I put gravy on absolutely everything for a week and fuck northerners this is absolutely disgusting

As someone who both lives and went to uni in God’s own county, (Yorkshire, clearly) I love gravy more than life itself. Nights out will inevitably end in gravy-soaked drunk food, mornings in could well involve a steak bake, and don’t even get me started on roast dinners.

I never thought I could over-do it on the gravy front, so decided to chuck it on all my meals for a week to see if the unthinkable could happen, and I’d get sick of it. Is there such a thing as too much gravy? Apparently so. Welcome, friends, to my week of soggy, meaty hell.

Monday

I started off my week as a gravy addict in King’s Cross station, where, it turns out, it’s fairly hard to get your hands on gravy at 11 in the morning. But, not one to be put off by a few teething problems, I had a plan. Google would save the day.

What I thought (in my sleepy and hungover state) was a brilliant bit of googling, actually turned out to be pretty useless as there aren’t usually shops specialising in Bisto at train stations. But you know what? I’m a trooper and managed to find a pasty shop to satisfy my needs – not a bad start to the week there.

Breakfast down, I headed home for lunch where I decided on a nice, safe, sandwich. Not much that can go wrong with a sandwich eh? Think again.

Yeah, I actually ate this.

I tried to make it a bit more bearable by having slices of beef in there, but the rank, soggy texture was just too much. Gravy, I love you, but you’re clearly not made for sandwiches. Plus there was the added shame of eating a sandwich with a knife and fork – it’s not natural.

By the time dinner rolled around, I was kind of dreading eating and thinking maybe a hunger strike was the way to go. But I love food too much to do that so on went the experiment.

Dinner was fairly traumatic, because I was having curry and I felt a bit sad about ruining such a delicious dish with the salty salty gravy I’d made earlier – but I had no choice.

Heartbreaking

It was pretty weird, but after the first bite something amazing (and really unexpected) happened. I kind of enjoyed it.

Tuesday

Woke up and briefly forgot about the ordeal that was going to be my breakfast, until it dawned on me that pretty much all breakfast foods would be absolutely disgusting with gravy on them: cereal, eggs, bacon, fruit, you name it, it’ll be foul. In the end, I decided to get creative with dippy eggs and toast, but without the relief of a real dippy egg because that would be too tasty. So, in reality it was just two egg cups of brown disappointment and some marmite-y toast.

Yum

I woke up pretty late so the toast and dippy gravy was more of a sad brunch than a traditional breakfast, but I plumped for some hummus and crackers as a mid-afternoon snack and let me tell you, there’s a bloody good reason people don’t have hummus with their Sunday roast.

For dinner, I plumped for tacos which turned out to be a horrendous mistake, because I ended up with this monstrosity of a meal:

Absolutely foul

The sogginess of the (otherwise bloody lovely) taco was a real low point of my culinary achievements to date. Considering I fucked up making instant gravy, instead producing this watery abomination, I don’t think I should be let loose in a kitchen again anytime soon.

Wednesday

On waking up, I went downstairs to pop the kettle on and instinctively got to work making my gravy for the morning’s meal – it’s become habit, and I’ve become disgusting. Like a Pavlovian dog, the smell of gravy has begun to signal mealtime for me and, although I’m not looking forward to meals, each gravy-laden bite takes me closer to dry food and the end of the week. So on I plough with my dippy gravy and toast, a repeat of yesterday’s breakfast.

Home sweet home

Wednesday. Hump day. I decided I need a bit of a treat, so I grabbed a steak and onion pie while out with my gran, who doesn’t really understand why I’m doing this (neither do I).

I decide to get a bit creative for dinner, and make my grandparents sushi, with some spring rolls for starters. Sure, gravy isn’t that far off soy sauce?

Gravy: not that great on spring rolls.

The spring rolls were pretty bad, but bearable and still vaguely enjoyable, and I was expecting much worse from the sushi. Gravy, fish, and avocado? Yum.

My kindly granddad decided to help me out and join in my food misery, trying some gravy on the sushi with me. Now, you might all think I’m rank for this, but it wasn’t actually that bad. And clearly, rankness runs in the family: my granddad liked it too. In his words: “It’s just a different kind of sauce, I guess.”

Thursday

Woke up early which is a shocker for me, and went straight for the Weetabix and OH MY was that a bad decision. The gravy turned them completely mushy and warm and it was straight up disgusting. Powered on through but I kept retching so breakfast was abandoned in favour of a much nicer and more morning-appropriate warm brown liquid: coffee.

’bout to vom xoxo

Went for Tuesday’s leftover chilli for lunch, and I’ve got to that stage of being beyond caring what brown-tinged food I’m eating because it all tastes like Bisto now. It’s like in The Inbetweeners when Will eats that bonsai tree because of peer pressure, except I’m the peer who pressured myself into this so I don’t even have anyone to blame. Balls.

Pizza for dinner, and this is the saddest one yet because it’s Dominos and instead of that gloriously addictive garlic and herb dip they do, I’ve got a sad little bowl of gravy granules and a kettle.

Sad!

I mean, it tasted fine but it’s the principle. No dip, bland pizza, sad Hannah.

Friday

Last day, last day. Time to pull out the big guns.

For reasons I will never understand, I decided that my breakfast should be a Granny Smith apple dipped in gravy.

This was, by far, my worst idea yet. My face says more than words ever could.

Retching

Sour apples and meaty gravy are two things that should never not ever be eaten together.

After recovering from the morning’s ordeal, it was on to leftover pizza for lunch. The pizza was a bit cold and hard, and the gravy didn’t make it any more appetising, but I don’t even care now I’m just powering on through. The end is nigh, and I can’t bloody wait.

LAST MEAL AND I’VE NEVER BEEN MORE RELIEVED

Went for a Chicken and Mushroom Pot Noodle as a bit of a treat, and really, it wasn’t bad at all. The gravy just made it more liquid-y, and no taste in the world is more overpowering that that bright yellow powder thing so really, I’m the winner here.

Moral of the story? Keep your gravy for your roasts (and drunk food chips) and let’s never speak of this again.