I've totally got a hiney tingle for my guest blogger today. This chick has her shit together...

Tamara Lunardo writes the blog Tamara Out Loud: Thoughts on Real Life and Real Faith, at www.tamaraoutloud.wordpress.com. She holds both a BA in English from the University of Florida and her five children, when they let her; she almost never holds her tongue.

"Shut Your Pie Hole Full of Cake and Eat it Too"
By Tamara Lunardo

I used to not care much about food; you could say I was of the eat-to-live persuasion. I never thought about it at all until it was mealtime, and even that was just a get-it-done-and-move-on-type deal. I was not interested in food beyond its basic function. I used to be skinny.

But time and children wisen and fatten you up, and I now have a deep appreciation, if not for fine foods, for food and drink in general. I realize now that food can do so much more than sustain your body. A birthday-cake flavored milkshake can provide the necessary motivation to ride your bike uphill in 97-degree weather; a shared deep-fried Twinkie, more than kisses, mingles souls; a bottle of cheap German wine might just seal the deal on that "one last" baby.

And so, as a foodie not in any official or cultured sense, I present to you my list of rules for a happy life and a fat ass:

1. Whipped cream is best served directly in the mouth. It is not altogether wasteful to incorporate it into an ice cream sundae or milkshake, but, in the event of such incorporation, each element ought to be savored individually so as to not lose its distinction.

2. If you refill your first glass of wine halfway through, it remains counted as one glass. It is advised not to refill prior to the halfway mark, as this will either diminish overall intake or necessitate a number of additional refills, which may draw the attention and disapproval of onlookers. If you are drinking alone, the halfway mark is subjective.

3. Broken cookies cannot be considered to contain any relevant calorie count. Resist the temptation to intentionally break cookies, as this will only encourage small children nearby to follow suit, leaving you with an undesirable number remaining. Instead, handle a few cookies with slightly more spatula roughness than necessary when removing them from the baking sheet; for pre-packaged cookies, simply drop the package with a loud and convincing, "Oops!"

4. Breakfast food is appropriate to serve at any time of day, especially if it includes bacon. Long considered the would-be vegetarian's last hold-out, bacon can rightfully crown any meal. Side it with eggs and French toast or Belgian waffles or good old American pancakes-- you decide the ethnicity of your meal-- and you have what really must be considered an anytime feast.

5. It is an acceptable and encouraged practice to dip french fries in ice cream. The delightful combination of salty and sweet has tantalized tongues in many forms, but only the french fry/ice cream partnership provides the complementary hot and cold sensations as well. It's a four-way triumph of taste.

6. An appletini garnished with an apple slice and a maraschino cherry constitutes three servings of fruit. The math speaks for itself. Cheers!

7. Pizza is the perfect food. Perhaps a statement of the obvious, but until pizza receives a trademarked designation as such, it bears inclusion in a list of foodie rules. Burden of proof belongs to the detractor. (Side note: Bad pizza is like bad sex-- even if it fails to measure up to its high-quality counterpart, it's probably still worth having. "Bad" is relative in either case.)

8. A cupcake is superior to a slice of cake. Given a slice of cake and a cupcake made with comparable recipes, the cupcake-- sorry, I can't resist-- takes the cake. A slice of cake means you've only had a literal fraction of those soft, rich layers and decadent frosting. But a cupcake, a cupcake beckons you to enjoy it in its entirety. "What, me? Have the whole thing? Why, yes! I think I will."

I guess you might call me a junk food junkie-- just don't call me late for brinner. I'll bring the bacon.