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 |
Mark Greenwood |
Nicey,
I'm new to your site but reading Jim Fussel's question about the colour of the mug affecting the quality of the tea reminded me of an experiment I did quite some time ago, before I had a life, to investigate this very phenomenon.
Being a true scientist, I didn't keep any notes so what follows is from memory. Basically I reasoned that water temperature is crucial to the proper brewing of tea so if the colour of the mug had an effect on the water temperature then this might be a possible explanation for the "dark mug
makes bad tea" phenomenon. As I'm sure we all know from school physics, a dark body (or mug) will radiate heat better than a light coloured mug (the so-called 'black body radiation'). So when we pour boiling water into a mug, it will cool down faster if that mug is darkly coloured. To prove this I pointed an infra-red thermometer at the outside of a white mug and a black mug while I brewed some tea. After a regulation brewing period the thermometer measured that much more heat was being given off by the black mug. Investigation of the water temperature inside the mug revealed that the water in the black mug was about 3 degrees cooler than the water in the white mug. So my theory was correct - the black mug allowed the water to cool down faster. Whether this actually makes any difference to the quality of the tea I have no idea, but it sure sounds plausible. As I recall, further investigation was hampered by the fact that I now had two mugs of tea in front of me and therefore it was necessary to go and have two sit downs, by which time the urge for discovery had left me.
Mark |
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Dan Pawley
McVitie's Lyles Creams Review |
Evening,
I read on your site about your fondness for the Lyons logo, and thought you may be interested in the story behind it. As with so many things, it's all to do with the Romans. Although they were very good at building straight roads and conquering and stuff, they were rather backward when it came to agriculture. They believed that if you were keeping bees and lost your swarm, all you had to do was kill some sort of large animal (usually a bullock) and leave it for a bit, and then a new swarm of bees would generate inside it's rotting carcass. You can read the whole story in Virgil's fourth Georgic. If you want to.
tata
dan
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Nicey replies: Dan,
I thought you were going to tell me it was from the Bible again, which of course we know. Most people who like to tell us its from the Bible never actually make it to the review where we mention that, before firing off an email about Samson and the book of Judges.
So its good hear a little more constructive thoughts on why you should expect to get Honey from lions. The 'Bible emails' all completely neglect the fact that bees do by and large and almost without exception prefer hollows in trees to rotting animal carcasses as a place to build a hive. The whole Winnie the Pooh thing would have been a lot more grisly if this where not so.
I suppose this is a matter of faith by its very nature. For Christians if the Bible says you get honey from lions then you do. No doubt there are strong links between the two.
Perhaps some of our South African readers would care to tell us in bee hives in dead lions is something known about in their country. |
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Giles Strachan |
Tea was never meant tobe made with Teabags. The best biscuit tea is Earl Gray. Simply place a pinch of the tea leaves in a seive, place the seive over the mug and add boiling water. The tea should be quite weak and have NO milk and NO sugar which are the tea equivelants of McDonalds and Burger King (no flavour and bad for you).
Oh yes, a pinch is between the thumb and forefinger and should be about 6 leaves.
The Pedantic Earl Grey Drinker
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Nicey replies: Do you like tea or do like Bergamot oil? I like tea with milk, I'm not keen on after-shave, another use for Bergamot oil, although I did used to know somebody who used to drink aftershave. The chap in question would be sent aftershave by his Aunties who didn't realise that he handn't really shaven for about 4 years. He used to drink he stuff with tonic water, as its mostly alcohol.
Dispite his hairy appearence some women found him strangely aluring, depending on what he had drunk and how recently he had burped. |
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Paul Cook
Botham's Tea, Shah Ginger and Ginger Choc Chip biscuits Review |
I suspect the recipe may have been obtained from the late MacTavish AlMacToum whose family were also responsible for the introduction of haggis to Iran in the late 18th Century. The creatures perished unfortunately as their small legs sank into the sand dunes in a way not generally encountered in the Highlands.
The biscuits were baked by the cook at Castle MacToum as a celebration of the birth of MacTavish's first son, who bore the family traits of red hair coupled with an Arabic skin tone, hence the name Ginger Shah. |
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Tim Porter |
Dear Nicey,
We have been developing a fantastic new biscuit game. The concept is quite simple – you just have to imagine what your biscuit persona might be. My friend Tracy thinks her persona would be a Wagon Wheel – whilst a somewhat ample and rather substantial biscuit it is packed full of delightful sweet gooey things and covered in a layer of rather enticing chocolate! A word of warning though – if the Wagon Wheel, whilst popular with a predominantly male audience, is too chilled, there is a tendency for the chocolate to flake off onto one’s rather nice shag pile!
Whilst I would love my persona to be something as glamorous and extrovert as the wonderful Boaster, delighted upon by housewives around the globe, the reality is probably something more akin to the Lincoln!
Nicey – if you were a biscuit what do you think you would be?
Tim Porter
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Nicey replies: I would be a Garibaldi, with small gaps in my crust revealing my inner contents of flat currants, oh and the occasional missing corner. How am I doing? |
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