Butter Nut Coffee

People become coffee drinkers in different ways:  

• Lifers- Some, like my wife, practically grew up liking coffee and was drinking real, black coffee in high school and college.
• Evolutionaries- some, like me, take an evolutionary approach.  We start on the Starbucks track.  Well, actually, growing up Fargo didn't have a Starbucks, but it have a Moxie Java which was sorta the same thing.  And so in high school, I'd get the Milkyway and think I was a real coffee drinker, but in fact my drink was more flavored hot cocoa then coffee.  Over time, though, my tastes evolved and now I prefer black coffee over other drinks.
• I'll try anything once- these folks will, well, try anything once, and after trying coffee are hooked.

I'm sure there are other categories to add.  The point, though, is that early in our marriage, I was in coffee flavored cocoa stage and married to a lifer.  So when I'd do the grocery shopping, I'd buy a huge tin of Butter Nut coffee.  It was cheap, there was a lot of it, and it satisfied (or so I thought!) my spouse's affection for coffee.  Little did I know, as I evolved in my own coffee journey, that Butter Rum was not a good coffee for a lifer (Folgers, perhaps, but not Butter Nut).  And now, since I've come to enjoy black coffee, we buy a fair trade version that's sold at our church.  

Some would say I'm hypocritical seeing as how now that I have a taste for coffee, I've changed my opinion on Butter Nut.  And perhaps, there's some truth to it.  And sometimes, whether it's coffee, marriage, work, or countless other areas in life, solving a problem (or meeting a lifer's need for coffee) is going to require more than just a Butter Nut approach.