My aunt once told me that her mother ate the exact same breakfast and lunch every single day of her life. I can’t remember the exact meals, but I think breakfast was something simple like an egg with toast and lunch was a scoop of tuna over a tomato. She maintained her weight to a T for years. Clearly she was not much of a foodie to want to eat the same meals her whole life, but she must have enjoyed those foods very much.

Starring Britney Spears as Kathy’s aunt’s mom.

Clearly, Kathy isn’t a professional tennis player, but her backhand is something to look at. (Inasmuch as demolition derby drivers aren’t too good at not crashing into stuff, but their driving is something to look at.)

I feel the need to taste everything – particularly on dessert buffets! – because I can’t stand to miss out on a flavor. Often I think this is at the cost of my waistline. Foodie tasting > intuitive eating.

See what I mean about reading her new laws? I had no idea eating cookies and not onions had been re-classified as “foodie tasting” and taken out of the squeamish, fussy, and dull category.

Fewer things are sadder than a whole wheat tortilla with unmelted cheese on it.

And also, her toppings? Just for looks, you guys! She’s only “heavy handed with toppings” because it looks “prettier.” She could totally go without eating that cheese and nuts, but she’s only doing it because “they say you should always” pair something like an apple with fat or protein. She’s a professional — she knows what she’s doing.

Truly, since “foodies” are defined by eating food for reasons that have nothing to do with being hungry for it, nothing to do with it smelling or tasting good, nothing to do with drooling over it.

I guess it all comes down to listening to hunger and fullness cues. If you put those at top priority, neither should interrupt a weight maintenance or loss plan. But it has made me wonder if I should stick with the same oatmeal for breakfast and salad for lunch to simplify my life like my aunt’s mother did.

No it doesn’t. You just want your readers to tell you to keep on rocking on. And by the way — I’m guessing that Kathy’s aunt’s mother wasn’t some dullard who couldn’t tell pastitsio from pistachio. I’m guessing that, instead of pretending thinking about If Your Almonds From Khufu’s Tomb Are Going To Keep You Full For 2.6 minutes or 26 minutes, your aunt’s mother just had better shit to do.

So on Friday’s post, which is Part 2 of a guest post that didn’t need to be split into two, Bath Matt refers to worms as “wrigglin’” and finally reveals what he plants in the garden (spoiler alert: “braisin’ greens” and carrots that squick out his wife because they have to spend time in dirt, says the woman who encapsulated her placenta).

•”curly and russian kale” (what do the Younger-Smugsons have against capitalizing things?

Between this and “greek” yogurt, I feel tempted to send them a letter of apology and, like, a case of toilet paper or hamburgers or something.

• Eight kinds of tomatoes.

• Okra, which takes just six plants for two people to have it a few times a week. On the downside, you have to eat okra a few times a week.

• Spinach, arugula, and lettuce, because when you’re trying to come off like someone who cares about a hobby, don’t raise things from seeds and pick easy plants because fuck effort:

You’ll really feel like you’re eating your bounty when you have great salads every day. Swiss chard may be the easiest thing ever to grow – you can literally just toss the seeds on top of the soil, lightly rake it around a little, and then water occasionally.  I think people get too excited about the idea of having something like unlimited bell peppers for the summer,

Gawd, i know. That happens all the — wait, what the hell kind of people do you know that they get “too excited” about unlimited bell peppers? And why don’t they have their own, so-intensely-boring-it’s-fascinating reality show?

• Eggplant and peppers (which one can only assume are bell peppers, since Kathy doesn’t like seeing numbers go above the mid 150s even on the Scoville Scale.

• carrots from last fall they ate and gave to the baby, so as to cultivate an appreciation for Produce We Could Have Bought Fresh For $1.99 But Didn’t.

Saturday’s post is a bunch of photos because Grandma Menstruation Blog and Grandpa Only Person In The Family Without A Blog Because He Has A Day Job came to visit a few weeks in advance of Sister Ethnic Meat Dish’s wedding. Kathy ate strawberries and eggs and toast and oats without yogurt because they were out and there’s no way she was completely angling for her parents to take her grocery shopping to buy her the big honking container of Fagos. For lunch, she had a couple salads, including one with chips and slices of cheese (just melt them and make nachos and at least enjoy them) and another with fish. Another time, she put cinnamon almonds

and avocado and some eggs that look so much like sheets they could be duvet covers on top of her salad.

The rest of the time, she had entitlement. Here’s Grandma Buzz listening to Baby Carbz pontificate on Euro finance (or, I don’t know, maybe bears or the repo work he did that week)

over a meal Bath Matt’s mom Karen made:

slow-cooked short ribs with salad and sweet potatoes and blackberry pie

as though any reader of Kathy Eats Consumes Fake Desserts Dressed Like Breakfast would ever think Kathy made ribs and their own blackberry pie.

Her parents supposedly loved the pancakes and fishy salads she made them, while Baby Carbz loved the brightly colored non-neutral, non-chevroned regular plastic baby toy and “interacting with the Bears”

I think what he’s actually saying is, “No, Mom, seriously — you’re joking with this bear shit, right?”

Since they had company and all, they totally treated them to a nice time — oh, who am I kidding? They pretended like Buzz and PeePaw were their own personal assistants, and “bar hopped all around Cville” and “had too much fun” by ordering pasta and mixed drinks, and repented with dour at-home plates of fish and collards and rice and then tofu and asparagus and leftover rice. Sorry, a few fizzy drinks

and sodden pasta dishes aren’t worth having to choke this down before and after like a pageant-stressed 11-year-old:

Kathy’s fourth post is about some people who sent her free bags of $4/bag granola and how it’s acceptable, even though some of it looks like a desperately sad battlefield death scene, or the death scene of the last of an endangered animal made of oats:

After describing more than a dozen varieties as everything from

Nice n spicy!

or

sweet n smoky

to

chewy and crunchy at the same time (texture!)

and

Really fun – like BBQ chips meet almonds

She ends with a ringing endorsement, saying she ate the “flax chips”** out of one entire bag and “there aren’t any real duds” in any of the sample bags she was sent. Gee, they didn’t entirely suck? What a ringing endorsement.

NatureBox would be ideal if you have hungry teenagers to feed or get bored of your same old bulk bin options.

Know what else is acceptable, Kathy? Eating a bologna sandwich if you’re desperate enough to have to be asking for the help of a soup kitchen. Even if eating four of them belies your non-foodie-According-to-Kathy status.)

*Don’t know what these are, but someone should invent them immediately.

** There is something about the idea of flax chips that makes me want to just sob like a little child.