I occasionally get emails and tweets admonishing me for being hostile to paleo and low-carb, having moved on and having to take a glancing blow behind me. It’s not an unfamiliar experience– I received the same when I stopped being vegan.

The truth is that I’m not hostile to paleo, low-carb, or vegan. All three represent food subcultures that taught me a lot about food and how it affects my health. I am thankful for that. Unfortunately all have quasi-religious underpinnings that can be detrimental to health. They are also hostile to critics.

It has been very difficult for me as a skeptic since criticism is frequently deemed to be a personal attack and is ironically often answered with personal attacks. Furthermore, when I was embedded with it socially, it was almost if you spoke up, you were in danger of being socially ostracized. It is my own experience that no one is blacklisted even for the worst behavior...unless they are openly skeptical.

It has been hard to leave. I mean there were good things– I got involved with grass-fed livestock because of it and many of my best customers, friends, and mentors also have a similar story. I thought maybe things could go back to the way they were when I started, when it was far more casual on a dietary level and it was largely a movement of people passionate about things like sustainable food, anthropology, evolutionary biology, and figuring out what worked for them.

I have told my own health story what seems like a thousand times, but the thing is I got better without being very restrictive at all beyond a period of very low carbing that had a targeted purpose, which was to allow my stomach to heal. It was more about adding foods to my diet such as meat and seafood then subtracting them, as well as letting go of dietary dogmas that were damaging my health like the idea that the best way to treat stomach issues was with more fiber or that fat was bad. It was also about diversifying the sources of food and the foods I relied on. I was only about 80% paleo then. It was fun and interesting to be a part of. I never worried about some ice cream or beer.

In Sweden I was very healthy until towards the end of my stay, when I think I messed up my stomach with NSAIDs again. I took to the corners of the internet where I found fringe diets for messed up people like the Specific Carbohydrate Diet, VLC (very low carb), raw paleo, and the Failsafe diet. I learned from these, though I never adopted them fully. In some ways they were bad because they foster extreme nitpicking, including lots of combing through papers, finding out of context studies to make people paranoid about food. In other ways they were good, because they helped me realize that there were more targeted approaches to my issues rather than just thinking about what I did or did not probably “evolve to eat.”

When I moved to New York City from Sweden I had trouble adjusting. I met most of the people I hung out with through Paleo meetups. At the time I think the larger community was moving towards those fringe diets I had encountered becoming more what paleo was about. Paleo was adopting the food paranoia of the aforementioned fringe diets combined with the hubris of the idea that it was the optimal human diet our ancestors were supposedly so healthy on. It crossed the line from awareness to fear-mongering, with more and more leaders associated with it promoting the idea that even if you feel good, you are being quietly “damaged” by certain demonized foods. Much to my chagrin as someone who is very interested in evolution, I noticed the movement was minimizing the role evolution played. Around this time I was first called an “elitist” for pointing out a major figure in the movement rejected that evolution even existed.

At the same time it was increasingly hard for me to accept that this dietary philosophy was the optimal solution. My testimonial was true– I did feel better, but better than what? Things were up and down. Episodes of fatigue haunted me, as well as my stomach problems returning intermittently. My response was to turn to the internet, where I became increasingly convinced that certain “bad” foods I was eating occasionally like beer were the culprit. I had to be better at this diet, so I gave them up. I didn’t feel any better. I met a lot of people in real life who had glowing online testimonials, but who were obviously struggling as well. I felt disillusioned.

The composition of people who mattered was also changing from quasi-anarchist back to the land hippy types to more and more slick marketing people who seemed to have little interest in anything beyond selling products, wearing leopard print, and eating bacon. The first processed "paleo" “products” appeared on the market. But at that point I was in too deep. Almost all my friends were from paleo. I wanted to save it from its growing association with stock internet junk science that I had once seen pollute the vegan community.

Also the movement was getting an infusion from some new blood, some input from the Weston A. Price Crowd for example from Chris Masterjohn, and Paul Jaminet’s Perfect Health Diet made people suddenly less afraid of things like rice. Influced by them and NEEDING to make a change very much after my serious fainting episode, I started eating white rice regularly again, as well as more carbs in general. I felt a lot better, but still continued to have health problems, particularly with my energy levels.

The paleo community however was just getting worse. It started looking more like a front to sell crap and a bunch of low-quality content farms rather than a community centered around real food. I started speaking out about it and experienced large amounts of harassment and then when I complained about that I was basically told to shut up and that I was attacking people who had devoted their lives to saving people (sounded pretty familiar to me from veganism). Behind the scenes, many of the figures I had admired were not what they seemed. The discourse had gone toxic.

But I was really really fortunate offline. I moved to Chicago. I waffled about being paleo-ish for a time, trying to get back to that original spirit I had about it in the beginning. I told myself I’d just remain gluten-free and “mostly paleo.” I had learned about FODMAPs and adopted that procol with good results getting my stomach stable. But then I joined Crossfit and completely lacked the energy to do much of anything. I crashed again.

Luckily I went on a trip to Europe. I ate what I wanted and felt great. After that I was pretty much done with paleo, even as paleo-ish or 80% paleo like I was before, though I remain interested in learning from physical anthropology and evolutionary biology, that’s pretty far from what paleo is about these days anyway and when it is it’s a bowdlerized scientifically anemic version. I turned down a book deal, knowing I was not qualified to write a book yet and that paleo community-associated publishers were churning out consistently low-quality books with little critical editing. I was ready to try new things.

Online, I started hanging out with the “bad kids”- the ex paleos, which is its own little movement at this point. It was probably started by Matt Stone who has been variously mocked all over the paleo community despite probably being able to make a good entry into the vapid testimonial wars the various gurus engage in. From Danny Roddy I started exploring Ray Peat’s work, though I don’t completely embrace it 100%, it gave me the courage to eat the ice cream I once enjoyed with impunity, as well as things like orange juice, which pretty much banished the fatigue episodes. I also realized via Amber of Go Kaleo that I needed to just stop trying to have a diet and “Eat the Food,” that all these years I’d been trapped in an unconscious haze of chronic undernutrition calorically. I never meant to eat too little, but so much of appetite is unconscious.

My appetite was frequently suppressed to the point of nonexistence, which was compounded by fear of eating certain foods like grains, so having to make a huge effort to eat a meal. Some people I’ve met seem to be able to get out of it while maintaining a particular diet, particularly if they monitor themselves very carefully, but I wasn’t able to and I think it’s the same for many people. Maybe our hunger signals can be broken both ways, not just in the overeating direction our culture is more worried about. In the end I realized I was doing this out of fear, because of food paranoia, not because it was the best way for me to fuel myself.

Since then a lot of my intolerances have gone away. It could have just been improving my metabolism through ending the chronic undereating or the probiotic supplementation I decided to pursue more aggressively. I stopped taking all supplements except for the Pearls IC, which I make sure to take every single day, and bromelain. I drink milk (despite being genetically lactose intolerant) and eat things like rye, broccoli, cauliflower, and other foods that used to tie my stomach in knots. I think the difference is I am aware that most intolerances are dose-dependent and potentially modifiable (barring a serious autoimmune disorder like celiac), not a limitation of evolution.

I think taking some of the approaches paleo has borrowed from or skimmed off (FODMAPs for digestive issues, very low carb temporarily for heartburn, ketogenic for certain neurological issues, awareness of gluten intolerance and sensitivity) and applying them in a targeted manner would be much more effective without the baggage. A lot of times I see people doing a strict paleo challenge who really could benefit from an elimination diet. Yes, some of the approaches have a re-trial phase after the challenge,  but considering what we know about gut bacteria and digestion that is not the best approach. When you don't eat a food, your body will sometimes downregulate enzymes used to digest it and your gut bacterial population will shift. Vegans sometimes have issues re-introducing meat because the production of certain protein-digested enzymes is downregulated. Does that mean meat is bad? No, it means it needs to be reintroduced gradually and carefully.

I also can't deny that there were family members and friends who adopted paleo because of me, as well certain people I met through paleo that I grew close with who I saw really struggle with health issues, caught in the same trap I was. Some of them are doing better now, some of them aren't. I feel just as bad about a few of them as I feel about a friend from my past who I introduced to veganism and who now has terrible health problems and won't even consider there might be something beyond veganism that would help. These people are my anti-testimonials, especially since so many of them post online about their success on the paleo diet while I see them crashing.

Offline, my social life changed as well. I met people who really loved food, all kinds of food, and I’m grateful for them every day. I don’t have a diet anymore. I largely eat what I want, but thankfully what I want is largely from-scratch food made with local plants, pastured animal products, and wild seafood. In some ways my diet is more "paleolithic" in spirit than ever, considering its anti-fragile diversity of plants and animals, including many wild foods.

So I’ll continue to write here about evolutionary nutrition. And point out resources from the paleo community if I feel they are useful and good, as well as continuing skeptic writing about certain paleo topics. But I do not consider myself a paleo dieter, writer, or anything like that. My choice to distance myself is because I do not like the way the community treats skeptics or people who do not do well while paleo. In these ways it is nearly identical to the vegan community it frequently derides. It is sad, but not at all surprising, to see some gurus and bloggers finally come out as feeling not so great. The community’s response seems to usually be to increase fat in the diet or restrict it further. Or to embrace diagnoses that are unknown to the scientific literature (parasites a normal doctor can’t detect but a special “practitioner” can, adrenal fatigue which is usually self diagnosed or diagnosed questionably*) to explain things that are often simply undernutrition. Leave and you simply “didn’t do the diet right,” a convenient way to dismiss problems. It's too bad to see it go this way, but seems to be the way many internet diet communities end up. 

When people ask me about paleo these days, I recommend they explore it, but also explore a lot of other food books with a skeptical mind. And to explore less sexy solutions like FODMAPs. And ultimately to consider not adopting a "diet" at all, but a greater awareness and a better relationship with the food system. Like ex-low-carber Darya Pino, I emphasize unprocessed foods from healthy food systems. The farmer's market, the pasture, the woodlands are my solace. 

And yeah, I'm enjoying some chilaquiles made with local corn tortillas and a good beer while writing this, and no, my biomarkers haven't changed in the past year except my HDL is a lot higher. And I'm loving food rather than fearing it.

*I was tested for adrenal insufficiency by an endocrinologist when I fainted, which is advised if you suspect adrenal issues

Edit: I honestly can't believe that people are commenting that I'm actually still paleo but with some cheats. C'mon people. I'm eating sandwiches. I bake BREAD with GLUTEN in it. I drink liquid sugar. And other people are commenting that meat is the best food ever and why would anyone eat grains which are inferior. I never understood that argument. Just because a food is more nutritious doesn't mean it should be the only food you eat. Most foraging peoples get their calories from a bland not very nutritious source and fill int he blanks with a variety of plants and animals.

A few months ago when my friends and were planning another themed dinner party, I submitted the idea for Mesopotamia on a whim and it was picked. So I delved a bit into cooking from the Fertile Crescent, where many foods we eat every day originate. There are "recipes" that exist from this time and place, in the form of tablets from Babylon in the Yale collection written in cuneiform. The problem is that these terse "recipes" have certain ingredients that have not been conclusively translated. Perhaps archeology will fill in the gaps. Archeologist Patrick McGovern, for example, used chemical analysis of pottery residue to reconstruct an ancient Phrygian drink and brew something similar for Dogfish Head called Midas Touch.

Jean Bottero published the most complete translation of the Yale Tablet recipes, but interestingly, food bloggers have contested some of his translations. Jean supposedly loved to cook, but perhaps held a French contempt for other cuisines, declaring the Yale Tablet recipes not fit for anyone except his "worst enemies."

It is interesting because a lot of the recipes are for broth and I've been been thinking about the influence French cooking has had on how many people make broths. I sometimes get emails about how I prepare broth and sometimes people are shocked I don't remove the fat from my broth. I leave it in the vast majority of the time. 

But in traditional French cooking, which has influenced so much of the Western world, the fat is often removed in various ways such as skimming. This reaches its pinnacle in French consommé, in which egg whites are used to effectively remove the fat. That's cool, but I don't really feel the need to do that at home. I think this is partially because I have been so influenced by Korean food, in which broths are often purposefully cloudy or fatty.

The removal of fat is probably a recent development. The first broths ever made were probably made in the later paleolithic as part of a survival strategy known as grease processing. The very purpose of breaking and boiling bones was to probably acquire extra fat with the added bonus of the savory umami bones impart into liquid. I think a paleolithic human would be horrified by the process of consommé, which involves essentially wasting both the egg whites and a bunch of fat (though if you have a dog at home, they appreciate eating the leftover "fat raft"). 

Apparently Babylonian broths were similar to paleolithic and Korean broths, in that they were nice and fatty. If you don't like fat, you might call them greasy, but a good cook should be able to design the rest of the recipe in order to make them more balanced. 

Similarly, whereas most modern cooks use purified salt, ancient cooks were probably more likely to cook with salted condiments (similar to fish sauce or soy sauce)and other foods like salt-fish or salt-pork. And probably if they were making beer, they were also making other fermented foods like pickles. Unfortunately, the fragments on the tablets don't have much information on the specifics of these things, but I would not be surprised if pickles or salt-cured foods were some of the unidentified ingredients like suhitinnu, though some believe there are spices or even vegetables.

Either way, it was an excuse to whip up some Middle Eastern ingredients that possibly have a long history. Harissa was out, because it relies on peppers, which didn't exist in Babylon since they came to this region of the world through the Columbian exchange. But like how Korea was making kimchi with other Ingrid before the Columbian exchange introduced peppers, it is likely the Babylonians made something like harissa, which is so good because it's essentially a bunch of delicious spices marinating together. I made my regular harissa recipe, but used more garlic and other spices: cumin, coriander, cinnamon, and caraway being the dominant ones (you can see what spices I have on my Trello board). I also made some delicious preserved lemons, though the Babylonians would have more likely had a type of citron.

One ingredient I had a lot of fun with was some tears of mastic I bought in Greektown here. I first had mastic in New York City at a goat ice cream shop (yes, really) called Victory Garden, where they used it to flavor soft serve ice cream. I have a strong affinity for evergreen flavors that evoke both forests and cathedrals, so I was addicted to mastic immediately. It is often sold as "tears", since it is the harvested resin of the mastic tree, and I bought the lowest grade small ones to experiment with. I ground them with a mortar and pestle and made some teas, which are supposed to be very good for your stomach lining, though you have to be careful when adding the mastic to liquid. If you don't add it slowly it literally turns to gum and you realize where humans probably got the idea for chewing gum. There is evidence that ancient humans chewed tree resins. But that doesn't bother me too much, it actually makes a rather nice gum, albeit with a fickle texture. Mastic has a very complex flavor, being both bitter and sweet, but that makes it actually rather perfect for balancing fatty foods. 

The small mastic tears I use

I decided to make a goat leg since I had one in my freezer. I hadn't cooked one in a long time, so I googled for some recipes and found one that suggested marinating in beets in order to give an attractive red color. I thought I'd go one further and use the beets for the acidic component of the marinade as well by using some Scrumptious Pantry pickled beets I had in the fridge. Full disclosure is that Scrumptious Pantry invited me to the Localicious event at the Chicago Good Food Festival, but I've been buying their excellent products from the Green Grocer since I started shopping there. At Localicious I sampled many good local foods, like the genius Billy Sunday deviled eggs that had liver mousse whipped into the yolk, and cider from Red Streak. While I was getting some locally cured ham from the chef at Big Jones, my friend and I bumped into a man and we promptly apologized, only to realize it was Sandor Katz, who is largely considered a fermentation god. I love my copy of his Wild Fermentation. We chatted a bit and various things, including the excellent practice of marinating meat in pickles, which he has also tried with good results. God knows what marinating meat in pickles does, I get the impression that pickle juice is a much more complex in its actions than plain lemon or lime juice. 

The rest of the goat leg marinade was Midas Touch beer, Wild Blossom mead, and good olive oil. The next day I made my spice/aromatic mixture, which was plenty of shallots, olive oil, garlic, preserved lemons, pistachios, sesame seeds, mastic, cinnamon, fennel, licorice, black pepper, fish sauce, cumin, dates, and fig vinegar processed until smooth and rubbed all over the leg. I braised the leg in the marinating liquid diluted with duck stock for a couple of hours. It was delicious- tender, red, meaty, earthy, slightly sweet, and highly aromatic. I served with some full-fat Greek yogurt mixed with sumac.

Thanks Jen Moran Photography!

I wish I could give exact ingredients to my recipes, but I usually improvise when I cook. I didn't grow up with fancy food- I loved Hot Pockets, Lunchables, Chick File A, and Kraft Handy Snacks. But I was lucky enough to spend a lot of my childhood outside in the woods. I think that helped me develop a "nose" for flavor, and flavor is as much about the nose as the mouth. I have found memories of sweet honeysuckle, crisp wild chives, pungent tulip trees, balmy pine needles, and the fragrant vines of wisteria. When I have my own children, I hope they can be as exposed to things like these as I was, as I think they are not just important in giving children an appreciation of nature, as to give them other sensory experiences that can help them appreciate many other things that draw on nature for inspiration later in life. If you didn't grow up in such an environment, I think educating yourself about flavors and just trying lots of diverse and interesting foods can help you learn to improvise. As far as educating yourself about flavor, I started a book recently called Taste What You're Missing which is written by a food developer who had to develop her palette as an adult on the job, and so far it's pretty good. Also, have plenty of spoons so you can taste while you are cooking and adjust. I tend to use at least seven different spoons a day, which makes me feel very glad I now have a dishwasher.

 A few months ago I had some serious fungi in my bathroom. And unlike the time it appeared, grey and speckled, in the dark dank bathroom of my old rat-trap Brooklyn apartment, I was thrilled. This time it wasn't mildew, it was oyster mushrooms. 

My apartment is certainly the best place I've lived in during my adult life, but it doesn't get a ton of light. I have a mint plant in the one window that gets some sun, but otherwise my gardening options are limited. So when Fab.com had a sale on mushroom cultivation kits from The Imaginary Farmer, I bought one, choosing the Hantana Phoenix Oyster kit.

The Imaginary Farmer kits caught my eye because they promised a more hands on experience than the other kit I had bought last year, which was an already inoculated pressure-cooked substrate. With that, I didn't have to do much beyond mist it to get it to grow, but I didn't really learn that much either. This kit required me to assemble the environment for the spawn myself. 

Reading the booklet that came with the kit, I realized I would be assembling a war in a bag. A type of microscopic war I was rather familiar with given my experiments in wild yeast ciders and exploration of the role of microfauna in human health.

I've often been a bit amused by straw-man rich anti-organic agriculture writings that accuse advocates of sustainable agriculture of being Luddites desirous of dragging us all back into a miserable 14th-century peasant past. The reality is that most modern farms that are part of this movement utilize methods that didn't exist until recently. The modern sustainable farmer is more likely to own pipettes and beakers than they are to own scythes (not that there is anything wrong with scythes). 

While humans have been consuming mushrooms for a very long time, cultivating mushrooms is newer, perhaps dating to the late 1700s. Many methods used today date to the 1970s, when certain people were very interested in cultivating err...certain "magic" mushrooms. Even to this day, an innocent cultivator of culinary mushrooms is likely to wade through a lot of material of the more psychedelic persuasion, which is credit to the fact that these people did a lot of the pioneering work in indoor growing out of necessity (similarly a lot of stuff used in indoor growing of vegetables can credit marijuana growers). Culinary and "magic" mushrooms are not the only options though, it is also possible to grow many important medicinal mushrooms like reishi.

The method in the Imaginary Farmer kit used oyster-mushroom inoculated grain, which was barley. This led to some question from gluten-free friends about whether it was safe for them. Honestly, I have no idea, but it would be interesting to study. For the rest of the substrate I used coffee grounds and sawdust. I was lazy and just used tap water for everything even though you are not supposed to because of the chlorine.

Did I mention this was a war? A war between the things I wanted to grow, which are mushrooms, and the biodiverse bouquet of ubiquitous other flora and fauna in the air, my breath, the sawdust, my hands... pretty much everything. My job to to give my team the advantage, but introducing as little of the other little folks as possible into my growing environment. I kept my hands clean with rubbing alcohol and the spawn sold by the Imaginary Farmer was selected to be resistant to hydrogen peroxide, which allowed me to use that to clean the sawdust. I put that all in a special mushroom-growing bag that had a filter-vent. And then I left it in my cupboard in the dark for awhile. And eventually it started to look like tempeh with a nice white mycelium binding the substrate into a block, which is the real "body" of the mushroom creature. 

The bad thing here for mushroom growing about my apartment is I have central heating, which makes it really really dry. So I put the block in my shower window, cutting a small growing hole and then covering the rest. I misted them in the morning and at night when I got home from work and suddenly one morning they appeared! 

The cool thing about this variety of oyster mushroom, which is a clone of a mushroom the company found interesting, is that in its early stages it has this salmon egg-like "tears."

Creepy huh?

Otherwise they aren't very photogenic. Some visitors called them "creepy." They got a bit more photogenic as they grew and I opened up another hole to start a new fruiting body (that's the actual mushrooms). I was really happy with my results. I was keeping a nice humid environment and my apartment temp tends around 50-62F. 

The other things are terrariums I made in a Dabble class that ended up not doing very well.

I had to harvest them a little earlier than I wanted because I went on a trip, but they kept well in a paper bag in the fridge, though some dried out a little.

 I cooked some of them with a steak I made and used the rest for a Viking themed party. For that I cooked them in smoked duck fat with some bog myrtle I got in Montreal, then cooked some lingonberries in duck fat with birch syrup, and served on a sourdough rye crisp with a bit of seaweed, cured duck breast, and wild boar, and shavings of getöst.

Photo by Jen Moran

They were really excellent in flavor and not at all like anything I've had from a store. They had a faint funkiness, which as a fish sauce lover, I welcomed, as well as the fantastic umami punch that characterizes the best mushrooms. If you don't eat meat, they can add a meatiness to dishes, but if you do they somehow manage to make meat even more "meaty" and flavorful. 

Sadly the next few weeks were busy and while the block continued to fruit a bit, I neglected it and they dried up. The death knell was on a nice warm(er) day I left the window open and then the temperature dropped 30 degrees while I was out at dinner (thanks Chicago). When I came home the mushrooms had turned black and they shriveled up. It hasn't fruited since, but I might try "restarting" it by soaking it in water, even though that's kind of a crapshoot. I also wanted to try another variety and maybe other more attractive methods (like logs) or methods that could be used on the farm.

So when I saw a class on Meetup.com by the Chicago Permaculture Meetup's Kevin Hovey, I signed up. It was at the Stone Soup Coop, a place that definitely feels like what I imagine the 70s were like. 

We went over different varieties (I want to try the almond agaricus, which is supposed to taste a bit nutty) and methods we could use from logs to bags to "terrariums." I'd love to use the logs on the farm and the terrariums in my apartment, particularly if I could use a pretty bell jar. Kevin talked a bit about how he wants to build a lab so he can get the kind of sterility in a filtered hood that really gives the mushroom cultures and spores an advantage.

He also talked a bit about getting your own spores and cultures. He gathered some local Chicago oyster mushrooms from a tree and cultured them. We used slow cookers to pasteurize brown rice bran substrates (gluten-free this time!) in jars and then used a homemade hood and needles to inoculate a variety of cultures and spores, which we got to take home. I have them in my cabinet at home and hopefully I will see some mycelium running soon, which incidentally is the name of a book by Paul Stamets that I've been reading. I also should probably pick up his more academic tome Growing Gourmet and Medicinal Mushrooms. He also has a popular TED talk.

I took a mycology class when I was in school in Sweden, but it was on forestry pests and I learned more about killing than growing them. But really the more I learn about this subject, the more I realize that there is so much that humans don't know about mushrooms. For example, only a few people know how to cultivate morels (I'd love to order some pre-inoculated trees for the farm) and black truffles. No one knows how to cultivate the prized matsutake, with its heavenly pine-forest aroma.

But these mysteries are certainly part of the appeal. And for the matsutake, even if you could grow it, would it really be the same? It is a mushroom defined by the ecosystem of the pine forest, with its flavors and aromas you can't get in a plastic bag. Wild mushrooms have a distinct terroir that many cultivated mushrooms can lack. For example the chaga I have in my cupboard task incredibly like the birch they came from, but you can hope that mushrooms grown in a bag don't taste like a bag. Growing outdoors in logs might allow me to cultivate a greater terroir by selecting different types of logs. 

Either way, I've had a great deal of fun so far with mushrooms without even getting high and I'm looking forward to learning more. Have any of your grown mushrooms? What are your favorite resources and varieties?

 I have a complicated relationship with coffee because I seem to be very sensitive to it. Even if I drink it regularly, it seems to make me a bit jittery at times. I reserve it for days I really need an edge in productivity. Other days I drink tea. I used to not be able to tolerate coffee at all because it upset my stomach, but I figured out thanks to reader Mike White that I could drink paper-filtered, but not French-press coffee. There is a lot of great coffee here in Chicago, so I'm happy I know this.

I've been drinking Cocoa tea, Tisano, for awhile now, but someone mentioned that they were enjoying a similar beverage that was a bit heavier more like coffee called Crio Bru and I got some online to try. 

I first tried the Crio Bru Cavella. When you open the bag it smells like chocolate heaven bliss. It's wonderful.

It probably works best with a french press. Because of the thicker grind it takes a long time in the paper filter. The caveat with the french press is that it is a fatty brew and you can get some oil slick on it. Since ahem some people put butter on their coffee, they might not mind it. When I'm drinking alone I usually don't care but if I'm serving it to other people I usually filter- a metal tea filter can also work OK. 

The cavella has a natural sweetness and lightness to it and does not get bitter easily. The other one I am trying now, the Coca River, is much much heartier and easily becomes a bit bitter. It probably holds up a little better to cream though. I look forward to trying more of them. I will say that it does affect me a bit like coffee if I drink the entire french press.. 

I also picked up some local Chicago Kishr at the nearby Green Grocer. It's a spicy Middle Eastern drink made with the coffee cherry that is also nice as a pick-me-up.