America's Got The Crunch Factor

In the first part of an ongoing series, I've decided to catalogue and rate some of the culinary delights that I encounter during my time here in America. The supermarkets here are a veritable carnival of weird and wonderful (but mostly weird) food items that may appear bewildering to the non-native, so in my commitment to public service,  I'm letting my curiosity get the better of me, to make the gastronomic mistakes so that you don't have to. 

Each delicacy will be rated on a 'crunch scale' of 0 - 5. For those of you who have eaten in Connaught Hall, you'll understand the scoring system, but for those who have not had the 'pleasure', a crunch is a measure of amount of stomach ache suffered post-consumption, ranging from 0 (no crunch - a pleasant eating experience) up to 5 crunches (a foul abomination of a meal, equivalent to eating a full Saturday brunch at Connaught).

So without further ado, like the crunching commence!

First up is something of an American instituition, guaranteed to cause bemusement for all other speakers of the English language:

Biscuits and gravy

After encountering these bad boys on a few occasions, I think I've finally worked out what they are. The 'biscuits' are a bit like heavy croissants, with a bun-like crust. They are quite sweet, but seem to be eaten with bloody anything and everything over here. Nothing too offensive.

The gravy is something else all together, and that something is pretty digusting. I should add the disclaimer that this gravy came out of a packet, so I'm not sure how it compares to the 'gold standard' of gravies, but I'm not optimistic based on this experience. The 'gravy' is a strange savoury porridge-type sauce that may or may not have little bits of sausage in it. I can't really describe the taste, other than 'savoury'. Suffice to say, you'd be hard-pushed to get me to try it again.   

And if that decription wasn't appealing enough, here's a picture of the feast (that's a fried egg on the top left): 

Crunch Factor: 3 crunches out of 5 (it would have been more, but the biscuits weren't too bad. On the otherhand, I'm still having nightmarish flashbacks about the gravy)