"I could’ve chewed this without chewing."

And so it begins. The most wonderful time of the year steamrolls every supermarket's shitty plastic Halloween decorations and decaying pumpkins into the trash, replacing the once-spooky shelving displays with deep reds, rich holly leaf greens, and picturesque images of snow-covered Victorian London streets, which seem laughably out of place judging by the run-down dirty streets that crawl through this nation. On one typically bleak English afternoon, I strode with purpose through a dismal ind...

"Before I even had a chance to register what on planet Earth was going on, we were explained that there was a €13 minimum spend per head as if it was a backstreet all-you-can-eat shitbox."

Aligned with the over-priced tourist junk shops and the themed pubs about the ankle-cracking cobbled streets of Bratislava's beautiful Old Town, sat another tourist trap bedecked with old-timey portraits of what I'm assuming are of people who never existed, stained glass windows, and regally painted flourishes adoring every free space possible: the Konditorei Kormuth café. Perpetually swarmed with people leering through the window to marvel at the migraine-inducing interior and touted as a "...

"This Bisto curry sauce was like a corrupted memory of actual curry sauce"

Here, in my little dusty nook of this new and instantaneous world in a universe brimming with videos on demand, lightning-fast data access via the information superhighway, and instant copy-and-paste face upgrades, there has always been a sacred pocket of simplicity that only poked at the rapid future we steamrolled into - a time where only food preparation was instant. Coffee had been dried and crumbled down to a pitiful jar of mud-looking granules and sold as a convenience, gravy that would...

"I could feel my day slipping away from me like the £6.25 I had spent on this box of dropped-looking turds"

Out of care for the earth and sheer laziness, I've been buying from Riverford Farms; an organic 'you get what we grow' seasonal-type fruit and veg box, and as the festive season began its boisterous entrance, Riverford announced they were selling mince pies that piqued my Christmas curiosity and got my taste buds ring ting tingling, too. It arrived in a simple box which visually spoke 'organic', 'good for the earth', and 'because of the other two points, I'm mightily expensive'. Flipping tha...

"The filling felt like the taste equivalent of an asterix at the end of a word; easily unnoticed"

For me, the Christmas season only starts when I procure boxes of mass-produced mince pies and eat myself into sheer insensibility, and right off the rip, this is a bad way to invite festive cheer into my life. Like every year, Tesco has a selection of mince pies going from the standard "Tesco Value" mince pies, up to the snooty Tesco's Finest range. I set aside my life of pure luxury in the name of festive science with the cheapest box available and upon employing an exiting walk like Scroog...

"Perfect for scrambled egg stock photography"

I'm not usually influenced by anything, but as soon as I read a book or watch a cartoon about space, I suddenly and desperately want to become a space cowboy. What's better than turning your back on some small and easily resolved issue, then hopping into your spaceboat and sailing off to the other end of the galaxy? Certainly not the food you'd be eating on the way. Crackd - The No-Egg Egg most likely won't be the de facto egg substitute of future space rangers, because it sure-as-balls isn't...

"It just tasted of, according to my notes at the time, 'eating the wrong air', which I can only unfold to be that it felt like something was really not right"

£4.50 Tesco Supermarket Like the cliché scene from a zombie film where the protagonist is forced into an infected-filled mega-mart to get supplies, I found myself sidestepping mindless patrons at my local Tesco for an avocado, and whilst soon looking for a place of respite to catch my breath and steel my fraying nerves, I found a quiet sanctuary. A seemingly unvisited and unloved place at the end of one of the supermarket's long and droning aisles, bereft of the hordes rushing the frozen piz...

"Looking like a small lost surfboard returning to shore along with the treasures and plantation of Atlantis placed atop"

Chado Tea Shop Cihangir, Istanbul Squirrelling my way around the "Camden of Istanbul", my other half told me about a perfectly lovely little tea shop. One that I simply had to visit due to my recently acquired interest in any tea other than the mundane English Breakfast tea I'm so accustomed to. So, whilst she had to jet off to a different country for work, I thought I'd head down the road from our Airbnb and kill some time before she came back. Open until late and serving light bites and ...

"I had already lost my mind about the potential food combinations I could create. Cheese with honey? I am Greek royalty. Tomatoes dusted with exotic spices? I am a Mediterainnian millionaire. A doughnut with my coffee? I am an uncouth American. "

Breakfast for two - 152 Turkish Lira per person (around £7 each) Beyoğlu, İstanbul, Turkey Fancy a breakfast where each individual ingredient comes on its own plate or bowl knowing that you're not the poor person that has to wash about 100 billion of them before the end of your shift? Then head on down to the hustlin' and bustlin' Arada Beyrut Cafe in Istanbul where you can fill every square inch of a table with items of food! A fairy chilly Saturday morning didn't hamper the hordes of peo...

"I'd never thought 'this is what they probably smell when they push open a sarcophagus' prior to opening these"

£2.80 Tesco Marmite. It can be the salty tar that bonds kings and paupers together in harmony or the unbreachable wall between love and hate. A savoury sludge that hits all the right notes like a seasoned jazz musician playing a solo straight from the heart...but that's only if you like jazz. For those that don't, it's the awful noise of some escaped mental patient slapping a piano like a wilding until the whitecoats burst through the door and capture them. During a trip to the 'big Tesco' ...