Sorry for the late reply- my wifes pc has a trojan. We've made a couple of successfull batches but there were so many changes made at once that it is difficult to tell which changes had te greatest effect.

First and most importantly- I used a Crock Pot, and to date it has been the only cooking appliance that's worked.

Another Important conclusion I drew was that it's important for the weed to be EXTREMELY well ground. The batch of this stuff we made that worked the best for us was ground up with an electric coffee grinder. My wife did a second batch later in the week with 'headies' (20 bucks a gram) but used our hand grinder thingy, and the final product wasn't anywhere near as good as the batch we made the first time. You want the weed to be so ground up it's like a fluffy pile of powdered sugar or something. Just put it in the grinder and leave it on until it all looks like kief. It will be somehat tough to remove, but with a little practice I learned to clear out 95% of the stuff from the grinder with a single circular swoop using the long flat edge of a book of matches.

The negative is that although I was finally successfull, I didn't really save any weed. I used mobyones advice and used about .5tsp of oil and added about a half gram of weed. I ended up adding almost another half gram to get the consistency correct (according to him) for a total of almost 1 gram of weed used. I simmered it, and the color didn't look right so we coked it a bunch more. My candy thermometer broke and I didn't keep good records so I have no clue what I did right. My wife and I split half of it, and after about three hours split the other half because we weren't satisfed. We smoked a couple of times and gave up but after almost six hours of waiting, we were the highest we'd been in years! But not a huge savings on the weed though.

I'm going to have to try to make the original recipe now that I've switched to the crock pot (~225F oil temperature when hot btw) for all my cooking needs, and report the results. And for everyone else; as soon as I can spare the time and buds, I plan on cooking four batches simultaneously for a set time. I'm thinking like 3.5-4 hours. Each seperate batch will have the same constant .5g in it- but I will do 1tsp of oil in one, .5tsp of oil in another... .25tsp... and .125tsp. I'll have to test one a night, and record my results as closely as I can, but I'm hoping to figure out the best cook time and the 'magic ratio' that will at least work for me...

-Mark