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Crispin Dry
Foxs Party Rings Review |
Nicey
I was delighted to see your review of Fox's Party Rings, a staple of birthday parties in my youth. My brother and I are sure we remember consuming 'Iced Bears' on several occasions in the late 1980s. These were very similar to party rings, differing only in that they were manufactured in the shape of bears. Does anyone else remember these?
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Matt Birtles
Digestive Review |
Greetings,
I may have missed something but what exactly are the digestive credentials of the digestive biscuit? I've just eaten the best part of a (small) packet and I feel digestively degraded if anything. Outrageous!
Kent |
| Nicey replies: It was meant to be the relatively large amount of baking soda used in them. Being a carbonate salt it acts as an antacid. However, it is broken down by heat so I've always thought it unlikely that eating Digestives would cure indigestion. |
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Trevor Taylor
Malted Milk Review |
Nicey
On your site you refer to the chocolate covered malted (Sports) biscuit as essentially a biscuit form of the Malteser. You may not know that malted biscuits were in fact health foods in late Victorian times and indeed the Malteser was such a health food, the chocolate adding sugar as well as taste as a dietary supplement for the avoidance of tuberculosis.
Other products which arose at this time include Ovaltine (and later Complan). Before Lucosade was a sport drink it also was a "tonic", an additional form of dietary glucose for the recuperative patient.
Perhaps we should consider the role of cakes, biscuits and tea in the development of health care, not least in stress reduction, as a topic on your site.
As an aside, for many years my wife called me Ovaltine because, like the malted drink, I was often drunk at bedtime. |
| Nicey replies: Well, yes I was aware of most of those. Last week I was looking into Bath Olivers which were invented as food for those visiting Bath in the eighteenth century, containing as they do the wonder remedy of the age, hops. |
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| PJ Chowdhury |
Hi
Great site- good fun to read!
My Canadian (and now ex) girlfriend accused tea drinkers of being rather camp. Of course – I took offence to this. It seems our overseas cousins do not realise that the Great British empire was built by a nation of tea drinkers! So many places wouldn’t know where they were without the English national bevvy! (q.v. “Asterix In Britain”) |
| Nicey replies: I'm sure she was only trying to get her own back for the Lumberjack song. |
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| Matthew Revell |
Howdy Nicey,
Just wondering if anyone knows why those crazy Americans use the word "graham" when referring to digestive biscuits.
Matt. |
| Nicey replies: Graham crackers, precede the Digestive by some 100 years and were invented by Sylvester Graham a Presbyterian minister in 1829. He was an early advocate of health food and invented his own coarsely ground wheat flour for its high fiber content. The flour nicknamed "graham flour" after Minister Graham, is main ingredient in Graham Crackers. |
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