|
Jamie Kirk
Tim Tam vs Penguin Review |
Dear Nicey,
I came across your excellent website while searching for somewhere to buy Penguin bikkies in Austin TX where I have lived for 10 years now. While the USA has looked after me well and I enjoy living here, it is not reboun for its abundance of excellent bikkies. In fact most of the US varieties are pretty revolting. You have already, quite rightly, poured scorn on the shocking Oreo cookie elsewhere on your website. Of course here in the USA a biscuit is a scone and a cookie is a biscuit, its all very confusing.
Anyway, getting to the point - I read your review of the Tim Tam with interest, so I decided to try and find them here as I wanted to have a go at the Tim Tam Slam. I found out they are available at World Market, which is a chain here in the US that sells food and furniture from all around the globe. They are called Arnotts Originals, Arnotts Double Coated and Arnotts Chewy Caramel. So any British or Australian ex-pats out there who need a Penguin/Tim Tam fix, you know where to go.
According to Wikipedia (www.wikipedia.org) Arnotts themselves prefer to call the Tim Tam Slam, the Tim Tam Suck.
Jamie Kirk. |
Nicey replies: Jamie,
Thanks for that useful info. Probably most useful to Australians who find them selves not in Australia as they are prone to do. They get a bit animated when the subject of Tim Tams comes up so its best and safest to take a couple of steps back and let them get on with it. Those three varieties are the core of the range. I liked the double-coats.
Still fingers crossed you might come across some Penguins too. |
| |
Sue Northcott
Maryland Specials Raisin, Oat, Choc Chunk and Maple Syryp Cookies Review |
Nicey,
I'd really like to put Chris Rayment off from any interference with sheep. Particularly those friendly seeming woolly creatures who hang around at the little car park at the Bwlch on the A4061 between Treorchy and the Afan Valley. They are quite partial to a nice cup of tea and a sit down, preferably in the car of some passing tourist who has stopped to admire the view and left the doors open for a second. They are also fond of ice cream. There's usually an ice cream van on the site. I think the sheep have been trained to snatch cones as a marketing ploy which makes the visitors buy twice as much in order to quiet the screaming kids.
(I think you need a sheep icon, but that could just be my cultural leanings.)
Sue Northcott
P.S. I'm quite partial to Gabriel Oak, but wouldn't want him to come at me with a knitting needle. BTW, I think it was clover that made the sheep bloat |
Nicey replies: Yes the Bwlch ice cream eating sheep are are indeed one of South Wales' most spectacular tourist attractions. I think we stopped there once as a child and then after that learnt our lesson and would simply drive past slowly, laughing at people being set upon by marauding sheep. I found this photo on flickr. Aren't these the same sheep that have learnt to cross cattle grids by laying down and rolling across them? |
| |
Amabel Thornton
Bourbon Review |
Hello Nicey, I recently found your site whilst looking for information about Crawford's Bourbons which, in my mind, are the only Bourbons worth eating. I was most disappointed as a teenager to discover that they were slowly but surely disappearing from supermarket shelves to be replaced by inferior "own-make" versions. After this awful state of affairs had spread across all the local supermerkets I made do with the occasional sightings of the original and best Bourbons in hotel rooms across the country where they lived on in handy 3 biscuit packs, nearly jumping for joy everytime the biscuit gods smiled on me and left me a packet in my room.
So imagine my complete and utter delight when browsing the shelves of the office shop last month I spotted packets of Crawford's Bourbons adorning said shelves. I immediately grabbed a packet (and paid for them, am not a theif you know!) and rushed back to my desk with a cup of Earl Grey tea. I had every intention of making them last at least a week, but they were all gone in less than an hour. An hour of chocolatey biscuit heaven. I have since bought further packets which have managed to last at least a day, and have asked the nice lady in the shop to make sure they keeping stocking them for as long as they are still being made.
Yours in chocolatey heaven
Amz |
Nicey replies: The Travel Inn in Guildford was particularly replete with Crawford's 3 packs of Bourbons as this photo I took at the time reveals.
The YMOS and I were guilty of raiding a few more packs off the maids trolley too. |
| |
Chris Rayment
Maryland Specials Raisin, Oat, Choc Chunk and Maple Syryp Cookies Review |
Yes Nicey, you’re right! I did Far from the Madding Crowd for ‘O’ level so we watched the film and the sheep poking incident left a lasting impression, I’ve always felt secure in the knowledge that if ever I found a distressed sheep whilst out on a ramble I’d know what to do to relieve it’s distress.
Bringing the topic back to tea and sit downs, I also remember an episode of Follyfoot where a horse with colic was brought to its feet by a hot beverage from a Thermos (I believe it might have been coffee) being poured into its ear!
One should never dismiss the power of hot beverages in a rustic setting.
Chris Rayment |
Nicey replies: Oh yes the invigorating hot drink in the ear, I wonder if it works on lions too.
Mind you don't go upsetting any slumbering big boned sheep next time you are out for a walk. |
| |
Andy Donovan
Maryland Specials Raisin, Oat, Choc Chunk and Maple Syryp Cookies Review |
Dear Nicey et al,
A little off the topic of tea or biscuits (but kind of on the topic of sit-downs) I was reading your reply to Chris Rayment's message and was reminded of how the yoghurt eating 'real women' are so surprised that the yoghurt 'tastes just like a desert'. I always thought it was a desert, and so was never that taken aback that it tasted like one. Maybe their judgement was clouded by their bloatedness.
Also, a tip for the Senokot lady - it's easier to digest food when you don't keep it in your handbag.
|
Nicey replies: They should be pleased that they are able to sort themselves using puddings. I'm sure there was a scene in 'Far from the madding crowd' when the sheep had eaten something that made them all puff up like balloons. This made them very unwell indeed and they were scattered around the field with their legs in the air. I think Alan Bates had to poke a knitting needle in them to deflate them. I'm certain I'm not making this up. |
| |