A Foodie Is What A Foodie Does

Four different people called me a foodie in the past few weeks. This led to some interesting conversations with the Mister about what it means to be a foodie. I mean, just because I love to eat (live to eat) and like to cook, does that make me a foodie? I like to buy things for my kitchen, but does that make me a foodie? Hell, I like to shop in general. So that can't be it. Does reading food blogs almost daily make me a foodie? Well, I certainly don't consider myself a grease monkey just because I frequent a couple of auto forums and have done some mods on my own car.

The Mister thinks I'm a foodie. No doubt about it in his mind. I, on the other hand, don't think I'm a foodie, just someone who loves to eat and sometimes who like to blog about it. Hell, I've never even heard the word until a couple of years ago. The Mister asked what I considered a foodie. I started to rattle off names, Kirk (mmm-yoso), Chubby Panda, Clotilde Dusoulier (Chocolate & Zucchini, well, she's more than a foodie), Reid (Ono Kine Grindz) just to name a few off the top of my head. I could have rattled on and on but I made my point, so I thought. I mean those are people who have food blogs after all. Right?

Then it got me thinking. What exactly is a foodie? I obviously didn't have an exact definition in my head or else I would have rattled it off in some Boyeristic fashion. It's one of those things where I know what it is in my head but I can't explain it. Or maybe I just don’t know. Should someone who lives to eat (not one who eats to live) be considered a foodie? I think there has got to be more to it than that. Do foodies have the Food Network or Fine Living on 24/7? So I watch a lot of Food Network, dating back from the mid 90’s, but so do millions of other people nowadays. Okay, so maybe one could argue that not too many of those millions know that Food Network started with Mario Batali, Bobby Flay, and Emeril Lagasse. But I too carry some useless facts in my brain and not all of them food related. Maybe the term foodie was some sort of by-product of Food Network. Maybe someone came up with the term as a polite way to categorize food fanatics, rather than calling us “pigs” or “gluttons” or “gourmands.” Okay, so it’s obvious I don’t really know what a foodie is. I’ll concede to that.

But it was the Mister’s coup de grace that brought my brain to a screeching halt (only for a second), "anyone who takes pictures of his food and writes about them is a foodie in my book." Hmm, interesting point. The only retort I could come up with was "maybe," and that's a big maybe, I'm a “hobby” foodie. A hobby foodie, someone who pursues food outside one's regular occupation engaged in especially for relaxation. Yeah, I like that and can accept that label.

So all you foodies, wannabe’s, gourmands, gluttons, pigs, and hobby foodies, go now and eat well.