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 |
Helen Smith |
It was with a heavy heart that I read your headline this morning re Dark Choccie Hobnobs. I had a suspicion that they were becoming rarer, but now I am devastated. I will just have to make my own from now on. McVities, you have dropped a clanger with this. Lets hope some far-sighted supermarket will grasp the oaty baton and start to make their own version. Of course the ultimate irony is that McVities will probably make them! As long as they don't have that stupid tube, I'll be happy.
I think they have tried to please all men with all things. Milk chocolate orange Hobnobs are just plain wrong. I have previously made my own dark chocolate orange Hobnobs, and concluded that taste-wise, there was too much going on. But, with the Blitz spirit that made this country what it is, no ginormous biscuit corporation is going to deprive me of my biscuity delights, no sir!
Sorry, just a bit emotional there.
Yours traumatically
Helen
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Matt |
Re: Plain Chocolate HobNobs
Well yet again some spotty Herbert of a marketing guru gets involved and buggers up a perfectly good products then when it falls in sales they ditch it as it must be the public not wanting it… couldn’t possibly be the public reacting to the changes. Maybe for once they should reverse their changes and see what happens to sales. |
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Robin and Danielle |
Hello Nicey and Wifey
We only found your website three days ago by complete accident, and now it’s the most favourite of our favourites. It’s especially appreciated, since we live in Romania, where the selection of biscuits in the shops is dire, and the black tea is prohibitively expensive (they all drink fruit teas here, for their supposed health benefits). Anyway, the way I stumbled across you was that I was trying to do a Google search for a biscuit called ‘Decadent’ that existed for a brief time in Britain in the late 1980’s (I think). It lived up to its name – it was big, loaded with chocolate chunks and other stuff, expensive and superb. Do you (or any readers) remember it and know what happened to it?
Best wishes, Robin and Danielle |
Nicey replies: In the late 1980s my life style was very far from decadent, and I was probably subsisting on large packets of GingerNuts and the odd Digestive. So I never tangled with these biscuits, although they do sound very shoulder pads and loads of money. |
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Mrs Sarah Mint-Viscount |
Dear Nicey, Wifey & YMOS,
While looking through the feedback section of NCOTAASD, I noticed various postings on the subject of kettles, and all the talk of kettles reminded me of the time I spent in County Kerry, and the strange kettle-y activity that went on while I was there.
I was there for about a year doing a course, and it turned out to be a place of real significance to me in tea-related terms. First of all, I had foolishly neglected to develop a taste for tea previous to doing that course, but while there, I finally discovered the love for a nice brew. This probably happened because of the canteen’s policy of charging (a lot) for all non-tea beverages e.g. orange juice, but not charging anything for the tea. It’s the old story: student meets free food/drink, student falls in love with the free food/drink - textbook stuff really
Second of all, it was in Kerry that I encountered an exciting new sport: Kettle Racing. A fellow student from Galway had played this unusual sport on a previous stint at student life, and he showed us the way. Basically what it involved was the following: whenever there was a house party, everyone was encouraged to bring the kettles from their own houses. Then, at some point during the evening, we would all congregate with them in the kitchen, and an adjudicator would be appointed (a neutral, who hadn’t brought a kettle). The kettles were emptied, lined up, and plugged in. The adjudicator would then take out a measuring jug and put a precise 1 litre of water into each kettle, ensuring that everybody’s water was equally cold…. and it was “On your buttons, set, GO”.
Naturally, we all got feverish with excitement as we waited to see whose kettle would get to clicking-off point first - well you can imagine the sort of emotion it would stir up. When your trusty kettle – the water boiler extraordinaire, and source of so many a good cuppa - is pitted against other kettles, you badly, badly want it to win. No-one wants some upstart kettle from down the road to be considered superior. So there were shreaks and roars as each person urged on their kettle, the representive of their house: “Come on 27 Millroad Crescent”… “Go on 15 Killeen Drive”. Unfortunately it did get nasty occasionally as people couldn’t come to terms with their kettle being beaten. So there would be accusations thrown around, about elements being pre-warmed with a boiling immediately prior to the race preparations, or overfilling by an allegedly impartial adjudicator. These unpleasantries aside, it was, all-in-all, a good giggle.
I know some people will immediately disapprove, thinking of the environmental impact of all those kettles being boiled unnecessarily, but I would point out in our defence that the kettle races held us all in such thrall that pretty much every other electrical device was abandoned while the race went on – every playstation, DVD player, television, CD player or radio was switched off as we focused on the exciting events in the kitchen.
Anyway, I just wondered if anyone else has played this outside of Co. Kerry, or indeed Ireland. I have a suspicion that, if at all, the sport will only be found amongst other students (Kings and Queens of too-much-time-on-your-hands activities).
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Nicey replies: I think we could only condone such a environmentally dubious sport if all the boiled water was used to make tea for the needy. |
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Sylvia Johnson |
Sylvia and Alice have been busy this September making very large and very fine cakes. Here is photographic evidence of our Battenburg slices and Butterfly buns. We would love to see them on your ever so splendid website.

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Nicey replies: Exquisite work. |
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