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 |
Kate and Mike |
Dear Nicey,
My friend and I are currently using your website for research for a uni IT project. We were most concerned as we couldn't work out if Weetabix is a biscuit or not?! My friend eats it dry with butter on... does this make it a biscuit? HELP! Many thanks,
Kate and Mike x |
Nicey replies: Kate and Mike,
Very much one for the biscuit Venn Diagram. There has always been a element of flirting between the two camps of breakfast cereals and and biscuits. The farley's rusk for example likes nothing better than a good dousing of milk and mashing up with a spoon whilst Nestle have the cookie crisp cereal which emulates small bite sized choc-chip cookies. I would happily place the Weetabix in the union of breakfast cereals and biscuits albeit way over on the cereal edge for the following reasons.
1) It somewhat troublesomely describes itself as a biscuit due no doubt to its form factor and little else
2) That's it really
Don't be drawn into those tied old arguments about what goes stale and how as these are all merely circumstantial evidence and not un-yeilding and absolute laws.
We once did a project at university where we left some horse manure under an ultraviolet lamp in a cupboard for a week then looked at it closely. I hope your project is at least as important.
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Alison Debenham |
Hi Nicey, Wifey and YMOS
Isn't this taking things just a little too far?
All the best
Alison
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Nicey replies: Very probably. It just adds yet another problem to your life, the foreboding and tension as your pack of 50 teapot drip catchers begins to run out and you realise that you may have to face up to unmanaged teapot drips once more until you can replenish your supply. |
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Chris Fawcett |
Dear Sir,
Having been informed by a colleague of your recent communications regarding the ‘is crispbread a biscuit?’ debate, not only do I stand by my argument that the English language defines it as being such, but the definition is also used within industry. The Competition Commission (an independent public body which conducts in-depth inquiries into mergers, markets and the regulation of the major regulated industries) describes a biscuit as follows. I do believe that such an authority should not be dismissed
Yours sincerely,
Chris |
Nicey replies: Hoisted by your own petard sir. First sentence "There is no agreed definition within the industry of what constitutes a biscuit.." , it then goes on somewhat awkwardly to describe proper biscuits like the Digestives as "sweetened products", having thrown its net to include your Ryvita. It hardly serves as a definition of a biscuit either, merely a few tentative suggestions for what may or may not be in a bona-fide definition if such as thing were to exist.
Which is why popular consensus rules hands down in these situations.
We shall hold a democratic poll and let the people decide.
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Susan Cook |
Can you help please?
A certain person in our office, during a conversation about top 5 biscuits, came up with the following "My favourite biscuit is a Ryvita!"
Please put us out of our misery, this has caused consternation in our office space, with people nearly coming to fisticuffs. Myself and other colleagues are of the opinion that the said item would clearly fall into the category of : cracker/crisp bread. Your expert knowledge, as Professor of Biscuits would be much appreciated.
Many thanks
Susan |
Nicey replies: This is just exactly the sort of misinformed, delusional and slack thinking that needs nipping in the bud. It's a crispbread of course. We shall not even grace it with a list of reasons why it very obviously is not a biscuit. |
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Kristen Rupp |
I'm writing to you as an American who has recently begun a love affair with tea and biscuits, to inform you that you are much to blame.
Although I was born and raised in the American Midwest, I've always been a bit of an Anglophile - eschewing action movies and MTV in favor of staying up late watching old BBC shows on public television.
If you have any American readers ask you where they can buy proper biscuits in the states, you should tell them to see if they have a store called "World Market" in their area. It's a chain of about 300 stores, and really the only part of the country they haven't spread to yet is the Northeast. (http://www.worldmarket.com/) They carry furniture and goods from all over the world, plus lots of tasty imported foods. I became a regular at our local World Market a year or so ago, when I discovered that they had an amazing selection of tasty European chocolate bars. I confess to being a complete Ritter Sport addict, especially the "butter cookie" and "milk chocolate hazelnut" varieties.
Then, this summer I moved into an apartment across the street from the store, and I began visiting much more frequently and trying a lot of new things. Well, really I only got as far as the biscuit aisle and have gotten hooked. I started with the Jaffa Cakes and Jammie Dodgers, but was still skeptical of the Digestive. Then I somehow stumbled upon an article about Custard Creams online a few months back, and ended up at your website.
I have always liked tea, although it is a bit sacreligious in the coffee-obsessed Pacific Northwest part of the country, where I live now. I have to confess though, that until recently I mostly drank herbal "tea", not realizing how good proper tea could be. Everyone I had ever known brewed their tea the same way - by plopping a couple tea bags into a pot and just letting it sit there forever, resulting in bitter, stewed tea. I have since learned the error of my ways (thanks to encouragement from your website and book) and now drink loads of proper tea (with milk and one sugar). I have even procured some PG Tips, which certainly is better than any American brands of tea I've tried. I've become such a tea fanatic I've even bought myself an electric kettle (brilliant! why doesn't everyone else have these?) and my friends and family think I'm crazy.
I've learned to love the digestive, of course. It's the perfect companion to tea! The selection at World Market is varied and unpredictable, but they always have plain and milk chocolate McVitie's digestives, as well as Crawford's Bourbons and Custard Creams (yummy), plus usually Penguins and Cadbury Fingers. Occasionally they will have Gingernuts, Fruit Shortcake, Garibaldis, McVitie's Chocolate Caramel, etc. I recently picked up a packet of Plain Chocolate digestives, which only make occasional appearances on the shelves. My favorite biscuit though has to be the Hob Nob. Until recently I had only tried the Milk Chocolate, but I spied the plain ones on the shelf the other day, and my are they delicious. I prefer to eat the less chocolatey-sweet biscuits at work, as too much sugar makes it hard to type straight.
I have to say that as much of a fan of Cadbury's chocolate I am, I don't like their biscuits. Too sugary for me, and not in a good way. Don't get me wrong, I like my sweets, but Cadbury's biscuits make me feel like I'm just eating spoonfuls of sugar.
This is turning into quite a long message, but I just have one more thing to add:
Regarding fruitcake in the States - I saw an expat reader of yours mention that she had noticed a certain negative attitute towards fruitcake over here. That is certainly true. Fruitcake is legendary for being an horrifically dense, overly sweet dessert that little old ladies bake and give away as Christmas gifts. The story goes that when you receive a fruitcake as a gift, you should not eat it, but rather try to pawn it off as a gift to someone else - or failing that, stick it in the back of the cupboard until next year, when you dust it off and try to give it away again. I don't know anyone that actually eats fruitcake, except for possibly some little old ladies. I may have tried some at my grandmother's house as a child, but I don't really remember. However, I did try some at a fancy tea party that I attended at a fancy hotel last Christmas, and found that it had a very strong brandy flavor, which does not appeal to me at all, and decided to avoid it in the future. Your rhapsodizing about the perfect fruitcake might make me reconsider, though, and attempt to bake my own this Christmas. Maybe.
That's all for now. Keep up the good work!
Yours faithfully,
Kristen |
Nicey replies: You seem to making very good progress towards a completely well balanced tea and biscuits outlook. The fruit cake will come in time. Ours is a very tasty and relatively light recipe not like those dark tarry masses that appear to have given it such a bad reputation in the US. I would have tough the Pacific North West is probably ideal fruit cake territory, providing it doesn't attract bears.
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