Your ViewsKeep 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! | Your e-Mails |
Trina
Lidl's Choco Softies Review |
Your piccie of a Lidl's Choco Softie has tormented me all week so I wended my way to Derby's Lidl's and fitted me up with said confection. What can I say? Well, 12 for 99p is excellent value although by Lidl standards they are flippin' expensive.
So, here's my thoughts? What are they? They are certainly not biscuits, nor cakes nor whatever.
And how should one eat them? I have the luxury of living alone so my eating technique (now scoffed 6 of 'em) is still in development. However, the choco shell is thin and tends to melt under your finger tips. It also splits in the manner of a Magnum so there is plenty of catching of cracked chocolate. The white fluffy bit gives the old tongue a work out (snickering, once more at the marketing idiot who named them Dickmans....) and the tiny wafer disk at the bottom is a lovely ending. The remaining 6 are in my fridge - I think they are probably at their best when served chilled.
As I am on a Weightwatcher's diet and the packet does not contain calorie or fat information I determined they were, to all intents and purposes, calorie and fat free. And that's my story when I get weighed tonight (and come home and scoff at least another).
Still does answer the question - what are they?
Trina
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Nicey replies: Trina,
Your pragmatic approach to calorie counting is an inspiration. |
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Barbara Walker
KitKat Review |
Hello Nicey and Team
I have been enjoying your site for some time now and it certainly takes the mind off things. Good news about Huntley & Palmers. As a Reading girl it brings nostalgic tears to the eye.
I recently took a British Airways flight in pursuit of the business your site helps me take my mind off, but not in swanky business class. BA have taken to offering a strange box of snacklike things in lieu of a meal – rather more akin to the packed lunches everyone ate within ten minutes down the M4 on the school coach trips… Along with possibly the smallest cake portion I’ve ever seen and something in a steamy plastic bag reminiscent of those towels things in Chinese restaurants was a very tiny KitKat indeed. I didn’t have a ruler on me, as that is probably one of the things they confiscate before you board these days, but it can’t have been more than 4cm long, but with two fingers for the sake of form. As you have probably gathered I find something profoundly disturbing about miniturism, especially where food is concerned, but ate it anyway, so sorry no photographic evidence. It sets the teeth on edge like really twee souvenir fairy things (I bet there were tons in Cornwall). If someone were to offer you a bit of their KitKat and that was all you got you would think them jolly mean.
And it tasted funny – rather a praliney taste rather like foreign chocolate that has been made with homogenised milk like Hershey Bars. Now what I want to know is whether this is because it had been manufactured in some sinister Nestle plant far from all that is proper and Rowntree, or does KitKat taste different at high altitudes or in a pressurised compartment? I gather tea is so foul on planes because water boils at a different temperature or something. They serve it pointedly after they can see you have eaten everything which could possibly be dunked as well. Has anyone else come across one of these midget KitKats (or other insultingly small airline biscuits?) Does anyone know where they are made? Or has anyone eaten a proper KitKat smuggled on to the plane and found an unusual taste? |
Nicey replies: Barbara,
It so happens I've written a bit in our book about aircraft food miniaturisation, in the section on Sitting Down. The thing about KitKats is that they are now made in all sorts of places, India, Czechoslovakia for example, by various parts of Nestlé so they could be some exotic ones. |
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Gianna Kaye |
Hi Nicey!
Hope all's well :)
On the subject of Iced Tea, I have to say that there is a world of difference between a lukewarm bottle of Lipton's and the Real Thing, which, when drunk on a REALLY hot day, is incredible. The best (and only) way of serving iced tea I discovered when on holiday in San Francisco and at a restaurant called 'Max's'.
Order it there and they will bring a teapot of freshly brewing tea to your table (along with the usual sugar), accompanied by a huge glass tumbler filled to the brim with ice (plus extra ice on the side!) and wedges of lemon and lime. The exciting thing is when you get to pour your freshly brewed tea over the ice and watch it melt instantaneously! Add sugar/ lemon/ice as you wish and you have yourself a really great drink! So - all you tea-drinkers out there; In the blistering summer, forget all that Lipton rubbish! Give real iced tea a chance! |
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Graham Nolan
Malted Milk Review |
Hi Nicey,
I came across a new (to me) packet of biscuits in Sainsbury yesterday. Elke's Cow Biscuits. They follow your standard malted milk biscuit formula and are therefore nice in limited quantities. They also have your standard malted milk biscuit drawbacks including the propensity to cling to your molars well after you have finished chewing. What this pack does give us compared to an archetypal malted milk pack is added humour. There are a number of cow-related puns modelled on the biscuits. For example the one I'm eating as I type has a picture of a cow and some bubbles and is subtitled Heifer-vescant. Sure, these aren't going to get you through a gig at the Comedy Store but they do enhance the biscuit-eating bonhomie in the workplace. Plus, the're a good ice-breaker in meetings - 'Want a Cow Biscuit?'.
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Nicey replies: I'm all in favour of innovation, but personally I'm still coming to terms with the cow and milk churn malted milk vs the classic big cow/little cow. I also saw some malted milks recently where the cow was just sketched on as an outline, which almost made me crash the shopping trolly.
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Matthew Child |
My Dad recently retired from Trading Standards, where he worked in the labsanalysing the various foodstuffs. Always one for telling me amusing, and often disgusting, tales of what they found he told me the tale of the 'Acid Juice'.
A complaint was received about the orange juice dispensed from several machines in the West Yorkshire area. It seems that the orange juice dissolved the plastic cups it was served in. At first it was assumed to be a joke, but they were obliged to investigate. Phone calls were made and a supply of the concentrate was obtain from one of the customers. It was mixed as per the instructions to the correct strength and poured into several vending machine cups. After 10 minutes they returned to the cups to see what happened. Nothing appeared to be amiss so one of the labs assistants picked up one of the cups only to have the rim come away in his hand leaving the cup behind, neatly severed at the surface level of the juice.
Having proved the OJ was indeed disolving the cups they later found out that there was excess amount of orange oil in the concentrate. Orange oil is often found in heavy duty cleaing fluids and boast superb cleaning properties. Imagine if it dissolve a plastic cup, what is it doing to your insides, Consider that next time you go for the 'healthy option' |
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