidise the soup and return it to the pan.

6. Add cream and heat, but do not allow the soup to
boil.

Serves 4

*Chicken Maryland with cannabis

2lb of roasting chicken in portions Salt & pepper Plain flour 1 egg
2-3oz fresh breadcrumbs 2-3oz butter to which add half a level tsp of
powdered cannabis Oil for frying

Garnish:
2-3 bananas
1oz butter
1tin of creamed sweetcorn

1. Place the cannabis butter between the flesh and skin of each
portion of chicken, then carefully replace skin.

2. Season the outside of the chicken with salt and pepper, then dust
with flour.

3. Beat the egg, and dip in the chicken portions, followed by dusting
with the flour.

4. Fry in the just-hot oil, until golden brown.

5. Peel and quarter the bananas and fry in butter.

6. Heat creamed sweetcorn and serve as sauce.

Serves 4
- ---
MAP posted-by: Derek