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 |
Keith O'Kane
Abernethy Review |
Dear Nicey and the Wife,
I was a bit surprised to read that Umami was frightened of the humble fig roll.
Surely there are much scarier biscuits to be afraid of, the happy face for example whose expressions always range from slightly sinister to downright evil.
Still, overcoming the fear must have been something of a personal triumph, so happy endings al round.
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Nicey replies: Well personally as I have mentioned in the past I had issues with Simmers Abernethy biscuits, that prevented me from buying them for years before I finally confronted them. I found their red and yellow packs a bit intimidating, so I have nothing but sympathy. Mind you just the other day in Sainsburys I was filled with the urge to thrust a pack of them in the hands of the mother and daughter who were almost coming to blows over a biscuit that would be both plain yet tasty. I assume as some form of self governing biscuit intake regime.
I toyed breifly with the idea of offering on the spot biscuit consultancy to all who appeared to need it but was distracted by box selection of Sainsbury's own organic biscuits, then the rest of team NCOTAASD turned up and ushered me to tills. |
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Harry Roberts |
Hi there
My name is Harry Roberts and i'm a big fan of the site. I was just wondering if there was a reason that you have not yet reviewed the Viennese whirl as a biscuit of the week?
I saw that you have reviewed the simple chocolate Viennese but, although it is in the same family of biscuit, i believe it is a different style altogether.
Please could you give this time honoured biscuit the recognition it deserves. Is it due to the fact that there is debate to whether it is a cake or a biscuit? I think maybe a vote or discussion could be in order!
Thank you for you time
Yours sincerely
Harry Roberts
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Nicey replies: Well Harry Roberts we'll put it to a poll. Without wanting to influence the outcome I would just like to mention that I really like them and they are made by Mr Kipling, and we all know what he makes. |
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Umami |
Fig rolls used to frighten me but last week at Carrefour Paris I decided on impulse to add a packet of Boland's of Ireland Fig Rolls to my cart, along with one of Crawford's Garibaldi and McVities Digestive. Yes, English biscuits in France but one do tire of all-butter 'grandmère biscuits eventually. The fig rolls, once we opened and took our first sceptical bite, was enjoyed with great enthusiasm; we had to restrain ourselves from finishing the entire pack at a go but this morning I scoffed the rest. It looks very much like the Jacobs version, maybe it's the same thing. The filling to biscuit ratio is good for me, we're getting some Fugola to compare later. |
Nicey replies: Bolands are a brand of Jacobs, being like Crawfords to McVities. We had a pack of those several years ago now and were rather stunned / appalled to see whale oil listed as an ingredient. |
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Gill Casey |
I think I may have hallucinated a tea room. After three days holiday recently in the mountains south of Brecon, where tea rooms seem to be very few and far between, I was desperate for a cream tea. Anyway I found myself slightly lost somewhere south of Talybont on Usk, having missed my turning but carrying on in a spirit of enquiry, as you do, and I came across a tea room tucked away in the countryside. And this was a proper tea room, mind, serving home-made scones and bara brith, loose leaf tea in pots, with nice bone china cups.
It was only afterwards that it occurred to me that it was too spookily perfect to be real. Had I stumbled across a fairy tea room that only appears once every seven years, or maybe it was a tea room of requirement that only appears to people desperate for a cream tea and a sit down. I wondered if anyone else may have encountered it in other parts of the world?
Kind regards
Gill |
Nicey replies: Yes I have some old reconnaissance photos of that area
We had a tea tour there some years back now and came across a tea place not far from CrickHowell in the village of Llangenny but this is east of Tal-y-bont so maybe the enchanted tea room is prone to manifesting itself in different locations. |
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Hiromi Miura
Leafy Pie and Green Tea Pocky Review |
Dear Nicey,Wifey and YMOS
11th November, it is "Pepero Day" in Korea.
So now, "Pepero Day season ". The "Pepero" is a so popular Korean biscuit ,which has been manufactured by Lotte since 1983 in Korea. It is a thin biscuit stick dipped in chocolate. I guess many people may think that the "Pepero" is similar to Japanese "Pocky" (French Mikado). But, sad to say, it appears that there is no relationship between them.
By the way, on this "Pepero Day", many Korean enjoy giving "Pepero" biscuits to their beloved boyfriends/girlfriend, cherished family members, close friends and bosses, and scoffing together.
Allegedly, the "Pepero Day" began 11th November in 1994 when some Korean girl students sent "Pepero" biscuits to one another, hoping to become slim ladies like thin "Pepero" sticks.
11th November, or 11/11 consisting of QUADRUPLE 1 seems to have been specially selected by those Korean girls, as the thin, slim stick shaped like a figure 1. And their gift exchanging seems to have spread all over the country.
Some says that the excitement to the day has been more than Valentine Day in recent years in Korea.
I have no ideas if this happy event is a splendid fiction created by wise Lotte or not. However, I think it is fantastic that many Korean automatically show up on BISCUIT sections in their local supermarkets and corner shops for "Pepero" biscuits, as the "Pepero Day" approaches, every year.
We can actually see many biscuits manufactured by NOT Lotte but other confectioneries sold as gifts for the day, along with "Pepero" biscuits by Lotte. And I want to extend a hearty welcome to such a stretch because, I expect that Korean will start enjoying even more any type of biscuits
in the world as well as "Pepero" biscuit at the very day of "Pepero Day", and eventually the lovely "Pepero Day" will be reborn as even lovelier "Korean Biscuit Day"(KBD) in the future.
Now, "Pepero" has three flavours including chocolate, cocoa biscuit & chocolate and chocolate & almond. Besides, a "Nude-Pepero" line is available in two flavours of chocolate and lemon cheese.
"Nude-Pepero" is a salt-less pretzel stick ZERO percent enrobed in coating. Instead it has some centre filling with a bit seductive naming.
I have a plan to gobble some "Pepero" biscuits with my husband ,11th November this year.
By the way, I read about Bourbon biscuits recalled because of possiblity of contamination of some biscuits by small pieces of metal wire in your "Nice News". I hope things will calm down, soon.
And I felt glad that those Korean girls had chosen NOT thin metallic wires but Pepero biscuits
for their gifts as something slim and thin in 1994.
Thank you for reading.
Hiromi Miura (Seoul Korea). |
Nicey replies: Hello Hiromi,
Once again you've alerted us to yet another blatant copy of somebody else's biscuit by the Koreans. They might not have anything to do with Pocky directly but everything about them is borrowed from Glico's Pocky something I'm even more certain of since receiving your training shipments of Japanese biscuits. Still it must be nice for you and your husband to find such a familiar biscuit in your new home and to have a whole day devoted to it.
I think that the unless they change the date it will probably not spread too far outside of Korea, as on that date we remember those who died in wars and conflicts especially the WWI and WWII as it coincides with the end of WWI. No doubt the Koreans have such a reflective time too, when we are probably doing something frivolous possibly involving biscuits, such is the nature of global biscuit celebrations and human strife. |
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