NiceCupOfTeaAndASitDown.com
Mission Statement
About
About our book

Buy our book as
Classy Hardback

Cuddly Paperback
Mailing list
Newsletters
Nice NEWS
14/10/2008
Biscuit of the week
Club Milk
Your feedback
Pauline Wilson
Search feedback
The Wife says
14/12/2007
Fig Fest
Biscuit quiz
Your Reviews
Missing in action
What the polls said
Prawnzilla
Giant Bee
Underpant toast
Apocalypse Bunny
Giant Marmots
The Duck
We are hosted by Precedence Technologies Internet Services
In Association with Amazon.co.uk
HomeForCakeTeaAndBiscuits

Your Views

Keep 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!
Chocolate Cake Fruit Pink Wafers World of Biscuits The French Cork Hat - Australia Kiwi - Kiwis
Rocket Science Jammie Dodger Fig rolls Jam Smells like biscuits Jaffa cakes Biscuit tin Tea
Seek you the Grail Cheese please Canada Personal mug Superstitions Holidays Vending machines Tea cosy
Dunking Butter Aeroplanes Kettles Toast Picnics Spoons Weapons
Custard Tea in the Movies Ireland Rest In Peace Japanese Black Thunder
Type some key words here to search the feedback section
 

Your e-Mails

Hiromi Miura
World of BiscuitsJamJaffa cakesJapanese Black Thunder


Polish Jaffa Cakes Multireview Review
Nicey replies: Hiromi,

Glad to see that you have settled down in Korea and are busily finding new biscuits. As you point out not only are those pies not big but they don't appear to be pies either. We are very lucky to have your Japanese view of Korean biscuits based on your working knowledge of British biscuits. I feel that one day there might come to pass a course of events that would see you at least saving the world using your specialised knowledge that is a Japanese view of Korean biscuits based on your working knowledge of British biscuits.

The smashing orangey bit in the middle of the jaffa cake to give it its full technical name is as you suspect actually jam. Industrial jam at that. Which means that the inclusion of the Jaffa Cake in the new edition of the Oxford English Dictionary with the definition as

a sponge biscuit with an orange-flavoured jelly filling and chocolate topping
is wrong on two counts and very obviously throws doubt on the validity of every other piece of information held in it.

As for Wifey she gave her left arm today, as she gave blood. She tells me she had a cup of tea afterwards and three Crawfords Gingernuts, although Digestives and Custard Creams were also on offer.


Philip Neaves
TeaTea cosyKettlesSpoons
Nicey replies: Philip,

Whilst I'm very pleased to use at least four of our tea icons to go along with your mail, I would urge restraint on your part and not to descend into full blown tea fascism. A live and let live attitude is the enlightened path unless of course you are having to drink somebody else's ropey tea, then its all right to have a go especially if you are having to pay for it.

One pound forty on the P&O Dover Calais ferry for half a cup of warm water drizzled over a one cup bag with a small plastic pot of milk, now that's something to get upset about. These vessels are now effectively the very edge of British tea culture. Leaving our shores they are the last chance for a cuppa in a place that should recognise the significance of such a thing. They are also a welcoming sight for the weary travelling Brit and should be a stronghold and embodiment of mass tea provision, in a way that we can be both grateful for and proud of.

Of dear you appear to have set me off on one now.


Neil Simmons


McVities Milk Chocolate Digestive Review
Nicey replies: Neil,

You are basically compounding the recent history of the McVities Chocolate Digestive into one issue. The Homewheat branding was dropped a bit over two years ago as McVities sought to refocus on the McVities name after the nasty dabbling with MacDonaldsesque 'McV' of 2002. So this was really an exercise in re-branding and fitted in well with the planned diversification of the Digestive. Indeed just the other week we bought some new McVities Yog Fruit digestives, topped with a sort of white substance and bearing little clumps of squashed fruit matter. This would have been un-thinkable five years ago, but now seems somewhat inevitable.

The biscuit too has changed a good deal in that time loosing lots of its salt content and its payload of hydrogenated fat. With the best will in the world it can't be said that the biscuits of yore are at all like today's, such is the price of progress.


Simon Sinclair
CakeFruit
Nicey replies: Hello Simon,

I'm very pleased to hear that you have built your own NCOTAASD fruit cake with some extra custom build to order features. Its also terrific news that you took it camping too. Wifey and I are filled with warm fuzzy cake, tea and sitting on the floor thoughts.

I think I once detected in an American sit-com a sideways jibe at the British and fruitcake, and just put it down to ignorance of the good things in life. I think that fruitcakes really became firmly established in the Victorian era. This was also around the time that baking powder and self raising flour came on the scene. Most recipes prior to that time are for fruited breads raised with yeast. So it would seem that the first British colonists had pre-dated this wave of Victorian baking. The emigrating Scots and the Irish were probably America's best hope of getting some decent fruitcake know how after that.

Certainly sounds like a subject worthy of further investigation.


Sara Tumalty
Cork Hat - AustraliaFig rollsJaffa cakesCanada
Nicey replies: Thank you Sara,

You are very gracious. I have to say I didn't realise that Jason was actually interviewing me this morning but then I was a bit out of it as the Wife left in the middle of the night (to go on a girls weekend to Poland (she has strict instructions to bring back exotic Polish Jaffa Cakes) ) and a car alarm woke me up twice after that. Then just before waking I was having a strange dream where the girl from Big Brother who was the actress who pretended to be Australian was pinching a variety of sandwich cream biscuits from a conference room which was sited in the middle of a very busy road here in Cambridge. I think one of the biscuits might have been a form of Canadian Maple syrup biscuit, judging by the colour of its cream. I however didn't mind as I was only on my second best bicycle.

Have a nice sensible Friday and a lovely weekend.

Nicey