Your Views

Keep your e-mails pouring in, it's good to know that there are lots of you out there with views and opinions.

To help you work out what is what, are now little icons to help you see biscuit related themes. And now you can see at a glance which are the most contested subjects via this graph (requires Flash 6.0 plugin).

Please keep your mails coming in to nicey@nicecupofteaandasitdown.com

If you like, you can use this search thingy to find stuff that matches with any of the icons you pick, or use the fantastic free text search, Yay!

Type some key words here to search the feedback section

Your e-Mails

Steve	Hi, I just read your bit in the book about tea in SF and fully sympathise. Was wondering if you have tried tea left in a flask with milk and tea bags for many hours (5?). You would imagine it would come out discustingly stewed, wouldn't you. But it comes out tasting like Chai which was quite a shock for me when my brother introduced it to me a month or two ago, because it reminded me of being in india, where the tea is deliciously sweet and tasty. I thought it was the cloves and other jazz they put in that made it so tasty but now i know its just the fact that its been left to stew for so long (maybe the milk sweetens and turns into something like condensed milk). Anyways, I've laughed a lot in the last 10 mins reading your book in the toilet of my friends about biscuits, especially the bit about Wagon Wheels, which when I was younger always viewed with disdain because of the soggy biscuit and poor quality ingredients, but then later in life wisened up and learnt to enjoy it as a whole! happy chai/tea/etc drinking Steve.
	Nicey replies: I heard that in Indian road side truck stops they rate the tea in kilometers depending on how far you have been and how stewed up the tea is, with 500K tea being the thickest. Personally I'm not consumed with a burning desire to try either tea Chai / Tea made with condensed milk / tea that has been stewed in any way, but I'll defend your right to do so if it comes down to that. Lets end by thinking of a hypothetical situation in which that might happen.
Mike Armitage	Hello Nicey ,Wifey and the rest of the team. I've just come back from a cycling holiday in Oakham, Rutland. I visited the local market while I was there and found a specialist Tea stall. ( Must be because the Oakham School is quite posh!) There were 3 varieties of Earl Grey tea on this stall! I bought some loose tea, a tea caddy and a "Dauerfilter" for making loose tea directly in the cup. Its a permanent filter and is "Auch ideal zum Aufbruhen von kaffee" I don't remember which variety of Earl grey tea I bought because the stall owner put it directly in my new caddy but it has a very strong scent of bergamot and it quite delicious. I have been amazed by people far and wide who admit to having seen and enjoyed your site or have read your book. Mike Armitage
	Nicey replies: We keep passing through Rutland, and Oakham on our way to and from other places. In fact we tried to find somewhere to camp up there two weeks ago but wound up in Derbyshire. If we had of made it to Rutland we would have been cycling round there too.. Just got back from a splendid bike ride this afternoon with both younger members of staff and Nanny Nicey. All off road in the hills between Saffron Walden and Royston. We took half a home made fruit cake and a flask of tea. We pop two teabags in the flask when we are ready to make the tea, and this works very well indeed.
Helen Rees	Dear Nicey, When we were kids, we spent every  Sunday in the summertime  at Llangennith beach on the Gower (South Wales). My mothers idea of a picnic was a whole roast chicken, a pressure cooker of potatoes and veg taken straight off the top of the cooker and put into the boot of the car not to be opened until we were ready to eat and an enormous red thermos full of gravy. This would be eaten  in the field above the beach obviously for fear of sand. The adults wouldn't actually venture onto the beach at all in fact. There were always warm hard boiled eggs too and angel cake and pink wafers. We had a  little camping gaz stove and a kettle for tea. It would take all afternoon to boil. My Gran (bless her) would sit there on her deck chair all day in her Sunday Best Coat and Chapel hat despite the blistering heat (1976 if you're wondering - we might be the wettest place in Britain now but we did have sun once I'm certain).   Ps just eaten a custard (or iced) slice. Is that soggy cream cracker on the bottom? Could they go in the venn diagram between crackers and cakes? Loved the book. Helen
	Nicey replies: Splendid we now have beans, soup and gravy as Thermos contents, but I'm willing to accept weirder ones, porridge perhaps? As for the bases of Custard slices I had always assumed that this was puff pastry that had been transformed by the immense humidity and pressure exerted by an inch and a quarter of custard, into a strange slighty glassy substance. Perhaps custard slices are a model of some geological processes such as the laying down of sedimentary rocks, or the earth's lithosphere.
Emma Forsdick	Nicey, Warmed by the impending British summer treats of Wimbledon tennis and hose pipe bans, my sister and I decided to take our first Picnic of the year over to Kew Gardens yesterday. No sooner had we sat down on our Iceland carrier bags and started on the sarnies than we felt the portentous first spots of rain. Being British and therefore prepared for this eventuality – our picnic was packed up within 30 seconds and we made our way to one of the greenhouses to take shelter just before torrents of Biblical proportions began. I soon become astounded by the brilliance of the average Sunday picnicker. Everybody grabbed a spot to sit down and out came Sunday papers, cushions, and an array of Tupperware clad food stuffs. Being similarly equipped ourselves; I took out my Funday Times and our packet of Crunch Creams. We were passing a pleasant few minutes when our neighbour interrupted us to ask if he might swap some tea from his thermos for a few of our crunch creams. Of course we obliged – and I had one of my most enjoyable cups of tea ever experienced, as I sat in the tropical heat of the greenhouse, listening to the torrents of rain on the glass, drinking a well brewed cuppa, whilst discussing the joys of rambling with an elderly couple from Surbiton. Long may British Summertime reign – and with it Generous Thermos glad ramblers!
	Nicey replies: We had a nice cup of tea and a sit down in the Cambridge Botanic gardens about two weeks ago, again on a rainy day. We were driven out of the glasshouses due to the younger members of staff deciding to be scared of the carnivorous plants.
Highland coo	As a keen mountain climber and hill walker i always carry with me my trusty thermos of tea with a seperate bottle of milk as otherwise the milk tastes like that manky UHT stuff one finds in hotels. Naturally i cary some small snack to keep my energy up, normally some shortbread or "digger biscuits" (family recipe, 'nuff said tho when it's basiclaly oats and golden syrup). However, recently i was tihnking of taking a trip further afield with som friends, notably the Andes in South America or parhaps the Alps depending on funds, when to my horror i learnt something that should put every tea drinker from ever going to anywhere of notable altitude. A physics frined of mine told me that according to kinetic theory as altitude increases, pressure decreases so the temperature needed to boil water decreases. This doesn't sound too bad, until you realise that at the top of the Alps water boils at 80 degrees Centigrade or at the top of Everest it is a lukewarm 60 degrees. So no tea to stave hypothermia off and, unfortunately, no trip. It does make you wonder how Edmund Hillary got to the top of Everest tho. In the meantime, Explorers BEWARE, tea at altitude is lacking in taste and heat.
	Nicey replies: The highest I've made tea is about 1800M above sea level. It works well enough at that altitude providing one doesn't use the local tea bags.
	More >>