Visiting Seattle Tonics - a Seattle Recreational Weed Tradition on Aurora Avenue

$183 worth of legal recreational weed in 2025 Washington State

Behold the sheer variety of today’s shopping outing: disposable vape cartridges, a cartridge for vape pens, two eight’s of flower, two 5-packs of pre-rolled joints, an impulse purchase of a single joint of a strain called 'redneck wedding' a pack of something called CHILL edible capsules (10 count) and a funky capsule shaped flavored disposable unit.

What have we here? I don’t know (yet).

The selection, prices, shop layout and product range combine into the ideal shopping experience - with the best value for hard earned money, without a close second. I am not paid by these folks and I have no connection to this fine local business. Seattle Tonics is my favorite shop simply because it is a better mousetrap. 

Seattle Tonics occupies a funky, reclaimed ‘no-tell’ motel on Aurora avenue, a local strip famous for car dealerships and street walking sex workers. This business, with their huge funky 21+ flag like sign waving in the breeze, has been a major factor stabilizing and improving the general, imho. Visitors from wholesome hamlets might find the area tawdry. 

So tasty, I had to break into this one...

Stopping by this evening, I managed to  catch my limit ( ie - purchase the maximum allowed per visit in Washington State, as specified by our recreational cannabis law.  In WA, that is 7 ounces of cannabis flower (or 7 grams of concentrates including cartridges, hash, RSO among others).  Everything for a total of $183 -  all taxes included. That, my friends, is value. Value for hard earned money. 

Stay tuned for upcoming reviews of these fine products, available legally in Seattle, Washington.

(c) 2025 Stoner Living Blog

Simple, DIY Pot Brownies - Make Marijuana Edibles at Home for Less (Six Times Cheaper!)

Yes, it is simple to make delicious marijuana brownies - of known potency - at home, for much less than buying them at the dispensary or pot shop. If you want six pot brownies for the price of one, read on - Stoner Living will show you how!

Thirty Six Lovely Brownies, Each with 18mg THC!

Legal marijuana comes in many forms: cured flower, pre-rolled joints, extracts in cartridges and edible formats. Edibles are of particular interest to health conscious consumers because they eliminate the hazards associated with smoking: no smoke, no carbon monoxide, no smelly cloud. 

In states with legal marijuana, edible marijuana confections and beverages are made with strict limits on the active ingredient. In Washington state, this limit is 10 mg THC per piece, with a maximum of 10 pieces in a package or 100 mg THC total. Having such limits is a prudent policy, and as somebody who has overdone edibles, I can attest that it isn't fun to overdo it. I've polished off a plate of medicated brownies and then slept for 17 hours. With store bought marijuana edibles, you know how much THC you will get per item, making for a much safer cannabis experience. 

When cooking with cannabis flower, it is difficult to accurately estimate to estimate the quantity of THC in a given brownie. But, by cooking with extracts purchased at the dispensary, it's possible to make excellent quality home-made marijuana edibles of known potency. The ability to make these products at home is wonderful for vegans or other orthorexics out there. 

The easiest way to safely make medibles is to begin with an edible concentrate, like RSO (Rick Simpson Oil). RSO is an alcohol extracted cannabis extract that can be added to anything you wish to cook. With a little simple math, it's easy to reliably calculate the THC quantity in each piece of your delicious, home made marijuana edibles. 

RECIPE: Simple Stoner Living Pudding Brownies

Ingredients:

1g edible cannabis extract (eg. Rick Simpson Oil)

6 tbsp butter (most of a stick)

2/3 cup sugar

1 egg

1 tsp vanilla extract

1/2 cup flour

1 package chocolate pudding mix (3.4 oz size)

2 tbsp unsweetened cocoa powder

1/2 tsp. baking powder

1/2 cup walnuts (optional)

Wet Ingredients with cannabis extract (RSO) added

Instructions:

Heat oven to 350 F. 

Grease a 9" x 9" pan with plenty of butter.

Begin your brownies by creaming your butter, sugar, egg and vanilla until well mixed. Take your cannabis extract and mix it in with these 'wet' ingredients. 

Meanwhile, combine your dry ingredients in a separate bowl: flour, pudding mix, unsweetened cocoa and baking powder. Mix these dry ingredients together.

Dry Ingredients 

Add your dry ingredients to your wet ingredients and stir well. If desired, fold in nuts at this point.

Dry Ingredients Mixed into the Wet Ingredients

Smooth ingredients into your well greased pan. Bake at 350 F for 20-30 minutes. Brownies are done when a toothpick inserted comes out clean. 

Carefully cut brownies into pieces of even sizes. This is very important if you want to determine the THC content of your brownies. In our example, we cut our brownies into 36 squares.

Carefully cut the brownies into EVEN sized pieces.

Now - we do a little simple math. Our cannabis extract has a label stating that it contains 657 mg THC. Because we made 36 brownies, we calculate that each brownie will have 18.25 mg THC.

It's Easy to Calculate the THC per Brownie!

657 mg THC total divided by 36 brownies = 18.25 mg THC per brownie.

Be careful, as these are stronger than commercially available brownies! I like to wrap these brownies in plastic wrap, making little 4-packs. Each 4-pack has a total of 73 mg THC, which experience has taught me is an ideal dosage for me, personally.  I wrap my 4-packs of brownies in foil and store them (carefully labeled) in the freezer. 

Brownies wrapped for Storage

Making your own brownies offers considerable savings over purchasing store bought edibles. One box of edibles with a total of 100 mg THC costs between $10-$30. This recipe made the equivalent of six boxes of cannabis edibles, for the cost of one unit of extract (~$20). It's like getting six brownies for the price of one! 

If making your own brownies is too much effort, you can just add extract to a batch of brownie mix from the grocery store.  

To calculate the potency of any type of edible made from a cannabis extract, cut your final product into evenly sized pieces; then divide the total amount of THC in your extract by your number of pieces. Extract is often sold in 1g sizes (1g = 1000 mg). Potency is often expressed as a percentage of THC, so if your extract is 65.7% THC, your 1g of extract has a total of 657 mg THC.

Please be safe and responsible with marijuana edibles - mark them clearly and keep them away from pets and children. Remember that the effects of eating cannabis can take several hours to fully manifest. 

(C) 2021 Stoner Living

Terrible Stoner Ideas circa 1975 - "Ways to Turn Bad Weed to Good" (Actually, Making Bad Pot Worse)

Now that marijuana is available in convenient retail establishments, quality is up and it's hard to find *bad* weed in Washington state. New cannabis edibles, extracts including shatter and alternative formats like cartridges are proliferating. It's the Cambrian explosion of pot evolution, and weed is morphing from a commodity to a category of differentiated value-added products.

Much of the branded cannabis sold as flower has excellent organoleptic qualities, but frankly, I hadn't smoked cannabis in over a year until the terrible vape-lung epidemic began a few months ago. I no longer smoke cigarettes, and unconsciously moved away from smoking cannabis in lieu of vaping or eating it. For some reason, the vape-lung epidemic made me nostalgic for the old-fashioned ritual of smoking.

"Too much bad weed is in the garden" - Junior Murvin lyrics

But I digress...

From the bygone era when groovy folks rolled grass into reefers, here is some vintage advice from the annals of stoner history. These ideas range from bizarre to terrible, and are probably quite puzzling to young cannabis aficionados who have never faced a bag of low-grade marijuana.

See below for the information exactly as I found it, spelling errors and all.

===============-==

WAYS TO TURN BAD WEED TO GOOD WEED 

1. Place the dope in a container which allows air to enter in a restricted 
fashion (such as a can with nail holes punched in its lid) and add a 
bunch of dry ice, and the place the whole thing in the freezer for a 
few days. This process will add a certain amount of potency to the product, 
however, this only works with dry ice, if you use normal, everyday 
freezer ice, you will end up with a soggy mess... [whf? SL]
2. Take a quantity of grass and dampen it, place in a baggie or another 
socially acceptable container, and store it in a dark, dampish place 
for a couple of weeks (burying it also seems to work). The grass will 
develop a mold which tastes a bit harsh, and burns a tiny bit funny, 
but does increase the potency.       [NOOO - don't do it! SL]
3. Expose the grass to the high intensity light of a sunlamp for a full 
day or so. Personally, I don't feel that this is worth the effort, but 
if you just spent of your friend's money for this brick of 
super-Colombian, right-from-the-President's-personal-stash, 
and it turns out to be Mexican dirt weed, and you're packing your bags to 
leave town before the people arrive for their shares, well, you might 
at least try it. Can't hurt. [maybe?  SL]
4. Take the undisirable portions of our stash (stems, seeds, weak weed, 
worms, etc.) and place them in a covered pot, with enough rubbing 
alchol to cover everything.  [Choose Ethyl Alcohol (not rubbing) - SL]
Now CAREFULLY boil the mixture on an ELECTRIC stove or lab burner. DO 
NOT USE GAS - the alchol is too flammable. After 45 minutes of heat, 
remove the pot and strain the solids out, SAVING THE ALCOHOL. 
Now, repeat the process with the same residuals, but fresh alchol. 
When the second boil is over, remove the solids again, combine the two 
quantities of alcohol and reboil until you have a syrupy mixture. 
Now, this syrupy mixture will contain much of the THC formerly hidden 
in the stems and such. One simply takes this syrup then throughly 
combines it with the grass that one wishes to improve upon.

=========================
Oy vey! Please don't try these ideas at home.

Let's consider these suggestions point-by-point:

1) I don't understand why CO2 from the dry ice would improve the potency of  bad weed that is dried and cured and in the bag. CO2 supplementation is used to facilitate indoor marijuana horticulture-prior to harvest.
2) No! (And, ewww!) Don't mold your bad pot in an ill fated attempt to improve it. Most terrible marijuana from yesteryear was terrible because it was moldy. Encouraging mold is more likely to degrade the psychoactive and aromatic properties of the marijuana and that isn't the objective here. Plus, toxic mold could grow.
3) Blasting bad weed with a sunlamp might drive off some of the musty character, but won't enhance potency via any logical mechanism. Proper drying and curing procedures are vital to ensuring good smoking quality and potency, but isn't a magic technique. Allowing time to 'air-out' cannabis with any type of aromaatic off-note or mustiness is a fine idea.
4) Alcohol extracts are a time-tested technique for making use of cannabis scraps... but use ethyl alcohol, not rubbing alcohol! Rubbing alcohol in the US is either isopropyl alcohol, or a denatured ethyl alcohol specially treated with bitterants/ adulterants intended to make it taste terrible. Use Everclear® or another highly concentrated alcohol intended for consumption available. When Everclear® is not available, high proof (>100) vodka is another alternative that will not add much flavor; 151 Rum is another widely available high-proof choice.

I have no idea who penned these tips, or where they originated. If anyone is aware of the original provenance, please drop us a line and I will update this article to give credit where credit is due.

DIY Bunker Door by Jack B. Nimble

These questionable 'tips' were included in a trove of  forbidden information available for 99 cents on the darkweb [250+ B@nned Books - Drugs, Scientology, Hacking - instant download!]. I'm a curious soul who couldn't miss an opportunity this good. Other gems included design plans for a re-enforced metal door, fashioned with automobile springs able to withstand a battering ram and (my favorite) husbandry & 'milking' instructions for the psychedelic Sonoran toad.

I'll end this dispatch with a few thoughts for readers of Stoner Living. I suggest that if you need a door that can withstand a battering ram, you are probably not living like you should. Also, while reptile husbandry is a worthwhile hobby, torturing toads by squeezing the living daylights out of them so you can get high is totally unacceptable. Kindness and decency is sexy; harming small, helpless animals makes you a jerk.

On the subject of 'bad weed', remember the obvious -  you can't polish a turd. If your cannabis is bad/moldy/frumpy, just throw it out! It's that simple. This is an ancillary public health benefit of legalizing marijuana, because when the clandestine market commands astronomical prices north of  ~20$/gram, consumers will smoke that moldy (or otherwise contaminated) weed, health consequences be damned.

I am grateful to live in Washington State, where regulated retail stores sell safe cannabis products, free from adulterants (like vitamin E) added by unscrupulous black market profiteers. I believe the federal legalization of cannabis will provide needed consumer protection and save lives. Let's make it happen.

(c) 2019 Stoner Living Blog.