This story originally appeared on MUNCHIES UK on August 14, 2016.

Never was the sun so bright before, no foaming of the milk so sweet, no beans so green beneath my feet, nor with such oil drops jewelled o’er. And thou art come at last, and half of this loveliness is thine.

So grab your thumbprint and wander with me through the best and most beguiling morsels to have graced the plains of Instagram this week.

Now that figure skating, punching strangers in the face, horse wobbling, and petanque are Olympic sports, it can surely only be a matter of time until the noble art of speed eating becomes recognised as a competitive pastime dating back to the oil-slicked, naked days of Greco-Roman glory. And when it does I, my friends, will be cleaning up that gold.

In the words of our generation’s greatest milk-breasted poet, Katy Perry, I got the eye of the tiger, a fighter, Dancing through the fire, ‘Cause I am the champion, and you’re gonna hear me cook raaaaaaw vegan puddings. Especially if they look like wedding hats covered in bacon bits.

Slip a ring upon my finger and make me your salted rubber wife. If Ursula the witch isn’t your go-to Disney bang then, I’m afraid, we have little more to say here. Except pass the dip. And stop trying to lick my knuckle.

OK, I could have accepted the uneasy bedfellows of whole tomato and a plain scone. I could have stepped back, live and let live when it came to the circular discs of cold, trembling meat. But you put a selection of Dairylea Triangles on my breakfast buffet and you are going to be lucky to live through until lunch.

Ah, the beauty of contrast. A salted bowl of fire and sea, as red as the earth and as hot as coal. Hold it up to your ear and perhaps you can hear the smell of burning.

Let’s be honest: “wild plums” sounds like the name of Kiefer Sutherland and Corey Haim’s ill-considered hair metal band, formed after the promotional tour for The Lost Boys in 1988.

Bugger it, when it looks this beautiful, I would hang tuna belly from my Christmas tree. Or set it in a golden engagement ring. Or tie it in my hair like a ribbon.

Just occasionally, the world’s most beautiful food also looks like the collection of scavenged sticks, leaves, berries, and nettles my sister and I would rip up from the recreation ground near our house and serve up to our deeply unhappy and resolutely unwilling parents as a “nature feast.”

The Japanese language did not, for many years, have any distinction between blue and green. The word “ao” would simply refer to anything from vegetables, to grass, to the sky and sea, and you had to fill in the details using context. According to my friend Wicked Peter (Wikipedia) “educational materials distinguishing green and blue only came into use after World War II” but as a citation for that is needed, I think we can probably take it with a pinch of salt. Still, the word thing is true. And it’s good to know that you could paint an ancient Japanese courgette blue and nobody would be able to dob you in.

Remember that McCain advert? With the little Welsh girl? Trying to decide between daddy or chips? That girl was a bona fide idiot and a Freudian nightmare. Now, pass the salt.