Maybe you've heard it being thrown around in commercials and newspaper food sections.

Dictionary.com says it means "a person who has an ardent or refined interest in food." I was pretty excited when people started using it, because now there's a complimentary term for people extremely interested in food, and I am one of those.

I'm the kind of person who thinks about lunch when she's eating breakfast, dinner when she's eating lunch, dessert when she's eating dinner, etc.

Even my trips are food related. Traveling to Philadelphia? Gotta have a cheesesteak. Austin? Authentic Mexican. New York? Pizza. Miami? Stone crabs.

But turns out I'm not so much a "foodie."

A foodie is a gourmand, someone who cares about high-quality ingredients, just the right amount of spice and the perfect accompaniments.

A foodie tends to cook at home. She may own several items from Pampered Chef. There's probably a lemon zester and a melon baller in her cabinets.

Let's face it.

I'm an eatie.

An eatie just loves food. All food. Onion rings are as enjoyable as caviar. Breyers ice cream is as much of a treat as creme brulee.

Give us a Meat Lovers pizza and a Diet Coke, and we've got an evening going.

My true label hit me when The Other Half and I went to an authentic Italian restaurant in our neighborhood. A guy who lives on one of the better streets near us and wears a suit to work every day recommended it, so we figured it had to be good.

And it would be, for a foodie.

For eaties such as Mr. Half and I, it was a disaster.

He ordered the margherita pizza with extra garlic. I ordered the frutti di mare ... which apparently, when translated, means "a bunch of stuff you won't recognize."

Shrimp, I recognize. Scallops, I recognize. Mussels, I recognize.

But with this dish, that's where the recognition ended. The rest I had to identify later (squid rings that tasted like fish-flavored gum, giant pieces of clam and baby octopus).

Admittedly, the eight-tentacled creatures with heads looked suspiciously like octopus at the time, but I was hoping against hope until I looked up frutti di mare recipes online later.

As I plucked about 15 octopuses out of my meal, Mr. Half grappled with his margherita pizza.

There's not tons of mozzarella cheese on authentic margherita pizza. Just lots of tomatoes and, because Mr. Half's bizarre order, and there were a lot of minced fresh garlic he was busy scraping off.

Who takes his wife out on a romantic dinner and then asks to add garlic to the meal?

He should have just told the waitress, "Excuse me. I have no intention of kissing this woman. Just wanted you to know." So, I'll leave the authentic Italian to the foodies.

As an eatie, I'm kicking myself that I moved from Cape Girardeau before the Olive Garden opened.

Heidi Hall is a former managing editor for the Southeast Missourian who now lives in St. Petersburg, Fla.