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Your e-Mails

Bruce Armstrong	Dear Nicey: Love your website and sense of humour, and especially the original spelling and grammar together with the Joycian rambling off into thoughts far removed. From what? Oh yes, tea and biscuits. My parents took us from the UK in 1959, when tea was loose and landed us in in Nova Scotia, Canada. Tea is big here, and the vast consumption of it a bit of a giggle to the rest of the country. By 1959, teabags had already displaced most loose tea, and we couldn't get a decent cuppa anywhere except at home. Then we discovered that all the tea came from Kenya and is called orange pekoe. I therefore became distraught at British colonial policy which obviously meant all the decent Indian tea was intercepted shortly after being picked and sent to the UK, leaving the rest of the world to choke down inferior brews. This, I believe, was as a distinct policy decision to make up for the Boston Tea Party, when nascent Americans invented iced tea by brewing it in the harbour. Nevertheless, my Mum soon discovered the universal "socials", at which other Mums would gather round to discuss their favourite topic or charity. These events were usually chronicled in the local paper with a description of the gathering, and Always the following note: "Mrs. So and So poured". Some of these ladies poured so much tea that they became very good at it, and championships had evolved by about 1885. Of course, my Mum quickly discovered that the nibblies offered at these socials were called ookies -- argh On the other hand, some of these things had morphed into what is generally known as "squares". Never seen anything like them in Blighty, but they have biscuits beaten by a country mile most of the time, as they are homemade, soft, gooey, quite often have lots of choccy nuts and jam in them and make you burp after the third cuppa. The most popular cookie, oh all right biscuit was then and still is the chocolate chip, which is made in every variety from hard like bourbons to gooey bits of mostly chocolate held together with undercooked dough. Hmm... Oreos are industrial floor sweepings and sugar baked into a hard and not very nice biccy. Don't like 'em at all, but some people are addicted. Rats. The "cookie" aisle at local supermarkets has well over 200 varieties of biscuits, but most aren't much good, although Dare Marshmallow Puffs aren't bad. These are, I should think, similar to Tunnocks tea cakes, but my brother and I used to put them in the fridge until they were cold and then you could pop the chocolate covering off them with your lips, leaving the white blob of marshmallow quivering on the biscuit, hiding the jam under it. Or you treat it like a boiled egg and smack its crown with a teaspoon, splintering the chocolate just enough to allow its removal from the clinging marshmallow with your fingers. Then while the cold chocolate gradually melted in your mouth, you could keep a close eye on the marshmallow, and decide how you were going to dispatch this particular specimen. You could lift it off the biscuit with your tongue and roll it around your mouth while it quietly dissolved, leaving the jammy biscuit behind, or in a fit of venal hunger bite right into the marshmallow and biscuit and chew it up. Delicious. As you know Wagon Wheels were an invention of Westons, which was a Canadian outfit. Having been quite unimpressed as a schoolboy in Britain with these things, we were eager to find out what the real thing was like. Just as bad with a faint whiff of decaying straw, which every wagon wheel seems to have. Maybe that's the grain content. There are many makes of digestives, but none of them taste like McVities. We still have Peek Freans here, but the funny little biscuits with the oven-hardened red jam blob in the middle taste remarkably like sawdust, and the tasteless jam sticks to your teeth for far too long. The bourbons are dreadful as well, being hard and with concrete-like filling and the digestives are merely passable. We had Marks and Sparks here for about 15 years, but despite their best efforts, they were unable to convince Canada that having all their goods arrayed around with snooty sales ladies and no pizazz was the marketing wave of the future. However, while they were here, at least people who had visited the UK and knew about M&S could get decent tea and biscuits, along with tinned cock-a-leekie soup, which I understand was a smash bestseller to expatriate Welshmen. The trouble with M&S stuff is that whilst being of first class quality, it never tastes like the original, does it? Something not quite right. After ten years of living in the colonies, I returned to London to take postgrad studies, and in my five years there downed so many cuppas and biscuits, it was all a bit of a blur really. Tescos were just starting up and were infested with grim-faced women buying the basics in pretty grimy locations like Lamb's Conduit Way, where one had to pass by the proprietor of an Indian restaurant who would call out the wondrousness of his curries and especially Bombay Duck as we Canadians tried to look the other way hurrying to buy some biscuits and a loaf of bread. By the way, ordinary bread in the UK is the best I've ever found by a long shot. I just can't enjoy a decent boiled egg without a proper slice of bread that's both chewy and heavy. Our loaves here weigh a pound and are the same size, which makes them fluffy enough to blow away in a light breeze, but not suitable as a gustatory complement to a humble egg. On the other hand, Britain invented Batchelors dehyrated peas and Vesta curries so you can't have everything your way can you. Fast forward to 1993 when I made my last trip to the UK, and managed to visit nearly all the friends I made while living in London, this meant travelling the length and breadth of the Uk including the Isle of Islay and quite a few drams of damn good whisky. Where was I, oh yes -- In Manchester, I had to give up tea-drinking by 6pm one day, as I counted back to the beginning of the day whilst sequestered in the loo and realized I had had 23 cups at six different places and a couple of real Eccles cakes from that place in Eccles which claims to have invented them. Very nice but felt a bit queasy. So now I read on your website that tea consumption is down a lot due to youngsters drinking too much juice and coke, which is a real pity because it leads to diabetes all that sugar. Plus, there's nothing like a quiet gathering with a nice cuppa and a biscuit or three. Anyway, I now buy Brooke Bond tea packaged in India from a local merchant so as to get the real tea flavour I like and make it properly as it's loose. Not like the leaf tea of my youth to look at, little hard granules that explode in boiling water. Not bad at all. On the other hand, besides biscuits of many varieties that would be instantly recognizable to you, we also get stuff from Poland, Germany, France, Belgium and the Netherlands which I have endeavoured to try. I should think that anyone from the aforementioned countries who visited the UK and had a decent cuppa and a UK biscuit would not want to return home. Good Lord, what are these things? Dry, crumbly biccies that don't travel well at all. Our Canadian stuff is much more like yours than these continental things. The Dutch try the hardest, but the German ones come in big bags without liners which mean they get crushed just getting here. I mean Britain gave the world hardtack, didn't it, and if that wasn't the beginning of the digestive, I don't know what is. Unbreakable unless dropped on its edge just so. Funnily enough, the very best tea I've ever been offered anywhere at a commercial place was in the USA, and I can recommend it highly. Visit the Acadia National Park in Maine, and wonder of wonders, the US National Parks Service serves tea in the garden and adjacent meadow at picnic tables in summer during the late afternoon. It is brought by attractive college students working their summer jobs there and arrives in a giant green porcelain teapot with Parks Service logo together with proper cups and saucers and milk and sugar. Just couldn't believe it when it happened, so had to have another pot with my parents. Wow. Who'd have ever believed it, the setting was perfect, the tea divine. So unexpected. Well I've written far too much and don't understand those icons, so don't know where this fits. But keep up the good work, I laugh my head off reading it and none of my friends understand why when I show them. I think I'll have a nice cup of tea and read some more, because I'm already sitting down. Bruce Armstrong Halifax, NS
	Nicey replies: Thanks Bruce for that mammoth message, and all of that useful information on Canada, its biscuits, cakes and its tea. Also thanks for the tip off about a place in America that makes a decent cup of tea, after four years I think we may be edging towards double figures on that. You also managed a fairly respectable icon haul. If you had kept going a bit longer I'm sure you would have most of the others, and I felt particularly that the kettle and toast icons where within your grasp at one point.
Uncle Greg HobNob Review	After several trips to the UK, I grew to realize that my firm belief that Mulino Bianco made the best breakfast biscuits in the world was being seriously challenged by the chocolate HobNob. But, I've had to rearrange my priorities before - having grown to realize the superiority of overseas cookies vs the ones we have here in the USA. I was more than happy with the Stella Doro Swiss Fudge Cookie back in high school in the 70's, and moved on - as I'm sure so many others did, as well - to the Pepperidge Farm Mint Milano in the 1980's. It was during my first visits to Italy that I discovered the Pan di Stella Breakfast cookie and fell madly in love. Now, a cup of coffee just wouldn't seem complete without a handful of those crumbly, hazel- nutty delights on the side. But, tho' aware of the concept of afternoon tea, I still confined my snacking to morning-time. But then - two things happened. I began to wean myself off the strong Italian coffee I'd been consuming, and gradually moved to drinking tea ... and I discovered that many tea "biscuits" had very little in common with my plain, dry perception of what a biscuit was. From Jacob's Ginger Biscuits to McVities Chocolate Covered Digestives, these were as far away from saltine crackers as I could have imagined. Then my good friend Pam in San Francisco introduced me to the Chocolate HobNob. Luckily, they were hard to get in the USA. Luckily, they were expensive. It didn't seem that they'd have a chance at knocking my beloved Mulino Biancos out of first place, as any time a visiting relative would fly over from Abruzzi they'd always know to bring several bags along with them. I was even starting to find a few stores in the Chicago area that stocked them ... all seemed safe. And then, my local supermarket added some English products in a specialty section. Creamed Rice, Branston Pickle, Malt Vinegar - and, yes - several rows of McVitties biscuits. Tho' still pricey enough to be considered a treat, I would treat myself - and stock up like crazy whenever I was lucky enough to take a trip over to Great Britain. But then - an amazing thing happened. My supermarket began to undergo a remodeling. Bins began to appear at the back of the store stocked with products they no longer intended to carry. Malteasers. HP Sauce. Lyon's Tea. Somehow, I had a feeling HobNobs would be next, if I could just remain vigilant enough. It took patience - and several visits. But one day I made my way to the back of the store & stumbled upon a sea of delicious blue cardboard tubes - Yes, Chocolate HobNobs!! And Chocolate Digestives, as well as Plain - plus Jacobs Ginger Biscuits, to boot. All for 69 cents each. Which is roughly 38 p, for you all. I abandoned all forms of self control & bought every package they had. Even tho' I'll actually be coming to London this fall, where I may - presumably - buy a few more packages of HobNobs. Because it is possible I could eat my way through the 25 tubes I have in the next 7 weeks. They're just that delicious. Greg Di Loreto
	Nicey replies: Righty ho then. Maybe you want to let McVities know when you are coming over and they'll make a couple of thousand extra, which should take them 20-30 seconds.
Lindsey Dodd Kimberley and Chocolate Kimberley Review	Dear Nicey I was interested to note the recent emails concerning our Russian cousins' drinking of tea with jam, and would like to tell Nicky Bramley about my Polish experience: one of the jams of choice which was added to tea in that fine country, by my unfine fellow-at-the-time, was rose jam. It had petals and everything (when I say 'everything' I exclude thorns and hips and leaves and stalks and roots). Rose jam is also a popular choice in Poland's famous doughnuts, which are merrily scoffed in a pre-Lenten fashion (a la pancakes), as is cheese. But that is another - and quite dangerous - matter. Imagine those petals floating up in your tea! Very pretty. Best regards, Lindsey. PS I am currently downing vats of tea (milked, not jammed) in order to rid my mouth of the unpleasant sensation of a Jacobs Kimberley. How can these atrocities be permitted in this day and age?
Nicky Bramley	Wow, I’d love to know what type of jam is used in Russian tea. Strawberry? Lumps of strawberry hunkered at the bottom of the cup Raspberry? A layer of pips to sieve through your teeth when you get to the bottom Rhubarb? Stringy floaters Blackcurrant? Little bouncy purple balls popping to the surface from time to time Aren’t other countries wonderful? Nicky
	Nicey replies: Yes it does raise many questions, doesn't it?
Isabel Stainsby	Dear Nicey, I'm glad that you have decent jam at NCOTAASD HQ - this means you can try drinking tea Russian style. I lived in Russia a few years ago and when I first came across tea-with-jam, I thought "Yuck!" - until I tried it. It's easy to make - make ordinary black tea the way you like it best, then stir in a generous teaspoonful of good-quality, preferably home-made jam. Don't add milk, and obviously you won't need sugar. Incidentally, the Russians don't always drink tea like this, just when they have people round for tea. The jam (in Russian, varenie) is provided in bowls and people also put it on slices of bread - and it's always home-made and extremely nice. I do hope you like this new tea-drinking experience. I'm going to go and eat some biscuits now. Isabel
	Nicey replies: That is so much more impressive than fruit tea.
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