Medicated Brownie Recipe: Homage To A Feminist Icon

The close of Women’s History Month has us rethinking both the power language and perceptions of drug dealers with this deliciously sticky recipe by “the original pot brownie lady”. Hell, the first ingredient listed is, “Magic”.

Why there isn’t a Netflix documentary on the life and times of Meridy Volz, artist and creator of the infamous “Sticky Fingers Brownies”, we’re not entirely sure (hint, hint Netflix). After digging into the vaults of the 1970’s San Francisco ganja scene, we learned that Volz’s story was anything other than that of your average narcotics kingpin. Or shall we say, queenpin?

Why’d Meridy name her pot brownies “sticky fingers”, anyway? Well, that part was an accident. After accepting the business from another hippie queenpin who sold coffee, little breads, and “just one dozen pot brownies in a special bag” each day at Fisherman’s Wharf, Volz, who knew a lot about pot, yet little about baking, forgot an imperative ingredient in her first batch: the flour!  

Legend has it that Volz, a “flower child, the real deal hippie”, evaded her only federal drug indictment in 1969 because she refused to open a package on the grounds that it was addressed to someone else, “a federal offense,” she exclaimed. That “someone else” was a 6-month old baby, Volz’s cousin’s child, she told Criminal podcast in a 2016 interview. Way to use language to stick it to em’, Meridy!

In their heyday, 10,000 of these infamous pot brownies were sold every month out of a San Francisco warehouse. Ten THOUSAND. In the nineteen-seventies! Indeed the Women’s Rights Movement was beginning to make strides, but a woman bringing in that type of income, at that time, was revolutionary.

By: Shannon DeGrooms

LINK: https://bit.ly/3ejBKnP