Who the hell is The Mushroom King? And how do I get a title like that? 

That’s what I was thinking to myself when Marty, Mad Dandy’s creator and a recovering caffeine addict told us about Paul Stamets, the Mushroom King. Paul lives up in the Pacific Northwest, surprise surprise. And he’s been studying, promoting, eating, experimenting with and talking about mushrooms for over 40 years.

Technically Paul is a world-renowned mycologist who works within the fungal networks that communicate with the ecosystem. He compares the fungal network underground to the internet in the way the mushrooms are connected.

Marty stumbled onto Paul and the power of mushrooms while reading Michael Pollan’s book “How to Change Your Mind”. Intrigued, and bouncing off the walls in the middle of Covid, Marty sat down and watched the video “Fantastic Fungi’ where he learned about the powerful health benefits of mushrooms, along with other fun facts like, “There are over 300 miles of fungi underneath every step you take…and that is all over the world.”

Needless to say, he was starting to get way into the health benefits of mushrooms. But let’s put the Mushroom King on hold for a moment.

Because around the same time, Marty was drinking something like four triple macchiatos a day, which is what, 4 x 3 = 12 cups of coffee a day? So Marty was a jittery mess, jacked up on caffeine reading about mushrooms when he stumbled onto this article called “World, you drink too much coffee.” And that introduced him to dandelion root tea as a substitute. 

So Marty got some dandelion root and tried it, hoping it would help him lay off the caffeine.

SPOILER ALERT: it tasted like crap. Way too bitter to stand on its own. But at this point, he was determined to find something else besides his beloved coffee. So Marty began mixing the dandelion root in with some chai. This improved the taste. But, ultimately, it was more like a healthy way to ruin a good chai.

Then he stumbled around into the world of turmeric, curcumin really, which has a ton of health benefits but is also pretty bitter and that just ruined the chai even worse than the dandelion root did. Plus its intense yellow color stains, so he ruined a few shirts in the blending process.

But then Marty discovered the golden milk latte, which is delicious but not particularly healthy. So, ya, you guessed it, he dumped it all together and now things are getting interesting. Not good yet, but interesting.

You still with me? Great. Then we’re back to the Mushroom King part of this story. Marty remembers all the benefits of each different fungi and starts buying Lions Mane, Cordyceps, Chaga and Reishi just like the Mushroom King told him. He’s scooping those into his concoction every morning trying to figure out the right amount to deliver the benefits without delivering the “damn, this stuff tastes like dirt” sort of quality. And, being honest, the exact amount was still elusive.

Then one morning, after he’s added in collagen because it has zero taste and does good things for your skin so why the hell not, he looks on his counter and sees the big vat of dehydrated peanut butter and it’s like those little angels come down and sing and the clouds part and the god rays shine in.

Marty had been using dehydrated PB for years because the saturated fats get removed from peanut butter when it’s dehydrated, and then it’s easy to re-introduce water to rehydrate for lower saturated fat peanut butter. So he scooped some of the dehydrated PB into his now somewhat complicated concoction to see what would happen. You can now guess where where we’re going here: It made the whole thing rich, thick and delicious with a little protein kick to boot.

He figures the Mushroom King would be proud. But there’s still the matter of the caffeine; Marty doesn’t want to eliminate it entirely, just wants to dial it down. So Marty pulls in some Turkish instant coffee, just a touch, to give a little wake-up and a bit of that coffee aroma.

For the rest of Covid, Marty is perfecting the balance of the concoction and mixing it in a Pyrex cup each morning and his wife Vanessa, who is kinda tired of all these powders all over the counter, suggests he mix it all into a big vat. So he does. And now what is currently the Mad Dandy formula is sitting on his kitchen counter waiting for Covid to end so Marty can introduce it to friends who say pretty much what he says every morning; “Damn, this stuff is good!”

And that’s basically how the Mushroom King inspired the coffee junky to create a mushroom coffee, infused with dandelion root that tastes like nothing else out there.