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 |
Paul Darken |
Hi there,
You're either a dunker or your not. I don't like dunking my biscuit in my tea and prefer to eat them separately. My wife, however, loves to dunk.
Her latest trick is to sit down with a nice cup of tea and a Penguin (Puffins from Asda are better though) and bite off opposing corners of the biscuit until the chocolate flavouring (or the white or orange stuff depending on the flavour you choose) shows through. Now here's the tricky bit... dip one of the bitten off corners into the tea and suck on the opposite corner until the tea comes through. Your mouth explodes with a multitude of flavours. It could be minty tea or orange tea or chocolatey tea. You have to be quick now though and stuff the whole biscuit in your mouth before it collapses in the tea (ruining an otherwise great sit down with a nice cup of tea). It may take a few cups of tea and several sit downs to get it right but it's worth it. My wife has shown half the staff at the hospital in Liverpool that she works in how to do this and regularly you'll see a Doctor or nurse with chocolate down their front because they weren't quick enough to eat the biscuit before it collapsed!
Great site... and we all love a sit down with a nice cup of tea... it's just that some prefer to dunk. |
Nicey replies: Yes this is the British version of the Australian Tim-Tam slam, popularised by aussie songstress Natalie Imbruglia. |
| |
Patrick Rooney
Marie Review |
Hi Nicey,
Thought I'd just drop you a note to tell you about a great little bikkie annecdote that I was recently told by a work collegue. We were all sitting down to cups of tea instead of the usual formal team meeting. I had read the Rich Tea review and it got me thinking about how I used to like them when I was a small tacker - the Australian ones have raisins in them - so I'd dashed down to Clancy's and bought a packet. Unfortunately the old nostagia thing caught me out again - they were very dissapointing - my suspicions should have been raised by the $1.62 price tag. I subsequently had the humiliating experience of failing to peddle them around the office for free.
Anyway, though I know that story is riveting enough but it wasn't the one I was going to mention. We didn't end up getting much work done but we were having a broad back-to-basics type discussion about some very in-depth topics including some stuff along the lines of "how much do people really like biscuits and who are they". One of my team mates is from Bangladesh and while she was saying that she can't really get too fired up about any kind of bikkie - even chocolatey ones aparently - she claims that her husband is quite the opposite and will readily eat several packets at a sitting. He likes to recall times in his late teenage years when his passion for Marie biscuits led him to cycle to India once a week (aparently Maries are unavailable in Bangladesh). Even though the border between the countries might have been a matter of only 10 ks or so, I still think the story is a terrific little heart warmer about grass-roots biscuit committment. Although, aparently the said husband doesn't bother much with Maries these days, even though they are available here, the dazzling array of contemporary Australian sit-down fare eclipses those younger days.
Regards
Patrick
PS: Thanks for the recent work, it's all nice. |
| |
Brian Barratt |
Hello Nicey,
During my boyhood in Newark (-on-Trent) (is there another one, then?), the ladypersons of the family used to make Grantham Gingerbread biscuits. The were delicious, all crisp on the outside and sometimes just a bit gooey on the inside, with bubbles in them. They had a Secret Ingredient, obviously. And they were yellow. That was 50-60 years ago. I was just thinking (as one does, you know) -- I haven't seen or heard of Granthem Gingerbread biscuits since then, during all the years, in four or five countries, through thick and thin. Do you/does Wifey/does anybody know them, or the recipe?
Greety things be unto you
Brian
|
Nicey replies: I've not heard of them, they sound very nice indeed so it would be good if we could find them. Maybe they were in some axis of power with the nearby Lincoln biscuit, and a dispute over the secret ingredient caused them to be sidelined. Is there anybody in the East Midlands who has heard of them?? |
| |
Brian Barratt |
Hello Nicey!
Oh dear me, you've twinged my conscience. We had our annual Hard Rubbish Collection, by Monash City Council, only a week ago. Being a procrastinator as well as a nice old gentleman, I haven't thrown out any of that sort of rubbish for about 20 years.
I scoured the junk room, nay, I almost emptied the junk room. I scoured the kitchen cupboards, and threw out about 15 old biscuit tins, including a most beautiful once-silvery one sent to me (full of the most delicious German spicy biscuits on edible rice paper) by a company in Nuremberg, when I worked in Zambia.
All this stuff was put out on what we call the nature strip (= grass verge, in England) the week before the collection. I watched as the kerb-crawlers came round, picking over the treasures. Two by two, all but two of those old tins were taken. Isn't it nice to think that they have not been orphaned, but are now in happy foster-homes?
Brian
|
| |
Eleanor Oguma |
Most gratified to find your site and the fig roll special today, the day when I discovered that my local foreign food shop here in Niigata now sells Lyons' fig rolls.
On the Arnotts of Australia theme, in addition to Tim-Tams (rather nice, but I still prefer the Penguin), Arnotts do a v.nice chocolate-covered mint-cream-on-Penguin/Tim-Tam-type base biscuit. Unfortunately they don't tend to travel well in the post, and get stuck together. Surely there's a market for biscuit coolers for sending chocolate biscuits in the post to those of us living in foreign climes? |
Nicey replies: Woo, we've not had an email fro Japan before. Do you think you could persuade the locals to include biscuits in the tea ceremony, I'm sure they would approve. |
| |
|
|
|