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!

Type some key words here to search the feedback section

Your e-Mails

Steve Watts Club Milk Review	Hi It is great to learn that Club is back in its original format, even if its only in Ireland I worked as a sales rep for Associated Biscuits Limited (Jacobs, Peek Freans, Huntley & Palmers & Chiltonian) from 1980 to 1996, surviving all of the major changes in ownership, Nabisco and Danone! When I joined Club was available in Fruit(Purple), Milk(Red), Orange(Orange), Plain (Bright Green) & Wafer(Light Blue) available in singles or in 5 packs (RSP 41.5p, on promotion at 27.5-29.5p) Mint(Dark Green) with plain chocolate was added a little later Many an hour was spent filling supermarket shelves and building promotional ends for these brightly coloured packs ensuring that you always separated the two green packs with one of the other colours so as not to confuse the customer! Changes came, the chocolate was taken off and replaced with chocolate flavoured coating, the famous sandwich biscuit was replaced, Club Wafer was discontinued, Club Milk turned blue. the chocolate came back but a lot thinner and Club Mint changed to Milk Chocolate! Sales declined We also saw the disappearance of Trio, Winner and Elevenses During my time with company, McVities & United Biscuits were the sworn enemy and now they own the brands, it grieves me to see Crawfords on Family Circle but perhaps they will see sense and re-introduce the original and best Jacobs Club... because I think we all like a lot of chocolate on our biscuits! Regard Steve Watts PS what has happened to Mrs Peeks Christmas Puddings?
	Nicey replies: Steve, Great to hear from somebody who was so involved with the revered Club Biscuit. It was my cherished wish that McVities would ride to the rescue and reinstate the Club back to its former glory but alas they seem to view the whole acquisition and what was Associated Biscuits as a means of getting their hands on Cream Crackers. Given that they have had to brand their Jacobs fig rolls as McVities in-order to sell them in the Republic of Ireland, maybe Jacob's Fruitfieild will brand their Clubs as Bollands and start shipping some over here (we can hope). As for all those Christmas Puds, we had a few in our time. Every one accompanied by my Dad's tale of how awful the one they had after the end of WWII was. The resurrected Huntley and Palmers does quite a nice Christmas pudding nowadays, probably to be found in Waitrose.
Jim Fussell	Hi Nicey, How’s tricks? Hope you, Wifey and YMOS are all well. I thought it was about time I contributed a mail to the site again…..it’s been too long. I’ve just come back from a work trip to the USA and as per usual getting any sort of cup of tea over there is tough, let alone a decent one. Anyway, it was a two and a half week trip and frankly something had to be done to satisfy my tea craving. In my hotel room was a coffee maker, 4 Lipton Yellow Label tea bags and 3 sachets of Coffeemate. How wrong could it go? I loaded the tea bags into the coffee jug and filled the machine with water. A flick of the switch and I was only 5 minutes away from a delicious brew. The slightly hot water landed onto the bags and the level rose until I was satisfied there was enough for a couple of cups. I poured and added a sachet of Coffeemate. I’m sure you can imagine how it tasted……so I nipped over to McDonalds and got a tea from them, which to my surprise didn’t taste too bad….or maybe anything would have tasted good after my effort. Regards, Jim.
	Nicey replies: It takes one or two truly woeful and tragic cups of tea to knock that plucky British optimism out you. I also think Ray Mears has a lot to answer for here as he seems to be able to conjure up most of life's necessity's using just some sticks and a bonfire, it seems reasonable that we should be able to comfortably come up with a cuppa using the resources of a hotel room, even an American one. If there is a next trip perhaps you should camp out in shrubbry next to the car park and brew up billy can tea. I'm sure those innovations style catalogues full of executive toys and gadgets have something that could be used to make tea in such a hostile environment.
Cathy	Hello from California, USA! Do you know of any way I can order some Empire biscuits to get here? I love them, but haven't had any since I visited Glasgow about seven years ago. Both my parents were from Glasgow. When I was a child growing up in Brooklyn, New York, there was a Scottish Bakery called "Drew's Bakery" near our apartment. We used to get Empire Biscuits there. I do wish I could get them here. They are so lovely with a nice cup of tea! Just happened to see your web site on "Google", and thought I'd drop you an email to see if you knew of some way I might be able to order some. Thanks so much and have a great day.....Cathy
	Nicey replies: I don't think that's possible. They are the sort of thing that just turn up in small local bakeries and not the places accustomed to shipping things worldwide. They are very simple things really, you should have a go at baking your own. Here is a charming blog page I found on just that.
John Black Club Milk Review	The cutaway profile of the legendary Club Milk does look like the biscuits I remember from Days of Yore But your review fails to mention whether it is still possible to nibble away at the chocolate and “Free the Biscuit” I recall that freeing the biscuit from its chocolatey coffin was the sole purpose of Club biscuits perhaps you can enlighten us on the viability of this technique today.
	Nicey replies: Indeed as I mentioned the biscuit is moulded differently from the old Liverpool built Clubs. Old style biscuits had round edge implying that they had been moulded on both faces, the new ones seem to be moulded on one side then scraped thus giving the flat bottom. This does mean that the chocolate seems to bond a bit tighter on the new ones but I still managed to bite off chunks as I mentioned. I didn't have enough of them under ideal circumstances to attempt the complete de-chocolating, but I would think it is possible. Also the one in cross section was one of the few to make it out of Ireland. We had to leave in quite a hurry due to the weather, in fact there were floods in central Dublin the day we left. This meant that my strategic and comprehensive last big biscuit buy up didn't happen. The rather lob-sided one here made it out in the top pocket of my ruck-sack.
Kate Talbot	Hi, Just found your site and love it! Thought you might like to see my latest finsihed artwork on a biccy theme. It is made entirely from wool and is called: Grandma, what big teeth you have! Alas since being diagnosed coeliac ten years ago, the joy of biscuiteering is lost to me though I still have very fond memories and if I close my eyes and concentrate I can still taste a custard cream. Ah! Those were the days! Thanks for the memories, Kate x
	Nicey replies: I'm very impressed by your attention to detail, it elevates what could have simply been an average common or garden knitted plate of biscuits, with a knitted cup of tea and a knitted selection tray of biscuits and knitted cellophane pack complete with illustrations and knitted insert tray to something truly extraordinary. As for those custard creams it seems the only coeliac biscuits worth messing with are the custard creams. Its these same custard creams that have caused so much confusion recently leading the OED to include Custard Cream this year.
	<< Previous | More >>