Local Man's Recipes Give New Meaning To Potluck

The munchies are nothing to giggle about when you’re ill and lack any appetite whatsoever. Then, says local Rastafarian Chef Ra, marijuana-induced food consumption might be a life-saver for people undergoing chemotherapy or enduring infection by HIV.

Chef Ra, a radio host at WEFT-FM and reggae regular on the Champaign club circuit, with his 5-foot-long dreadlocks and broad smile, writes humorous columns for High Times magazine.

But he said his column, and a new DVD, contain recipes for cannabis-based dishes that are written with ill, sometimes starving people in mind.

The illegal drug is not generally part of mainstream medicine.

The Illinois State Medical Society has no policy on cannabis other than to “not endorse the legalization of the possession or use of marijuana,” said spokeswoman Kelly Elwood.

The American Medical Association said it is interested in research on the subject.

A policy statement at its Web site “calls for further adequate and well-controlled studies of marijuana and related cannabinoids in patients who have serious conditions for which preclinical, anecdotal, or controlled evidence suggests possible efficacy and the application of such results to the understanding and treatment of disease.”

Chef Ra says he jokes about ganja use, but it is no laughing matter.

“An appetite restored, or some other therapeutic benefit, to someone with a chronic illness like multiple sclerosis, is nothing to joke about,” he says. “I sometimes use humor so people will halfway listen to me.

“If you do a little research, you will find that doctors in England are predicting cannabis could be as widely prescribed as aspirin within a few years.

The potential of it as medicine is just beginning to be understood,” said High Times editor Steven Hager, in an e-mail interview.

The new DVD, Chef Ra’s Ganja Gourmet, is available for $24.95 from—http://www.hightimes.com/

It offers recipes from Springtime Ganja Nachos, Rasta Pasta Pesto, and the Ultimate Hash Brownies and “the secret to making perfect Ganja Butter,” according to the Web site.

Chef Ra has come a long way from the years of his youth, when he remembers being class president at Urbana High School in 1969.

A trip to Woodstock, a growing impatience with the Vietnam War, experiences with the Black Panthers, 28 years of living as a Rastafarian and college classes in political science have all shaped his views.

“Bob Marley is like a god to me,” says Chef Ra, whose name is meant to honor Sun Ra, an eclectic musician who has influenced jazz, classical and rock performers.

He started writing for High Times, a Bible for those who cook with grass, in 1988.

He found his in with Hager, who grew up in Urbana and has known Chef Ra, albeit then with a different name, since fourth grade. They met sharing a “souped-up go-cart” and became basketball buddies.

After graduating from the University of Illinois, where he worked for the Daily Illini, Hager served a stint as a reporter for the New York Daily News, then became editor of High Times.

He also wrote a film called “Beat Street” and a book called “Hip Hop.”

The friendship helped Chef Ra become one of the most popular columnists at High Times. He has also he made an earlier film, “Chef Ra Escapes Babylon.”

Chef Ra says growing fame elsewhere in the world doesn’t mean he has any intention of leaving Champaign-Urbana.

Some of his family is gone, and he remains single, but Chef Ra says he has built up an extended family here that he could never leave. He loves to cook for them.

And he intends to keep on cooking.

“I travel all over the world, New York, Amsterdam, but this is where I live. With the Internet, it’s a global village,” he says.