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 |
Ben Harding
Iced Gems Review |
Hi nicey & wifey
We been greatly interested in the "die hard with a biscuit" scenario, and it has been much discussed. We suspect that whilst being useless as a weapon, garibaldi slabs would make good substitutes for Kevlar, when used in body armour vests... However, on the offensive, we favour firstly scattering a few packs of iced gems on the floor... Mr Willis invariably fights barefooted, we believe, and the tiny spikes pressing into his feet would undoubtably slow him up. We favour the McVities ginger nut for the coup de
gras as it is just the hardest on the block.
Meanwhile my colleague is just about to bring down a nice cuppa, and I am hoping that I don't get the black mug. (Stay away from the dark side, my son)
Keep up the good work
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Anita Mahler
Iced Gems Review |
Dear Nicey --
I am thoroughly enjoying your book! Yes, I am writing you from the USA; and no, the book was not a gift, I bought it on my own. I am somewhat one of those foodies (however, I only enjoy 'food' books if they're well written). FYI -- I discovered your book thru a catalog I get called A Common Reader.
I am nearly finished with the book and have just gotten thru with the 'Icing' chapter. I have indulged in some biscuits, mostly the Marie/Maria type. But after just reading about Iced Gems, I realized I also ate these as a child here in the States (Los Angeles), but I called them Belly Button Cookies.
I am of Chinese descent & oddly enough there are always a fair number of British-type cookies & crackers that are sold in the Chinese market (I don't know if this has to do with the British occupation of Hong Kong for so many years). My non-English speaking paternal grandmother often bought us 'cookies' while we took her on her weekly shopping expeditions to the market in Chinatown.
I was actually looking for these Belly Button Cookies recently in a Chinese market due more for nostalgia than anything else. However, I was unable to find them. I had no idea the cookies were originally from England.
However, my best friend's husband has been traveling often to London lately & I haven't been able to think of anything for him to bring back for me. Guess I now know what to ask for. To make his search easier, will he be able to find the Iced Gems at a Safeway? Or would he be better off at a Sainsbury? Or do you have a better suggestion? (I've been to London twice (& the first time I was sent on a mad hunt for a particular type of mustard for a friend that I found in a Safeway of all places)).
Thanks much for your time! Keep up the great website & I hope there's another book from you soon!
Best regards,
Anita Mahler |
Nicey replies: Hi Anita,
Glad to hear that we have put you in touch with the icing of your youth. Your friends husband will have no problem tracking down a sack of Iced Gems for you all the big supermarkets have them. They are available in fruit flavours or lately chocolate so probably best if he gets the fruity ones.
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Gill Tweed
Iced Gems Review |
I was in the depths of despair today, missing my son and his wife and my tiny grandson, who live in TimTam land in Sydney. I was wondering how I could make it through Christmas without them. I was in tears of abject misery. Suddenly there was a knock at the door. It was the postman with a parcel from Amazon containing your book and a message from my family with love and the wish,'may your tin be always full!'. Well, because I have been trying to lose weight, so I will be able better to fit into the airplane seat the next time I fly to Oz, my biscuit tin has languished empty for many months. But buoyant with the joy this present brought and cheered by the loving wishes from my family, I rushed off to Sainsbury's and splashed out on virtually every biscuit variety available, including pink wafers, to which I am unaccountably addicted (chacun a son gout and de gustibus non disputandum, as they say!). I just wanted you to know that I feel a hundred times better than I did before the postman's knock. And I think the book is pure genius.
Thank you so much.
Best wishes.
Gill Tweed.
PS I once had to perform the Heimlich manouevre on an adult at a school Christmas party in order to dislodge a stubborn iced gem from her windpipe. Truth is stranger than fiction. GT. |
Nicey replies: Gill,
So glad that we have cheered you up with our ramblings. Hope you get to do some biscuit research with your family down in Oz soon. |
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V Chan
Iced Gems Review |
Dear Nicey,
In Southeast Asia, the company Khong Guan still makes and sells iced Gem Biscuits very similar, in fact, virtually identical, to the ones that you describe as having eaten thirty years ago. They have sharp points, the icing colours are bright green, pink, yellow and white, and the base biscuit approximates the old Marie biscuit. Should you ever be in Singapore or Malaysia, they are easily obtainable in supermarkets and old-fashioned groceries, or provision stores as they are known here.
Yours sincerely,
V Chan |
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Pebejay
Iced Gems Review |
A seasonal remembrance of these is that my Gran always gave us a little tin of these as a Christmas treat. They came in a 2x2x2 tin which mimicked the big shop tins. I still have one of them!
Also, living on the edge of Reading we had several neighbours who worked at the H & P factory and used to get us penny bags of broken biscuits on a Friday. They often contained stray Iced Gems which certainly didn't appear broken.
Pebejay
Wokingham |
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