A second cup that is not entirely coffee
I live in coffee country. The hills around us grow it, the town smells of it on roasting days, and my family holds opinions about beans the way other families hold opinions about football. So I want it understood that what I am about to confess is confessed under duress of honesty.
My second cup of the day is instant. And it has mushrooms in it.
How It Came to This
The first cup is sacred and local and nobody touches it. The problem was always the 2pm cup, the one that carried me into evening calls and then sat up with me at midnight, uninvited. I needed something that felt like coffee without behaving like it.
Catfit mushroom coffee is instant coffee blended with ten mushroom and adaptogen extracts, lion's mane and chaga among them, with a fraction of the usual caffeine. You stir a spoonful into hot water and it tastes, genuinely, like a decent instant coffee with something earthy underneath. One reviewer who has tried the whole category called this one earthy and aromatic with a rich texture; another admitted they never drink instant and were surprised into liking it.
What I notice is what I do not notice. No 3pm jitter. No midnight audit of the day's decisions. The afternoon simply proceeds.
Fair warning from the honest end of the reviews: one buyer found it had barely any taste at all. Mushroom coffee is a mild drink by design, and if you measure coffee by its punch, this will read as a shrug. Start with a heaped spoon and less water.
My compromise, borrowed from a reviewer and now permanent: half a spoon of this stirred into a weak cup of the real thing. The hills get their tribute, the mushrooms do their work, and everyone sleeps.
The Diplomatic Position
My husband has declined to acknowledge the jar. My mother picked it up once, read the word mushroom, and put it down with the face she uses for foreign inventions. I have stopped campaigning. The jar and I understand each other, every afternoon at two.
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